She blinked. “How many souls? Five. But I’ve got more shadows than I can count.”
“That’s the partials, right?” I asked. “The ones you only take a little of?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s not the most pleasant thing you can do to a person, but leaving them missing a memory is better than taking their life.” She sighed. “I’ve killed a lot more than that, though. Most were in the line of duty.” She looked away. “But some weren’t, early on. Some were ...” She brought her eyes back, slow, and I could see depths in them when she turned back to me. “Some were personal. Things I did before I got a tight handle on myself.”
“I lived a pretty disciplined life while I was growing up,” I said, staring back at her, but not really looking at her.
“I know,” she said tonelessly. “Ever since we moved into the house.”
“I think I went off the rails this last year,” I said.
“It could have gone worse,” she said. “Teenage rebellion is always hard.”
I looked at her almost pityingly. “What? Like this is my rumspringa, and soon I’ll go back to following the ordnung? I killed people.”
“So did I,” she said quietly. “So did I. But there’s nothing you can do about it now except—”
“Penance,” I said. “That was what I figured in England. That what I’d done ... seeking revenge was testing the ends of my powers—”
“Pushing societal limits and finding that there aren’t that many for a meta, right?” She cocked her head at me. “Not with the old structures of power falling away under Century’s scythe.”
“I decided I was going to make up for it as best I could,” I said. “Try and atone, protect as best I could.”
She nodded. “Redemption’s a word that gets thrown around a lot nowadays. When I was hiding in Gillette, I watched a lot of TV and inevitably ended up seeing some of that awful reality television. Hollow, vain people clawing for fame and whatever droppings it brings with it. They toss around the word redemption after a failure like it’s something you do after you make a simple slip up, like bumping into someone in the street.” She looked at me, and I could feel the power in her eyes, the truth, that she knew what she was saying. “You and I both know it’s deeper than that. Redemption isn’t as simple or cheap as they’d suggest; not as easy as winning some vapid and pointless competition. Redemption for us means saving our souls from the abyss that most of our kind dwell in.” Her blue-green eyes glimmered in the half-light of the office. “I saw my sister go down that road, and there’s nothing in this world that can redeem her now.”
“I know how that feels,” I said, and I did, all the way to the bone, my body feeling like it might suddenly sink through the chair, it was so heavy.
“You’re not her,” my mother said. “The ones I killed ... they still weigh on me, every day, even the ones I killed in the line of duty. You don’t have to sink like Charlie. There is redemption out there, if you want it badly enough. This might just be your chance.”
“I don’t know that I can ever make up for what I’ve done,” I said, shaking my head.
“Not make up for it. Not even offset it. Just ... do your best to try and tilt the balance back in the other direction.” She sighed. “Live a life where you’re doing your best to fight back from what you were, what you did. Become a person who’s the opposite of what you were when you dove deep into the waters of revenge. Someone who stands up for what’s right.”
“I may have to kill again before this is all over,” I said. “I may have to kill Weissman and Sovereign. There aren’t any easy solutions for these men, there are no prisons that can hold them, no places to send them where they won’t harm others.”
“Then we’ll have to kill them,” she said. “And that’s part of your redemption, too. You’ll have to make the hard decisions others can’t because your soul has taken damage that others shouldn’t have to experience.” She caught my gaze, and hers was haunted. “It’s a terrible burden. A terrible price. But because of what you’ve done—if you really want to redeem yourself in your own eyes—you have to carry it without complaint.”
I nodded. “I had a feeling it would come down to me.”
“You got yourself into it,” she said sadly, “and you’re the only one who can carry you through. Trust me on that. I’ve been carrying it myself for more years than I can count.”