At first, when Adam opened his eyes from the gory dream, his limbs tingling from the adrenaline of it, he wasn’t sure where he was. He felt like he levitated; the space around him was all wrong, too little light, too much space overhead, no sound of his breath coming back at him from the walls.
Then he remembered where he was, in Noah’s room with its close walls and soaring ceilings. A new wave of misery washed over him, and he could identify its source very precisely: homesickness. For uncountable minutes, Adam lay there awake, reasoning with himself. Logically, Adam knew that he had nothing to miss, that he effectively had Stockholm syndrome, identifying with his captors, considering it a kindness when his father didn’t hit him. Objectively, he knew that he was abused. He knew the damage went deeper than any bruise he’d ever worn to school. He could endlessly dissect his reactions, doubt his emotions, wonder if he, too, would grow up to hit his own kid.
But lying in the black of the night, all he could think was, My mother will never speak to me again. I’m homeless.
The specter of Glendower and the ley line hung in Adam’s mind. They seemed closer than ever before, but the possibility of a successful outcome also felt more tenuous than ever before. Whelk was out there, and he’d been searching for this for even longer than Gansey. Surely, left to his own devices, he’d find what he wanted sooner than they would.
We need to wake up the ley line.
Adam’s head was a jumble of thoughts: the last time his father had hit him, the Pig pulling up beside him with Gansey inside, Ronan’s doppelganger at the cash register on that day when he decided he must go to Aglionby, Ronan’s fist slamming into his father’s face. He was full of so many wants, too many to prioritize, and so they all felt desperate. To not have to work so many hours, to get into a good college, to look right in a tie, to not still be hungry after eating the thin sandwich he’d brought to work, to drive the shiny Audi that Gansey had stopped to look at with him once after school, to go home, to have hit his father himself, to own an apartment with granite countertops and a television bigger than Gansey’s desk, to belong somewhere, to go home, to go home, to go home.
If they woke the ley line, if they found Glendower, he could still have those things. Most of them.
But again, he saw Gansey’s wounded form, and he saw, too, Gansey’s wounded face from earlier today, when they’d fought. There just wasn’t a way that Adam would put Gansey in peril.
But there also wasn’t any way that he was going to let Whelk slide in and take what they’d worked so hard for. Wait! Gansey could always afford to wait. Adam couldn’t.
He was decided, then. Creeping quietly around the room, Adam put things in his bag. It was hard to predict what he would need. Adam slid the gun from beneath the bed and looked at it for a long moment, a black, sinister shape on the floorboards. Earlier, Gansey had seen him unpacking it.
"What’s that?" he’d demanded, horrified.
"You know what it is," Adam had replied. It was Adam’s father’s gun, and though he wasn’t sure his father would ever use it on his mother, he wasn’t taking the chance.
Gansey’s anxiety over the gun had been palpable. It was possible, Adam thought, that it was because of Whelk sticking one in his face. "I don’t want it in here."
"I can’t sell it," Adam had said. "I already thought of that. But I can’t, legally. It’s registered in his name."
"Surely there’s a way to get rid of it. Bury it."
"And have some kid find it?"
"I don’t want it in here."
"I’ll find a way to get rid of it," Adam had promised. "But I can’t leave it there. Not now."
Adam didn’t want to bring it along with him tonight, not really.
But he didn’t know what he’d need to sacrifice.
He checked the safety and put it in the bag. Climbing to his feet, he turned toward the door and just managed to stifle a sound. Noah stood directly in front of him, hollow eyes on level with Adam’s eyes, smashed cheek on level with Adam’s ruined ear, breathless mouth inches from Adam’s sucked-in breath.
Without Blue there to make him stronger, without Gansey there to make him human, without Ronan there to make him belong, Noah was a frightening thing.
"Don’t throw it away," Noah whispered.
"I’m trying not to," Adam replied, picking up his messenger bag. The gun in it made it feel unnaturally weighted. I checked the safety, didn’t I? I did. I know I did.
When he straightened, Noah was already gone. Adam walked through the black, frigid air where he had just been and opened the door. Gansey was crumpled on his bed, earbuds in, eyes closed. Even with the hearing gone in his left ear, Adam could hear the tinny sound of the music, whatever Gansey had played in order to keep himself company, to lure himself to sleep.
I’m not betraying him, Adam thought. We’re still doing this together. Only, when I come back, we’ll be equals.
His friend didn’t stir as he let himself out of the door. As he left, the only sound he heard was the whisper of the night wind through the trees of Henrietta.
Chapter 42
Gansey woke in the night to find the moon full on his face.
Then, when he opened his eyes again, waking properly, he realized there was no moon — the few lights of Henrietta reflected a dull purple off the low cloud cover and the windows were spattered with raindrops.
There was no moon, but something like a light had woken him. He thought he heard Noah’s voice, distantly. The hairs on his arms slowly prickled.
"I can’t understand you," he whispered. "I’m sorry. Can you say it louder, Noah?"
The hair on the back of his neck rose as well. A cloud of his breath hung in the suddenly cold air in front of his mouth.
Noah’s voice said: "Adam."
Gansey scrambled out of bed, but it was too late. Adam was not in Noah’s old room. His things were scattered about. He’d packed, he’d gone. But no — his clothing stayed behind. He hadn’t meant to leave for good.
"Ronan, get up," Gansey said, shoving open Ronan’s door. Without waiting for a response, he moved to the stairwell and pushed out onto the landing to look out the broken window that overlooked the parking lot. Outside, the rain misted down, a fine spray that just made halos around the distant house lights. Somehow, he already knew what he’d find, but still, the reality was a jolt: The Camaro was missing from the lot. It would’ve been easier for Adam to hot-wire than Ronan’s BMW. The roar of the engine starting was probably what had woken Gansey in the first place, the moonlight merely a memory of the last time he’d been woken.
"Man, Gansey, what?" Ronan asked. He stood in the doorway to the stairwell, scrubbing his hand over the back of his head.
Gansey didn’t want to say it. If he said it out loud, it was real, it had really happened, Adam had really done it. It wouldn’t have hurt if it was Ronan; this was the sort of thing he’d expect from Ronan. But it was Adam. Adam.
I did tell him, right? I did say that we were to wait. It’s not that he didn’t understand me.
Gansey tried several different ways to think of the situation, but there wasn’t any way he could paint it that made it hurt less. Something kept fracturing inside him.
"What’s going on?" The tone of Ronan’s voice had changed.
There was nothing left but to say it.
"Adam’s gone to wake the ley line."
Chapter 43
Just a mile away at 300 Fox Way, Blue looked up as a tap came on her cracked bedroom door.
"Are you sleeping?" Maura asked.
"Yes," Blue replied.
Maura let herself in. "Your light was on," she observed, and with a sigh, she sat on the end of Blue’s bed, looking as soft as a poem in the dim light. For several long minutes, she didn’t say anything at all, merely picked through Blue’s reading selections piled on the card table shoved against the end of the mattress. There was nothing unfamiliar about this quiet between them; for as long as Blue could remember, her mother had come into her room in the evening and together they’d read books on separate ends of the bed. Her old twin mattress had seemed roomier when Blue was small, but now that Blue was human-sized, it was impossible to sit without knees touching or elbows rubbing.
After a few moments of fretting through Blue’s books, Maura rested her hands in her lap and looked around at Blue’s tiny room. It was lit to a dim green by the lamp on the nightstand. On the wall opposite the bed, Blue had pasted canvas trees decorated with collaged and found-paper leaves, and she’d glued dried flowers over the entirety of her closet door. Most of them still looked pretty good, but some of them were a little long in the tooth. Her ceiling fan was hung with colored feathers and lace. Blue had lived here the entire sixteen years of her life, and it looked like it.
"I think I’d better say sorry," Maura said finally.
Blue, who had been reading and re-reading an American Lit assignment without much success, laid her book down. "For what?"
"For not being straightforward, I guess. Do you know, it’s really hard to be a parent. I blame it on Santa Claus. You spend so long making sure your kid doesn’t know he’s fake that you can’t tell when you’re supposed to stop."
"Mom, I found you and Calla wrapping my presents when I was, like, six."
"It was a metaphor, Blue."
Blue tapped her literature book. "A metaphor’s supposed to clarify by providing an example. That didn’t clarify."
"Do you know what I mean or not?"
"What you mean is that you’re sorry you didn’t tell me about Butternut."
Maura glowered at the door as if Calla stood behind it. "I wish you wouldn’t call him that."
"If you’d been the one to tell me about him, then I wouldn’t be using what Calla told me."
"Fair enough."
"So what was his name?"
Her mother lay back on the bed. She was crossways on it, so she had to draw her knees up to brace her feet on the edge of the mattress, and Blue had to withdraw her own legs to keep them from being crushed.
"Artemus."
"No wonder you preferred Butternut," Blue said. But before her mother had time to say anything, she said, "Wait — isn’t Artemus a Roman name? Latin?"
"Yeah. And I don’t think it’s a bad name. I didn’t raise you to be judgmental."
"Sure you did," Blue said. She was wondering if it was a coincidence that there was so much Latin in her life at the moment. Gansey was beginning to rub off on her, because coincidences no longer seemed so coincidental.
"Probably," Maura agreed after a moment. "So, look. This is what I know. I think your father has something to do with Cabeswater or the ley line. Way back before you were born, Calla and Persephone and I were messing around with things we probably shouldn’t have been messing around with —"
"Drugs?"
"Rituals. Are you messing around with drugs?"
"No. But maybe rituals."
"Drugs might be better."
"I’m not interested in them. Their effects are proven — where’s the fun in that? Tell me more."
Maura tapped a rhythm on her stomach as she stared up. Blue had copied a poem onto the ceiling just above her, and it was possible she was trying to read it. "Well, he appeared after this ritual. I think he was trapped in Cabeswater, and we released him."
"You didn’t ask?"
"We didn’t … have that sort of relationship."
"I don’t want to know what sort it was, actually, if it didn’t involve talking."
"We did talk. He was a really decent person," Maura said. "He was very kind. People bothered him. He thought we should be more concerned with the world around us and how our actions would affect things years down the road. I liked that part of him. It wasn’t preachy, just who he was."
"Why are you telling me this?" Blue asked, because she was a little distressed to see the unsteady press of Maura’s lips against each other.
"You said you wanted to know about him. I was telling you about him, because you’re a lot like him. He would’ve liked to see your room with all the shit you’ve put on the walls."
"Gee, thanks," Blue said. "So why did he leave?"
Right after she asked the question, she realized it may have been too blunt.
"He didn’t leave," Maura said. "He disappeared. Right when you were born."
"That’s called leaving."
"I don’t think he did it on purpose. Well, I did, at first. But now I’ve been thinking about it and learning more about Henrietta and I think … you’re a very strange child. I’ve never met anybody who makes psychics hear things better. I’m not exactly sure we didn’t accidentally do another ritual when you were born. I mean, a ritual where you being born was the final bit. It might have gotten him stuck back in there."
Blue said, "You think this is my fault!"
"Don’t be ridiculous," Maura said, sitting up. Her hair was all frazzled from lying on it. "You were only a baby — how could anything be your fault? I just thought maybe that was what happened. That was why I called Neeve about looking for him. I wanted you to understand why I called her."
"Do you even really know her?"
Maura shook her head. "Pft. We didn’t grow up together, but we’ve gotten together a few times over the years, just a day or two here or there. We’ve never been friends, much less real sisters. But her reputation … I never thought it would get weird like it has."