is the girl Noelle wanted me to take. So I took her. And as bad as I feel keeping her here when she wants to leave, I can’t let her go until she’s done whatever she’s supposed to do, or I’ve done whatever I’m supposed to do. Or until I know whatever Elle wanted me to know.”
But Kori clearly thought I’d lost my mind. “Kris...”
“Don’t. I’m not crazy. Do you have any idea how many people have died because I couldn’t figure this out?” I closed the notebook and laid one hand on its ratty cover. “Because I don’t. I have no idea how many people I’ve failed to save, like I failed to save that crossing guard.” Like I’d failed to save Noelle. “I don’t know, because I can’t figure most of these out. This is the first time I’ve even come close to seeing what she wanted me to see, and I’m not going to give up on that.” I wasn’t going to give up on her.
“Is this about that boy? Micah?”
An old, bitter pain rang through me at the mention of his name. I hadn’t consciously thought about him in years, but his face was never far from my memory. “No. This has nothing to do with him.”
“Because you know, you can’t punish yourself forever, and no matter how many kids you shield, you can’t bring Micah back.”
No. I couldn’t. But I could stop it from happening to the others. To the kids most in danger of being headhunted by the Skilled mafia. Kids like Kenley, who’d barely been in college when she was extorted into joining the Tower syndicate. Kids like Micah, who’d been delivered into their own personal hell by people like me, who didn’t ask enough questions—who didn’t care enough to ask the right questions—and became unwitting, unbound cogs in the very machine I wanted to destroy.
But for once this wasn’t about Micah.
“This is about Noelle, and the things she saw, and the things I’m supposed to do. There’s a reason she said those things in my bed. There has to be. Destiny doesn’t deal in coincidences.”
“But Kris...Noelle didn’t say these things to you.” Kori spoke with a firm voice, as if that might make her assertion easier to believe. “She said them to no one. In her sleep. We don’t know if Elle ever remembered a word of this.” She took the notebook from me and flipped through it aimlessly. “She wasn’t trying to saddle you with some kind of heroic mandate. She was just...sleeping.”
I’d thought about that possibility over and over since Noelle died, and every time, I came to the same conclusion. “Did you ever hear her talk in her sleep?”
Kori shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a couple of times.”
“Exactly. You didn’t hear much of it because even when she came for your sleepover, she slept in my bed. I think she fell asleep with me on purpose.” She started to object, but I spoke over her. “Think about it, Kor. She could have snuck back to the sleepover as soon as she had what she’d come for. But she didn’t. She stayed with me—she slept in my bed—for a reason.”
Kori looked as if she didn’t know what to say.
Then, she looked as if she had too much to say.
“You’re telling me—with a straight face—that you think Noelle slept with you off and on for six years so that you’d record her prophesies in a notebook she didn’t even know you had, then drive yourself nuts for the rest of your life, trying to figure out what she was talking about, when she didn’t even know she was speaking? Seriously?”
Well, when you put it like that... “Yes.”
“Kris...”
“Think about it, Kori!” I set the notebook on the nightstand and turned to face her more directly. “No one knows what Elle knew, and most of what she said only makes sense years after the fact. Maybe she did know about the notebook. Maybe she wanted me to keep it. Maybe she knew I was going to write in it before I knew I was going to write in it. Hell, maybe she knew she wasn’t going to be around long enough to do anything about all the stuff she saw, and this was her way of asking me to take over for her.”
Kori exhaled slowly, apparently struggling for patience. “Fine. Let’s assume you’re right. Why on earth would she have wanted you to kidnap Sera?”
“Maybe she wanted you to trade her for Kenley?”
Kori