Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

MARNIE

I hated Levi for hurting me.

I hated myself for letting him.

I hardly spoke to Imogen after returning to our room last night. The next morning, I still couldn’t seem to get my head straight. The worried looks she kept shooting me as we sat at the cafe made me even more self-conscious about the feelings I didn’t want to feel.

She kept casting big puppy eyes at me as she nibbled on her muffin.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Okay.”

More worried stares ensued.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.

“Of course.” She tilted her chin up and stared at the sky.

I sighed. “I didn’t say you couldn’t look at me at all.”

“But I don’t know how I’m looking at you. Whatever offensive expression I’m sporting—it’s totally involuntary, so it’s safer if I just do this.”

“It’s worse,” I said.

She looked at me again, this time with a look of bewilderment.

That was better.

“It’s just….” She pressed her lips together.

“What?”

“I know Levi is important to you. You’ve bonded in such a special way in such a short time.”

“He’s not important to me.”

“As a general rule, inconsequential people can’t devastate us.”

“I’m not devastated.”

She gave me a pitying look like she wasn’t sure if I even realized I was lying.

I did know it, but I’d die before I’d admit it. If I admitted how much I cared, how badly I hurt, it would break me completely. I couldn’t afford to be devastated when Otis and his accomplice Noodles were out there waiting to murder me a second time.

If I could manage it, I preferred to defer the emotional aftermath indefinitely.

Imogen nibbled her muffin and looked back up at the sky. “When you love someone?—”

“I don’t love him,” I snapped at her. “I hate him.”

I hadn’t meant to lose my calm demeanor, and I immediately regretted it.

“Mmm.” She tilted her head slightly and pressed her lips together.

“He betrayed me, pretended that he cared.”

“Did he though?”

“Of course he did. He knew what Otis did, and he sought me out because of it.”

“Are you sure? Did he tell you that?”

No. He didn’t tell me that. He didn’t tell me anything at all. I hated these frustratingly reasonable questions and the holes they poked in my anger.

“We’re practically strangers,” I said. “I don’t love a stranger whose allegiance is to the man who murdered Nie.”

“You know what I think?”

“Something contrary and flowery and disgusting, I’m sure.”

She smiled like it was a compliment. “Nobody is perfect. But some people are worth it.”

That wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. I figured she’d say something along the lines of rainbow fairy love is always meant to be.

“Ooh, a cat!” Imogen popped up from her seat and started running. “It has a crown!”

Grateful I had a to-go cup, and for an end to this torturous conversation, I took my coffee and headed after her.

As I rounded the first corner, I was surprised to find the pair stopped in the street. Had Noodles led us here purposefully? It certainly seemed to be the case.

“Aha! I knew it. You have a crown,” Imogen waved her finger at the cat. “You’re the cat-fox, Noodles McDoodles Butterbelly!”

The cat lounged across the middle of the street and flicked its tail like it couldn’t be bothered with us.

It was wearing a tiara, which was weird. The ears were a little longer, and the fur was a little redder than a typical tabby, but it looked like a relatively benign cat-like creature to me. It looked almost nothing like the red fox I’d seen on the video.

“What are you doing in Nevermore?” Imogen asked the cat.

The cat looked away.

Imogen snapped a photo with her camera. “I’ll send this to Rose. She’ll confirm your identity.”

The cat continued flicking its tail.

If this went wrong, I still had potions in my bag, and I had my knife. I’d have to drop my coffee and Imogen’s muffin to retrieve them, but that was a small price to pay for staying alive.

“I know you can understand me,” Imogen said. “You better talk or I’ll bodysnatch you and make you talk.”

Could she bodysnatch a kitsune? I didn’t think so.

“Pathetic bluff,” the cat said in an unsettling human-like voice.

I stared, not believing my ears. This really was Noodles.

“Why did you take my head?” I asked.

“To help, obviously. You’re welcome,” Noodles said.

“How did taking Nie’s head help?” Imogen asked. “Is this some kind of reverse psychology nonsense? Pretty sure taunting people with their own head in a box is not nice.”

The cat huffed, and its tail twitched faster. “Wouldn’t it have been crueler to leave it?”

It sounded almost pleading, like the cat wanted to be reassured that she was doing me a kindness.

“No,” Imogen said. “It was pretty much the meanest thing possible.”

I wasn’t so sure.

Yes, opening that box had been devastating. But the cat hadn’t killed Nie. If it had left her head here in Nevermore, Mar wouldn’t have come here to find her. I wouldn’t have known about the threat to my life, what had happened to the other me, and I never would have met Levi.

That last part may have been for the better.

And all of this assumed that Noodles wasn’t colluding with Otis and Levi.

“Meanest thing possible?” The cat rolled upright and tucked her paws under her, tail smacking hard back and forth at her sides. “It’s impossible to win with your kind.”

“What are we winning and losing?” Imogen asked.

“Nothing,” the cat huffed. “Everything.”

Noodles definitely thought she was doing me a favor.

I asked, “Why did you think delivering Nie’s head would help?”

“Because then you’d know your Nie had been eliminated from the competition,” the cat said. “And as a part of the same being, they’d be coming for you next.”

No one until the alchemist had attacked me, and that was only after I came to Nevermore. Still, despite my neutral facade, my heart raced with a quiet optimism. Every word she spoke inched me closer to the truth I desperately sought.

I asked, “What competition?”

At the same time Imogen said, “Who is coming for Marnie?”

“You truly know nothing.” Noodles sighed again, this time more exaggerated than the last. “Your clone entered you into The Competition. Kill or be killed. Everyone who is left is coming for you, Marnie.”

Some sort of last man standing competition? Like…in the movie Highlander?

Each remaining threat had the same binding curse that stopped him from leaving the island. If they were all after me, they never would have been had I not come to Nevermore.

“Why would Nie do that?” Imogen asked. “Why join?”

Instead of answering, Noodles insisted, “I did the good thing by warning you, just like I did a good thing when I warned the other on the train.”

The other had to be Nie.

There was no Noodles on the train manifest from Piccadilly to Nevermore, and I didn’t remember seeing a cat or fox getting on the train either.

The pieces finally clicked.

“You can turn into a person,” I guessed. “It was you in the cloak on the security footage at the station following Nie.”

“Yes, because I’m good,” Noodles said. “Tell me I did good.”

Imogen wrinkled her nose.

I remembered the other time I’d seen a cloaked figure—in the basement of the Mournmore.

“Did you kill the gorilla guy?”

“You’re supposed to praise me,” Noodles said, in a sharper voice than before. “No accusations.”

“Okay.” I had to be careful how I phrased my questions or she’d run off before telling us anything else. “But it was you over the body, right? The person Levi and I chased?”

“Maybe.”

“Why were you there?”

She said nothing.

“Why did you stop running now?” Imogen asked. “Why’d you lead us over here? Why do you want to talk to us?”

Noodles didn’t answer.

“We’ve heard you force people to do things against their will,” I said. “Secondhand, of course. Why do you care so much about being good?”

It seemed to be a new desire for her. Though I couldn’t say for sure since I hadn’t been involved with Rose and her mother back when their issues with Noodles started.

“Reasons,” Noodles said with a sniffle.

Gently, I asked, “What reasons?”

The cat flicked its tail and said nothing.

“What else can you tell us about the competition?” Imogen asked.

“Nothing. It’ll be over soon.” Noodles jumped to her feet.

“You know more. It would be good to tell us everything,” I said.

“I don’t think so. Not this time.”

I could swear there was a hint of fear in her voice. What would a kitsune fear? The reaper? Death came for all of us.

Before I could ask anything else, she scaled the side of a building like it was nothing. She disappeared on the rooftop.

“I think that ‘being a good cat’ story is bogus,” Imogen said.

There were certainly holes in Noodles’s story, but what did she have to gain from talking to us now? What reason did she have to lie?

“I’m not so sure,” I said.

If Noodles didn’t kill the gorilla guy in the basement, why was she there, and who really killed him? Otis?

And if Noodles really warned Nie on the train about the danger of coming to Nevermore, why did Nie stay? Had Noodles simply made a vague comment like it’s a bad place rather than an explicit warning that Nie could end up murdered?

Imogen shrugged. “I have to pee. You want to come?”

“I’m good.”

“Hold my muffin?”

I took it and sipped on my coffee as I waited for Imogen to return.

As I took a big drag of caffeine, a sharp prick stabbed into my neck.

I tried to turn, but everything went fuzzy and I collapsed into darkness with nothing but confusion swirling in my head.