The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions Book 1)

WHEN I FIRST MET THE professor, I was with Mara at a botanica in Miami, and he was masquerading as a Santeria priest (which I would’ve preferred). Abel Lukumi a.k.a. Armin Lenaurd a.k.a. whoever the fuck he is, in reality, is nothing more than a Gifted con man. He used my father, my mother, and will use me if I allow it. Before he vanished, my father explained, quite insanely, that he believed I would have to kill Mara because of Fate and Destiny, or else she’ll inevitably kill me in some unspecified way. After that horror show, I received my own letter, as did Mara. Mine was from my mother, written to me before she died. Mara’s was from the professor, but the message to both of us was the same: The die has been cast. Your role has been written. Be the hero and play it, or there will be no happy ending for either of you.

I made a decision that day, and it seemed I’d have to make another. I tear the professor’s letter in half.

Fate is bullshit. Destiny doesn’t exist. If I want a happy ending, I’ll have to write it myself.

I find Mara poised in the middle of a balcony that rings the great hall. People in black swarm inside the house and then march out of it like ants. Mara has been pacing, tigerlike, between the two groups—I stuff the will and letter back in the envelope before I call out to her.

She rushes over. “Noah, I know who he is.” She notices the envelope in my hand. “What is that?”

“Shit my dad said, essentially.” The professor is rather a sore subject with us. “I’ll explain later. What happened?”

“So, after you and your grandmother left, I tried to find my way out of the house so I could go outside and see what was happening with the body, but this place is Labyrinth, and I never made it.” A look of clenched frustration, then a deep breath. “I was trying to get out of the house, and I ended up hitting a dead end—a staircase roped off with a little sign that said ‘private’ or whatever. Obviously, I stepped over it.”

“Obviously.”

“I ended up in this older part of the house—the rooms looked completely different,” she says, glancing behind her shoulder at the great hall. “I ended up under the stairs? Beneath the stairs?”

“Below Stairs, do you mean?”

Her eyes light up. “Yes! Below Stairs. I ran into this complete caricature of an old English person who said his name was Bernard—he pronounced it Bernerd, by the way—”

“Naturally.”

“He works for some charity, I think—preservation, maybe?”

“The National Trust?”

“Maybe? I think he said something else. Anyway, he told me I wasn’t supposed to be down there, of course, and I played the dumb American.”

“Not very well, I imagine.”

Her mouth lifts into a half smile. “I start apologising, saying I got turned around, and that I was with you, and his eyes twinkled with this old-man-who-doesn’t-get-to-talk-to-anyone-but-today’s-his-lucky-day twinkle, and he pompously starts giving me a tour of ‘Below Stairs.’ Muttered something about rumours and ‘that boy.’ Right,” she says, nodding as she registers my expression. “He’s the first—maybe the only person I’ve met—to even mention him. So of course I ask, ‘What boy?’ And then he acts like he didn’t hear me, telling me hundred-year-old stories about maids catching your ancestors having affairs, whispering about whose children belonged to whom, instead.”

“But you kept on.”

“No one has ever been more interested in the shit Bernard has to say. As far as Bernard knows.”

“You looked up at him through your dark lashes, face full of wonder.”Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

She grins. “Which makes him more enthusiastic and less willing to let me go. He starts showing me things that old valets and lady’s maids and other indentured servants squirrelled away—two-hundred-year-old kids’ toys and these small trunks inlaid with silver and probably, horribly, ivory, so I start having a panic attack.”

“Wait, are you joking?”

“No, I mean, sort of. It was a thing—the dumb-American game didn’t seem to be working, so I worked up to the scared-little-girl game.” She lifts her shoulders into a shrug. “I wanted to find out if he knew anything that actually mattered, but he sits me down and tells me to breathe.”

She hates being told to breathe.

“I fucking hate it when people tell me to breathe—it’s like telling me to smile. Like, you breathe.”

“Dare I ask whether Bernard survived your encounter?”

“Fair question. I took pity on him because he’s eight thousand years old.”

“Generous.”

“Indeed,” Mara says, mimicking my accent. “Anyway, I started going on about how upset I am about your father, and what happened at the funeral, and then I go shivery and whisper, Sixth Sense style, that I saw the whole thing. He licked up everything I offered him, and then begins telling me, ‘in strictest confidence’ how ‘The boy is the great-great-grandchild of a house maid that served your great-great-grandfather.’  There are pictures of him somewhere, a portrait in the house. There’s all of this stuff that goes back centuries, he said. Your family kept everything.”

“Did he happen to add anything helpful, like, for example, where?”

“Yeah, no. He talked about servant records and family trees and shit being here, in the house, but where here, he didn’t know. But he did give me a name.”

“Need I ask?”

“Sam Milnes. Familiar?”

I shake my head.

“He’s apparently also the great-great-grandson of the old groundskeeper, but his G3 was fired as soon as they discovered the lady’s maid was pregnant, and moved south to do something else, I don’t remember, and Sam’s dad is a chef at a pub about an hour away from here. Not at the funeral.”

“His father wasn’t? Mother?”

“Nope. No one in his family. I asked specifically.”

“Bad blood?”

“Bernard mentioned something about a rumour that he wasn’t the groundskeeper’s kid, that someone in the family knocked her up, then sent both of them packing to hide it.” She shrugs one shoulder. “Or some other shit happened so long ago that no one cares about it anymore.”

“Maybe Sam cared,” I say, looking past Mara for a moment. I thought I spied a spot of red behind her. A red suit, perhaps?

“Or he knew something? I don’t know. Why was he here?” she asks herself.

“He had the key,” I say absently, trying to find the red-suited curator.

Her forehead scrunches. “What key?”

“To the bell tower he—the tower we found him in. That part of the ruins is only accessible by staff of the house and the Trust. He had the key, somehow, to unlock the gate.”

“It—you don’t think it’s the same key his family would’ve had, do you? I mean, it’s not like they had safety regulations in the . . .”

Great-great-grandfather. I do the maths. “Eighteen hundreds?”

A flicker of something passes over Mara’s face, quick enough that I’m not quite sure whether I’ve imagined it.

“The gates are old—don’t know when they were put up, but I couldn’t get past them as a child. And I did try. Some of my first lock-picking attempts, in fact.”

“Maybe we should go back and check?”

Maybe. Probably. But I need to check on something else, too. The professor’s letter is scratching at my mind—as Father surely intended, for some undoubtedly twisted reason. And I don’t want to bring it, or him, up with Mara. I’m entirely sure he’s full of shit, and she—well. She’s not. I can’t give her any reason to think about him. We’ve been there before, and I know where it’ll lead—with her wondering if she should leave me. For my sake—for my life, rather. But my life means nothing without her in it, so. Unmentioned the professor shall remain.

“Why don’t you go back to find out what’s happened with Sam?” I ask her.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “But don’t you think the English CSI equivalent is swarming the scene?”

Doubtful—my grandmother would pull whatever strings available to make sure they’re doing whatever it is they do without being spotted by the guests. “Why don’t you find out?”

Her head tilts. “Me? As in, just me?”

“I still haven’t found Katie. I want to talk to her before we go.”

Mara nods, but there’s a wariness to her. I’m an extraordinary liar, but she knows me too well.

“What, you don’t want to be alone?” That’ll get her blood up.

“I don’t care about that,” she says with a slight lift of her chin.

“It’s all right if you don’t. I wouldn’t.”

“I’m fine by myself,” she insists. “I just don’t really know where I’m going.”

“Right. I’ll go with you back to the tower, but see if you can’t find someone here who’ll tell you whether the police have got here yet. I’ll meet you back here as soon as I find Katie.”

She’s quiet. Not hurt—a bit annoyed, I think, but there’s more to it than that. What, I don’t know.

I fit my hand around her cheek, thumbing her bottom lip. “All right? I won’t be a minute.”

She nods, biting the tip of my thumb. Not softly, either.

I lean toward her, letting my lips graze her earlobe. “I’ll be back very, very soon.”

And then I leave her at the balcony, glancing back once and adding an arrogant grin for good measure before I take the stairs two at a time, past the great hall, past the thrumming masses of people and the silent statues, and head Below Stairs myself.