I move a bit farther into the room, but not much. Like distance will make the truth easier for Nora to swallow. “Finn didn’t disappear.”
His name at least halts Nora’s immediate protest, earning me enough time for another sentence.
“Whoever is taking these kids, I think they’re keeping them alive. I don’t know why. And after a few years, they…they die.”
Nora pushes to her feet, and I can see the argument rising on her tongue. Her frown pulls so deep, I wonder if it hurts. “How the hell would you know that if you don’t know where they are?”
She is giving me every chance to back out, but I have to push forward. “I know because Finn told me.”
The last of Nora’s resolve splinters—I’ve gone too far.
“Finn didn’t run away. He was taken,” I say. “He didn’t leave you. He misses the hell out of you, actually—”
Nora jerks forward, so fast I almost expect her to hit me. Instead, she folds her arms tight against her chest. Her jaw trembles with how hard she’s clenching her teeth. She is shaking as she says, “That’s enough.”
“He and two of the girls, Sloane Hart and Aisha Davies, are trapped in some kind of limbo. Like ghosts. They’ve been stuck in my aunt’s house for years, but they’re still alive—”
“What is wrong with you?” Nora snaps.
“Nora—”
“I tried to be your friend, Jo, I really did. Even when you gave me every reason not to be. But this is cruel.” She throws her hands up. “You need to go.”
She moves forward, shepherding me toward the door, and I scramble backward, digging my hand into my pocket. I came here with one fail-safe, and even it might be faulty. But it’s all I have.
I yank out the sheet music, the one with the song I started and Finn finished, and shove it at her.
She grabs it, mostly to get it out of her face, I think, but thenher gaze falls to the paper, to the writing, and she freezes. Slowly, her head tilts and her lips part, then her eyes glaze over.
“This is my brother’s handwriting,” she says. “How do you have this?”
“Finn and I wrote it,” I say, voice soft. “Well, he really did most of it.”
I take her in. Nora is taller than me, as tall as Finn, but when her shoulders sink, and her chin dips, she’s the fourteen-year-old whose brother never came home. Her hand rises to her chest, above her heart.
“I know it sounds impossible,” I say. My chest tightens, and my words come fast. “But I’ve spent the last three months with him. I know that he fidgets more than any human being I’ve ever met, and that he has to have music playing around him at all times. I know that he secretly likes trashy reality TV shows. I know that he’s thoughtful in a way that’s super weird for a teenage boy.”
When Nora lifts her gaze to mine, I know why Finn kept so many of his own secrets, too.
It’s in her eyes. The shift from skepticism to hope, all of it shaded by fear. Hope is more dangerous than any grief. Grief may never go away, but it softens. Hope digs its claws in, down to the bone, and never lets go.
“The same people who have had your brother for three years have mine now, too,” I say. “I want to get them back.”
—
“Obviously, the police will be no help,” Nora says ten minutes later, pacing back and forth in front of a whiteboard she dragged out of the back of her closet.
“I wasn’t counting on it,” I say.
“And if they’re in on it, we tip them off,” she says.
“You think they are?” I ask.
Nora pauses as she thinks, her tongue poking against one side of her mouth, giving her a chipmunk-esque look.
“Why the power plant?” she asks.
“It’s a guess,” I say. “We’ve checked every inch of my house, and the one across the street. The only place we haven’t gone is the plant. And it’s hard to get to. It’s a decent place to hide.”
