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He was about to wake up; the strange, vertiginous sensation that always accompanied the ends of his dreams was beginning to wash over him, like a wind just stirring and rippling through the hairs on his arms.
"Take me with you," begged Orphan Girl.
Ronan Lynch shook his head, and blinked himself awake.
"Where do dead people go?" asked Blue. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her mother measure out musty-smelling dried herbs that would go into a musty-smelling tea. The whole kitchen stunk of whatever it was that she was tipping from the plastic bag in her hand into the jar on the table; or maybe it was a combination of different stinking plants, all the odors twining around each other into one truly awful fug. Blue tried breathing through her mouth, but that was just as bad.
"Go?" Maura added one last spoonful of something brown and dessicated, and then shook the jar gently. "They usually get buried, I suppose."
"Not their bodies. The part that –" she gestured aimlessly in the air, though Maura wasn't looking at her. She didn't want to say soul. That wasn't exactly what she meant, and she didn't want to get into that conversation, anyway. "Like what you see in the churchyard at St. Mark's Eve. Where are they when they're not in the churchyard?"
"Is this about that boy?"
"No," said Blue, with perfect truthfulness. That boy was Gansey – Maura did not need to say his name for her to know that; it was always Gansey – and this was not about Gansey.
Maura set down her tea jar and turned toward Blue. "The spirits we see on St. Mark's Eve aren't dead people."
"Because they're not dead yet. They're just going to die within a year." And now she was thinking about Gansey, and it made her heart squeeze a little, in her chest.
"No, what I mean is that they're not dead people." The way Maura said it, Blue could hear the emphasis; the words fell separately into the herbal-tea-scented space between them. Dead. People. "The people we see as spirits are still alive when we see them. Those spirits are just the shadows people cast on the corpse road. Echoes of their lives and of their deaths."
"So what happens after they die?"
"After is not really a meaningful term to use in this regard."
That was true. Blue had seen Gansey's ghost before she'd ever met the living, breathing boy. And Cabeswater, on the corpse road – the ley line – seemed to be outside of time entirely, somehow. They'd seen all four seasons in one day, read a message on a stone that Ronan had left, before he'd ever written it. The rules of time seemed to change in the vicinity of the corpse road. When you were in Cabeswater, or when you were dead.
It didn't make sense to Blue, when she thought of it like that. Because eventually, everybody died, and so then how was it that time worked at all?
Okay, back up. Noah was dead. She knew that for a fact; they had found his bones. They had buried him. But it was impossible to think of Noah – her Noah, the boy with a smudged face who liked to pet her hair and snuggle innocently against her, his cold hand on hers, his cold face buried in her neck – as an echo. He said things and did things like a real person, a live person. He wasn't a telephone answering machine, or a doll that spouted out one of twelve different phrases when you pulled the string on his back. He was dead, and he was real. Not an echo.
"It's a bit like a dream," said a soft voice from behind her, and Blue turned to see Persephone's cloud of hair. "Where do your dreams go when you wake up?"
"Dreams aren't," she began, and then she stopped, and swallowed. Noah was not an echo and he wasn't a dream. He was real; her dreams weren't. But she knew somebody whose dreams were real, real enough to pluck things from and set them free in the world to flutter and caw. Someone who might know the answer, or might be able to find it.
They had gone to Cabeswater and flown the crazy drone plane Ronan had dreamt into existence, and afterward, as they made their way back to the Pig, she plucked up her courage and moved a little faster so she could walk next to Ronan. He was a couple of yards ahead of the rest of them, slouching along in that belligerent way he had, feet braced apart against the world as though he was daring it to object. Chainsaw gripped his shoulder hard enough that Blue was surprised he wasn't dripping blood.
"You dreamt a very cool plane," she said. It was a shame that it had fallen into the lake, out of reach.
He shrugged. Chainsaw spread her wings and flapped a little, then settled back down, a feathery black cloud.
"Do you ever," she asked, "dream about people?"
He turned his black scowl on her, and she tried to look calm and casual. She suspected she wasn't doing a very good job.
"Who and what I dream about is none of your business."
"Jane is our friend, and you have to be nice to her," called Gansey from behind them. Blue didn't think he'd heard Ronan's words – she'd spoken quietly, and Ronan's response had been not much louder – but his tone, she imagined, had been clear. She set her shoulders. Gansey did not need to rescue her. She could talk to Ronan if she wanted. No big deal.
"I was wondering about Noah," she said, and Ronan swiveled his head so that both he and Chainsaw were now eyeing her. "Where he goes when he's not with us."
He turned his head farther, a quick glance behind them where Noah walked with Gansey and Adam. She looked back, too; Noah was laughing about something, and Adam's face was tight and closed-looking, and Gansey…was Gansey.
"It's hard enough to bring out something small," he said. His hand opened and closed, as though he were grasping something other than air. He still sounded vaguely angry, but it was damped down now, just on the edges of his quiet words as he glared at her. "Anyway, I don't dream about Noah."
"I wasn't asking for that." She hadn't even thought of it. And how would that work, anyway, with Noah already here? She shrugged, trying to make it look like it hadn't been a big deal. It was wearying talking with Ronan. She was never sure if he was going to act like a human being, or say something horrible. "It's just something Persephone said."
His whole body seemed to tighten up, to close off even more, if that was possible. Ronan didn't care for her family; Calla had made sure of that. He looked out across the forest, and his pace quickened enough that she had to work to keep up. "What did she say," he muttered. It didn't sound like a question, exactly, but his eyes cut toward her again.
"When Noah isn't with us," Blue said. "She said it was like where dreams go when we're awake."
"Huh." His gaze grew sharp; then he looked away.
They walked in silence for a moment. Then he said, again, "Noah hasn't been in my dreams."
It sounded to her like he'd stressed the name, just slightly. "Noah hasn't," she repeated. "But the rest of us have?"
He grinned almost savagely. "The rest of you, yeah. Even you."
She was not going to blush. But she was not going to ask.
It had been unsettling for Ronan to realize that his mother had been plucked from a dream by his father. The thing that bothered him most was not the fact of Aurora Lynch sitting quietly in her sitting room, sleeping without a dreamer to animate her; he'd been accustomed to that ever since his father had died. It wasn't even the thought that this meant he was the child of the real and the imaginary, crossed together; in a sense, not completely human. He'd never felt completely human. It was something he'd always known in his bones, long before the trees had first named him Greywaren.
What frightened him was the desire, pure and anguished, that rose from him with no warning. He wanted to do the same, and he would never do the same. He would die solitary, and his creations would sleep around him, and he could not do that to a human being, even one who had been pulled from his imagination. It was bad enough that this fate would fall to Chainsaw, who he loved fiercely in a way he couldn't explain.
But he couldn't leave someone in the same state as his mother was now. In his best moments he thought that maybe he wasn't as unlovable as he feared; maybe he'd find someone, someone real, someone who would stand by him as they dealt with whatever shit the world heaped upon them. In his worst, though, he imagined being alone, alone forever. And that was when the temptation came upon him, like a box of candy on a hidden shelf, like a door left unlocked. Like the keys to the Pig, waiting in his pocket.
When Ronan, tearing himself loose from sleep with the puzzle box clutched tightly between his fingers, had gone out to talk with Gansey, it was almost the first thing Gansey asked.
"Am I in your dreams?"
"Oh, yes, baby," said Ronan, laughing. Suddenly it seemed that everyone wanted to talk about his dreams and who was in them. Gansey would shit himself if he knew. And Adam….
There was a part of Ronan that wanted to reach for the Adam in his dreams. The confident, scornful Adam, the Adam who fluently mocked his stumbling Latin; the Adam who knew what Ronan, in his secret moments, wanted of him. But he couldn't even begin to approach that Adam, let alone see so fully, know him in every way, the way he'd need to in order to grasp and shape and pull; and anyway, as much as he could tell, dream-Adam didn't care for him any more than the real one did.
Even if he could do it, it seemed ridiculous. Two Adams, existing side-by-side here in Henrietta – was that even possible?
But Noah would be different. A whole different set of problems; a whole different set of possibilities. Except that Noah was the one person he hadn't seen in his dreams. Not ever.
It had been weird, at first, to think of Noah as a ghost. Noah had just been the weird roommate who didn't like going out, whose room was always perfect, who was quiet most of the time and raucously silly some of the time; just another misfit, and therefore perfectly suited to living at Monmouth Manufacturing.
If Noah really existed in the dream-forest – if what Blue was suggesting was true, if the forest in Ronan's dream was where Noah went when he wasn't with them in the physical Henrietta– would bringing him out cause his ghost-self and his dream-self to coalesce? Or would it make two of him – and which, in that case, would be the real Noah? The ghost, or the one from Ronan's dream?
He had never seen Noah there, in his dreams. But his dream-forest was a version of Cabeswater, drawing its power from the ley line. Noah was tied to the ley line as well; his bones were buried there, now. Maybe there was a part of him in that world, the world of Glendower and the Orphan Girl and the trees that spoke Latin.
Something to think about, he decided, the next time they went to Cabeswater.
But then they went to Cabeswater, and it was no longer there.
After everything – after Kavinsky, after reclaiming The Barns, after bringing his mother to the reviving power of a Cabeswater restored – the balance of things had shifted. Or maybe it was just that there was so much more going on that what had seemed important before was now trivial, and they had new problems that couldn't be ignored.
Like Blue's mother, for example; as far as Ronan was concerned, that whole clan of psycho psychics could go collectively jump in a lake, but since the note Maura had left when she'd vanished had mentioned Glendower, Gansey was, predictably, all fired up. Maybe even more fired up than Blue, who seemed to have gone more quiet than usual.
But all of them were looking to Ronan now. The cave that had appeared led underground, to Maura and Glendower, and probably to the ley line, and to who knew what else. And Adam had looked at him and said they had to make it safer. He'd said it to Gansey, but he was looking at Ronan when he said it.
Which meant that he thought Ronan could do it – do something, anyhow. Adam had some weird connection to Cabeswater that nobody understood – least of all Adam himself – but if he thought Ronan could do what they needed, the rest of them would back him up.
Ronan would fly to the fucking moon for Adam, but he wasn't going to tell anyone that.
"So, what do you think?" asked Gansey. They were standing in a semi-circle around the cave entrance. Blue was next to Gansey, and Noah was next to Blue, close by her but not touching. And Ronan was close by Noah, close enough to feel the chill that seemed to pour out of him in waves, like standing next to the fridge when the freezer door was open. Adam on his other side; and Ronan almost felt like there was heat coming from him, almost as if he was somehow cancelling out Noah, or matching him, balancing his chill. They were all standing closer together than they would normally, but this wasn't normal, this was Cabeswater.
Ronan shrugged. Blue said, "I don't like it," her voice trailing off uncomfortably.
"It's waiting for us," said Adam.
"What is?" said Ronan; at the same time, Gansey said, "It? Not he?"
"Is Glendower all you ever think about?" Blue sounded exasperated and irritable. Ronan guessed she had reason to be.
"I just meant the cave," said Adam. "The world underneath."
"The world," repeated Noah quietly. There was a reverence in the way he spoke, a real wistfulness, like it was something he wanted but couldn't have, or didn't think he deserved, and it was so different from his usual flip tone that Ronan turned his head to look at him.
Noah's shoulders were hunched like he was trying to hide, his eyes shadowed and hollow. He looked like he had that night when Gansey had thrown open the door to his room and challenged them all with the fact of Noah's death. Ronan wondered what it was that Noah saw when he looked at the cave, if it was different from what the rest of them saw.
To Ronan, it just seemed like so many other doorways in his life: a place he wasn't supposed to go but that called to him irresistibly, a place he might have to bully his way into or sneak his way into, but it didn't matter. It couldn't keep him out.
"Well, then. We wouldn't want to disappoint the world underneath," he said, and took a step forward, toward the dark mouth of the cave. Blue – he thought it was Blue, though it could have been Noah – made a small squeak of surprise and dismay that was abruptly cut off as he passed into blackness.
It was as though a switch had been thrown. There was no light behind him; everything was black, everything was gone. Even gravity seemed uncertain. The silence was absolute.
No, not absolute. There was – it wasn't the sound of breathing, exactly, because that would imply it was an ordinary, living creature, one that passed air in and out of its ordinary lungs for its survival. But it was a familiar sound from his dreams, and his own breath caught hard in his chest, his heartbeat becoming loud and insistent and too fast. The beat of his heart.
The beat of wings.
I don't hate myself, he thought. But it was hard to cling to that thought here, in Cabeswater. It had been different with dream-Adam there across the lake from him, placing stones, pointing at the sky. It had been different when he had been focused on protecting Matthew, who surely deserved to be saved. He'd drawn strength from both of them.
Now it was just himself and his demons, sprung from the darkest part of his soul; and they had claws and teeth and hot, stinking breath, and they wanted him destroyed for his sins.
Then he was screaming, and running, and hoping he had chosen out rather than in because direction was meaningless, everything was black and blank and still and soundless other than his thudding heart and the furious frenzied beating of the night horror's wings as it came for him.
"So, plan B," said Gansey. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the leather armchair, his shoulder just touching Blue's leg where she sat. It gave her a warm, safe feeling, even though nothing about this was in the least safe, she knew. Even here in Monmouth Manufacturing, they were not safe. And in Cabeswater, which was unsettling at the best of times….
She tried not to shudder. Instead she looked at Ronan, who was slumped sullenly against the wall, his arm swathed inexpertly in bandages. It was starting to bleed through again. Not a pretty sight; but it was better to look at him than at Adam.
Hard to believe she had once imagined herself in love with him – hoped she was in love with him, if she had to be honest, but she had known, probably from the start, that she wasn't, not really. But it hadn't been this Adam. This Adam hovered close to Ronan's side; this Adam was angry, taut, barely constrained. This Adam had unleashed something that had taken them all by surprise, and it had scared her – it had probably scared all of them, even Gansey, for all he was acting his usual cool self. But whatever it was, it had saved Ronan.
"There is no plan B," Adam ground out. "We are not doing that again."
"All right," said Gansey mildly. "What exactly was it you did?"
"I don't fucking know!" Frustration and fury colored his words, and on the windowsill, Chainsaw squawked and fluffed her feathers in response.
Ronan had burst from the cave like a wild man, and that thing had been right behind him, black and huge, all teeth and claws and destruction. His arm had already been slashed open and was dripping blood, though he hadn't seemed to notice. He hadn't noticed anything, not even the four of them standing there, and he'd hurtled straight into Noah, who'd let out a small "oof" as Ronan knocked him to the ground.
That was when Adam stepped forward, his hands out in front of him, looking for all the world like he was going to wring the neck of that thing as though it were some overgrown black chicken. But instead he'd said some words in another language, sharp and alien-sounding, and something had crackled from the palms of his hands, and the thing following Ronan had let out an unearthly screech and shimmered so brightly she had to look away, waves of color pulsating across its dark shape like the rainbow on an oil slick. And then it had vanished.
"It was one of the night horrors. From my dreams." Ronan's voice was barely audible; he sounded tired, like the words were somewhere far away, or somewhere deep inside him, and it took a huge effort for him to pull them out. "She told me they were part of me. But I can't control them."
"You can," Adam told him. "You did at Kavinsky's party."
"That was you. You were in my dream. And…there were other things going on."
A glance passed between Ronan and Adam, one Blue couldn't decipher. It made her feel a bit strange, a bit wistful. There was something in it that felt like hands reaching out and brushing fingers.
"Who told you they were part of you?" asked Gansey.
"Orphan Girl. I don't know her name. She's in my dreams a lot."
"So the thing followed you out of a dream when you weren't paying attention, and then it hid in the cave?" Blue asked.
"No. It came from my dreams, but it was in the cave. It's hard to explain."
"Like the rock," said Adam unexpectedly, and Ronan nodded. "Yeah. I wrote the message in my dream, and it was there in Cabeswater."
"So we can't get into the cave because your dreams are putting these things there," she said.
"We don't know your mother's there," Gansey said. "I mean, know it for a fact." But it sounded to her as though he was only saying that to placate her, and wasn't actually convinced himself. Glendower is underground. So am I.
"I do," Blue insisted, though of course she didn't. Yet another disadvantage to not being psychic. Though being psychic probably wouldn't make a difference. Accurate but not specific, specific but not helpful.
"We need to get into the cave," said Adam, and she shot him a grateful glance.
"I need to get into the cave," said Noah. Blue hadn't noticed him before, standing next to the armchair, but now she felt his chill.
"So go into the cave," said Ronan.
"It doesn't work that way. I'm stuck here because I'm already there."
Ronan rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah. That makes a lot of sense."
Which of course it didn't, but they were all used to Noah not making a lot of sense when it came to his being a ghost. And it was no use asking him, Blue knew, from long experience.
"Anyway, the cave's not safe," Blue said. "Not if Ronan's monsters are in there."
Adam was toying with something in his pocket; now he pulled it out. It was a tarot deck; it looked like the one Persephone used. He chose a card and showed it to them all. "Eight of Swords."
"And that means what?" asked Gansey.
"The Prisoner," said Blue. Maybe she wasn't psychic, but she'd been around her family for long enough to know the cards.
"It means we're trapped. Or something's trapped," said Adam. Blue raised her eyebrows, and he added, defensive, "I've been reading up on them. Persephone gave me a book."
Persephone must have given him one of her decks, then. That was a rare honor; Adam probably had no idea. But Blue only nodded. "Something needs to change. I mean, that's what the card is about. Being powerless. Something that needs to be dealt with."
"Maybe we need to go to the source, then," said Gansey thoughtfully. "These things are coming from your dreams, so that's where we need to take care of them."
Trust Gansey to have a plan, thought Blue. Boys like Gansey always had a plan, neat numbered steps in a notebook that they worked their way through in precise nibbles, like Persephone eating a piece of blueberry pie. Gansey had a sister who flew helicopters and a friend in England who kept him informed of the latest research on ley lines. Gansey had plans and the means to execute them.
"No," said Adam. "It'll be even worse in his dreams, and we can't help him there. He's not doing this alone."
"I won't be." Ronan dug his uninjured hand into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded into a sort of envelope, edges sharply creased and folded back on itself. He started laughing, an uncontrolled, maniacal laugh that made Blue's head hurt. "Kavinsky's gift," he managed to get out between barks of laughter. "Boring side-effects."
"You shouldn't –"
"It's all right, man," said Ronan, interrupting whatever it was Adam had been about to say. He spread his other hand and poured a stream of small green pills into his palm. "Instant nap-time. We can all go together."
"You can take us with you into your dream?" asked Gansey. His eyebrows went up and his voice was tinged with unmistakable admiration. Sure, thought Blue. Of course you admire him. He made you a car. Her old desperate wish came to the surface again, her secret desire: to be one of the Raven Boys, to live at Monmouth Manufacturing. To hear that kind of awe in Gansey's voice, directed at her. As if she could give him anything.
She couldn't even give him a kiss.
"I think so. When I did these with Kavinsky, we both went to the forest." He tilted his palm, and the pills rolled first to one edge of his hand, then the other.
Gansey reached out a hand and Ronan tossed one of the pills toward him. He plucked it out of the air, then held it between thumb and forefinger to inspect. "But he did it without you, too. You'd have to take us. Could you take us?"
"Things come out of his dreams," said Adam, holding up his left hand. He held up his right, to match. "Why couldn't things go into his dreams?"
Ronan shrugged. "One way to find out."
They had argued for a while over just how they should proceed. Gansey thought it would be best for them to all take the pills and plunge in together. Blue frowned and said she thought they ought to at least test it first. "I mean, you said it was hard to take something out. Maybe it's hard to take things in, too."
"Jane, ever sensible," said Gansey.
"No, I've got it now," said Ronan. "I made the Pig, right?" He was still a little amazed it had worked, proud beyond words that he had done it. But he was pretty sure he could do it again. He could ask Cabeswater; he could shape it in his mind, the memories of leaning against the hood, the constant smell of gasoline.
"People are more complicated than cars," said Blue.
Privately Ronan doubted it. Not most people, anyway, though he granted that Blue and Gansey and Adam – definitely Adam – were exceptions. "Some people," he allowed. "But I can do it."
"No, it's too much of a risk," said Adam. "I'll go with you the first time. It should be me."
"Why you?" The thought made Ronan feel anxious and warm at once. If anything happened to Adam…. But no, Cabeswater wouldn't let anything happen to him. Would it?
"I'm the Magician."
Ronan rolled his eyes. "Tarot shit."
But Blue was nodding. "I think that makes sense."
"And if anyone should know," said Gansey. He didn't even sound sarcastic, which meant he had it bad. Poor Gansey.
Ronan had not lied to Kavinsky; Gansey was everything to him, yeah, but as a brother, as the best of best friends. Blue was weird but she was okay, even if she lived with a bunch of scary horrible women who could flay him without lifting a finger, even if her mother was dating the man who had killed his father…
…the man who had not killed him, or taken him to (certainly) be killed…
...her mother, who had disappeared, and was somewhere underground. In the cave, maybe. With Glendower.
"Maybe Blue," he said, without thinking, and Blue shuddered and Adam took a step toward him, and Gansey said, "No," in a firm voice he'd never heard Gansey use.
Yeah, Gansey had it bad.
"We all need to go," said Noah, and everybody's head turned to him, because all of them had forgotten about Noah. It was easy to forget about him, the way he deliberately blended into the background, but none of them could deny that Noah had a particular expertise in this field that could not be ignored. "And me, too. You have to take me with you."
"I don't want to go," said Blue. "You guys are the muscle. I'd just get eaten by the monster."
Adam pulled another card from the deck. "Three of Pentacles." He scrutinized it for a moment, then added, "Teamwork."
They all turned to Blue, who made an unhappy noise and scrunched down into the sofa. "Yeah, that's what it means. I just…"
They waited as she looked around the room, everywhere but at Adam, as though she were trying to find the right words somewhere on the walls. "Okay," she finally said. "I guess we all need to go."
"We'll protect each other," said Gansey. "So how do we do this?"
She was quiet for a long moment. "I think we need a bowl," she finally said. "With a dark liquid in it." Gansey went to their fridge and found some apple juice, which Blue looked at doubtfully.
"That's not very dark."
"I could make coffee?"
She wrinkled her nose but agreed that coffee might work, and Gansey set to making a pot.
"We don't have to do this now," Adam said softly, in his ear, while the others were watching the coffee fall, drip by drip, into the pot. "Maybe we should wait a couple of days." He reached out and touched Ronan's arm where it was bandaged, his fingers as delicate as a butterfly's touch.
"Nah, I'm good. Looks worse than it is." In fact it hurt quite a bit; but there was a sense of urgency in his chest that Ronan couldn't identify and couldn't explain, something that felt like doom hanging over them all if they didn't act right away, get it fixed, get it done. The Eight of Swords, trying to fight its way out through his ribs with sharp points and edges.
Blue and Gansey came back with the coffee in a wide bowl that Ronan had never seen before. Probably a gift from Gansey's mother, or his sister, graciously accepted and put on a shelf or under the bed and forgotten. He took a deep breath; the coffee smelled good. Weird to be using coffee when they were going to sleep. He handed out the pills to everyone but Noah, who shook his head and smiled slightly.
At Blue's direction, Gansey placed the bowl of coffee on the floor, and they all sat around it in a circle – a small one, so that their legs were all touching. Adam was on one side of him, Gansey on the other. Noah sat between Adam and Blue.
Ronan looked around the circle. "When you take the pill, you'll fall asleep. It happens pretty quick, so we should all take them at the same time."
"Yes," said Blue. "Think about the rest of us, hold us in your thoughts. Try to imagine bringing us with you."
"You really know what to do," said Gansey appreciatively.
She looked flustered. "No, not really. It's just – I grew up with this stuff."
Gansey nodded. "And what about us? What do we think about when we take the pill?"
Surprisingly, it was Adam who answered. "We," he said, "are going to think of Cabeswater."
He opened his eyes in the forest to see them all slowly getting up, squinting their eyes and holding their heads. All except for Noah, who looked around them with open delight at the tall trunks around them, the light filtered through gray-green foliage dappling them all in irregular blotches of light and shadow. He was more solid than usual, as solid as he was on the ley line. Maybe even more so; he looked as completely real as the rest of them.
Gansey sighed and stretched, cracking his neck and reaching out his arms. "That was no fun at all, Lynch. You could have told us."
"You wouldn't have believed me," said Ronan. He was used to the effect now, after doing it so many times with Kavinsky, but he remembered how weird it had felt the first time to hurtle into sleep like he had been shot out of a cannon, to fall gracelessly into his dream with a crash. "Anyway, you're here, right?"
"Right."
Blue was looking around the forest warily. "There's someone behind that tree."
A flash of white, the skullcap she wore over her blonde hair. "That's Orphan Girl." Ronan looked to the trees, and called out, "We are here in peace." It sounded strange in his ears, and Orphan Girl frowned at him.
Then he realized: when Gansey and Blue had spoken to him, they'd used English, and so that was the language Ronan had called out in. But it was Latin that was spoken here, Latin and the strange language that was not Latin nor English but something else, the language of the trees. He repeated his greeting in Latin, adding, "I'm not taking anything."
Suddenly she darted out to stand before him. She looked nervous. She spoke to him in Latin. "What have you done, Greywaren? What have you brought here?"
"These are my friends."
She frowned at him. Then she walked once around their circle, and they all turned to watch. She stopped in front of Blue, her face solemn. "Filia vatis es."
Blue looked at him helplessly, and he translated. "She says you're the psychic's daughter."
The girl moved to Noah, and brightened. "The sacrifice." She looked over her shoulder to where Gansey stood staring. "You should be thankful to him. He died and you lived."
She'd spoken in Latin, but either Gansey had been studying or he recognized the key words, because he bowed his head in response. "I am thankful," he said in careful Latin, sounding uncharacteristically humble. He looked at Noah. "Gratias."
Noah did not look dead at all. He looked vibrant and real and happy, and there was something different about him that Ronan could not place. "That's all right," he said to Gansey, in English. "It's been kind of fun. But seven years, wow."
Orphan Girl had moved to stand in front of Adam. She regarded him for a long moment. "Magus est." The magician, she'd named him. There was a kind of hushed awe to her voice. "Gratias." Adam looked embarrassed.
"Can you all please speak English?" Blue asked plaintively.
"She doesn't," said Ronan, but he translated for Blue again. It was strange to him, to have to translate. His dreams had always been purely in Latin. What had Kavinsky spoken when they had gone in together? He couldn't remember.
"This isn't Cabeswater," Blue said, looking around them at the tall trees. "Is it?"
"Cabeswater," said Orphan Girl, nodding.
"It is in a way," said Adam thoughtfully. "But it isn't. It's like – like you know how we go into the forest outside of town, and we're in Cabeswater and also in the forest, but they're not the same. It's like another layer of something on top."
"Or underneath," said Ronan.
"Shadows and echoes," Blue said.
"So what do we do now?" asked Gansey. He repeated it in Latin, looking at the girl, who shrugged and in turn looked at Adam.
Adam closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again and pulled something out of his shirt pocket; a card. "Seven of Pentacles," he said. "We go to the cave. Or what this layer of Cabeswater has where the cave is."
Underneath, Ronan had said, and Blue thought that was about right. Maura had said that the spirits they saw were the shadows cast on the corpse road, and she guessed they were on that road now. She looked around nervously for something like whatever had possessed Neeve that night. There were strange shadows behind every tree, and odd sounds whispering in the tree branches, which bent and moved without perceptible wind.
The girl in the white cap led them along the path. Noah walked next to her, talking with her in what Blue supposed was Latin; whatever he said must have been funny, because they were laughing quietly together. They looked like real people, like real alive people, even though Noah was dead and the girl was – well, she didn't know what the girl was.
They stopped at a place that looked like the forest around the pool-that-had-been, the cave-that-was-now. But there was no pool and no cave. The only thing that looked the same was the hollow oak tree, the dreaming tree where Blue had had the vision of Gansey asking her to kiss him, knowing it would mean his death.
And then Blue realized that it was not the same tree at all.
It had the same jagged cavity, rotten and black, but it was not the same tree. This tree was larger than the hollow oak – three times as big around, an outsized giant – and the leaves were wrong for an oak, more flat and needly, like a pine. Blue couldn't rightly tell what variety it was. It didn't look like something that grew around Henrietta.
Adam stopped in front of it. The girl said something to him, and he nodded. "It's a gateway. That's how your night horror got out."
A gateway to Ronan's dreams, a gateway to Cabeswater. Blue felt dizzy just thinking about the layers upon layers. A big cake with frosting on top and in between. Or maybe the rings of a tree.
"Well, then," Gansey said. "How do we keep the bad things from coming through? Do we need to destroy it?"
"No!" she heard herself answer. Her heart had clenched at his words; she didn't know what they had to do, but the thought of destroying this tree sent a sort of thick horror into her chest, constricting her breathing, making it rapid and shallow.
"No," said Adam, more calmly than she had. His hands shuffled the cards, cut the deck. He turned up the one on top: Eight of Swords. "It's for Ronan to do."
"Shit, man. What am I supposed to do?"
The harsh whispering of the tree branches resolved itself into the distant beat of wings.
"What am I supposed to do, Parrish? Come on, tell me!" Ronan sounded as desperate as she'd ever heard him.
The girl said something in Latin. Blue looked over to Gansey.
"Swords don't kill people, the guy with the sword does."
The wingbeats became more frantic. Louder. Closer. It felt like a noose drawing tight; like a cloud of poisonous gas seeping in, inexorable and deadly.
Ronan held out his hand and closed his eyes. It sounded to Blue like he was trying to control his breathing. In, out. Deep breaths. His hand closed into a fist.
The noises faded for a moment, then rose again. Blue heard a faint but deep screeching, like a far-off Chainsaw magnified a thousand times. Like something big moving in for the kill. She shouldn't have come. She moved closer to Gansey, who put a comforting hand on her arm. "The tree," he murmured in her ear, very quietly.
She got it immediately. They could run for the shelter of the hollow tree, as they had the night they'd confronted Whelk, the night Adam had offered himself to Cabeswater. But this wasn't quite the same tree. The girl had said it was a gateway. Blue was not sure she wanted to throw herself into it, because where might she come out?
Ronan opened his eyes, looked around – at Adam, at Blue and Gansey, at the trees around them; finally at the girl, who was still standing very close to Noah. "I don't hate myself," he ground out. "This has to be something else."
Adam had the deck of tarot cards out, Blue saw. He flipped up another card. Eight of Swords, again. He shook his head. "There's something you have to make peace with."
"I'm fine." But he looked like he had when Calla had said what she had about his father; he looked like he was bracing himself to take a swing at something.
"You're not," said Adam. He shuffled the deck again, turned up the top card. Eight of Swords. He stuck it back into the middle. "You're not."
"Let me take a card, Parrish."
"You've got to –"
"Give me a card!"
Adam held out his deck, and Ronan took the top card, without looking, and flipped it onto the ground in front of them. The Eight of Swords again, thought Blue; but it wasn't. "Strength," she said aloud, hating how her voice shook.
Ronan swore. "We'll put up a fight, then."
"Not that kind of strength," said Adam. "Compassion. Forgiveness."
Ronan looked at Adam like he had asked him to take a sledgehammer to his BMW. "You're joking."
"You can do it," Gansey said. His hand tightened on Blue's arm.
"You're joking," repeated Ronan. The edge of panic in his voice was a naked thing. His eyes darted wildly from one side to another, up to the treetops, out to the spaces between the trees where "I can't – you can't ask me to do this."
There was a loud screech, and they all looked up into the trees. Something was forming, approaching, gathering. Blue could see them now, a dozen dark shapes circling above the clearing, like nightmares made real. Too many eyes, hungrily looking down on them. Sharp-toothed mouths opening wide and snapping on air.
"Watch out!" called Gansey, as one broke from the pack and dove toward them.
"Greywaren!" said the girl sharply, and Ronan shook his head.
"I can't!"
The nightmare angled toward Ronan, a hissing, shrieking thing. Blue shrank into Gansey's side, unable to look away. She'd never seen Ronan look so lost. The fury that usually fueled him had vanished – or maybe it was locked up inside him, in a place he couldn't or didn't want to go.
"Damn it, Ronan!" Adam took two strides across the clearing and shoved Ronan hard out of the way. The nightmare screeched angrily at him, but veered away to rejoin the circle. "Do it!"
The girl spoke again, looking from Ronan to Noah.
"What was that?" Blue whispered to Gansey, and he shrugged.
But Noah laughed, a clear, bright bell against the dark rustle of flapping wings. "You're right," he said to the girl. He grinned at Ronan. "If I could do it, you can. It's easy, man. Just let it go."
Blue looked over at him and it suddenly struck her: the smudge on his face – the place his skull had been crushed, when he'd been killed, when Whelk had murdered him – was gone. This place had restored him in some way. He was whole and happy and looked more alive than she'd ever seen him before.
Ronan was climbing back to his feet, gulping air, trying to get himself back under control. "Please, Ronan," Blue said, a bit desperately. "It's for you as much as it is for anybody." It's for all of us.
"All right," grated Ronan. "You've got to hold them off," he told Adam.
"I can try," said Adam. He stepped forward, tense, precise, and held his hands out to the side, palms outward as though he were pushing against something.
Ronan stood in his place for a long moment as the noises gathered around them. Blue held her breath. Suddenly he shouted, loudly, "Niall Lynch! Father! He looked down, closed his eyes.
"Come on, Ronan," Gansey muttered. "Come on."
Maybe Ronan had heard. Or maybe he'd just triumphed over whatever it was he was fighting in his head, where they couldn't see it, because he opened his eyes and looked up at the treetops again. "Father! I forgive you! Tibi ignosco!"
The creatures above them shrieked as though they'd been hit. Blue shivered. It felt to her as though something had been released, as though a taut length of cord had been eased. But not all the way. There was still something held back, something waiting. The creatures still circled above.
"You're fucking kidding me."
"You have to mean it," murmured Adam.
"I do," said Ronan, but he closed his eyes again, as though he was drawing strength from something inside him. As though he was coming to an agreement with some part of himself. The trees sighed, and he nodded, as though he understood them.
"Declan Lynch!" he shouted to the trees, to the things circling above. "Brother! I forgive you! Tibi ignosco!"
The creatures screeched again, shrill and horrible, the sound of something dying in agony, being pulled apart. Rainbow colors burned above the treetops like fireworks, like neon lights sparking and flashing, a riot of clashing noise and color. There was another, stronger sense of release, a breath held and blown out.
And then there was silence, complete and total. Not even the trees whispered.
Ronan slumped to the ground, exhausted. Adam quickly moved to his side, touching him softly, saying something low to him that Blue couldn't catch.
"Well, that was something." Gansey's voice split the silence like a rock dropped into a pool. The ripples spread through the clearing, and suddenly Blue felt like she could move again. She pulled away from Gansey and moved to where Adam was cradling Ronan's head in his arms.
"The cave. Do you think it's safe now?" They had to be able to get into the cave, back in the real Cabeswater, the one…above. They had to find her mother. Her mother, and – she glanced back at Gansey, who was frowning at the huge tree – Glendower.
"I don't know," said Adam softly. "I hope so."
Belatedly, she added. "He's okay, right?"
"He just needs to gather his strength. Come here and hold on – we need to all be touching. He'll take us back."
Blue reached out to touch Adam on the shoulder, and looked back to where Gansey stood next to the tree, looking into the deep black of the hollow space. "Gansey?"
He didn't move for a long moment. "A layer underneath, you said. Underground." His voice sounded distant, like he was a long way off. Like he had fallen asleep again, in this dream of Ronan's, and was having his own dream.
"Come on, Gansey."
"Glendower is underground. On the ley line. Is that where we are? On the actual, physical ley line? Is Glendower here?"
"Gansey!" This time it was Adam, sharp and urgent.
Gansey turned to the girl, who was still close by Noah. "Glendower? Um, adest Glendower?"
The girl's answer was clearly negative. Blue could see it in the way Gansey slumped, the way his whole body gave up. He walked over toward Ronan and Adam and reached out to take Blue's hand, but before he touched her, she broke away.
Glendower is underground. So am I.
"Wait! I need…Gansey, you have to ask her for me. Is my mother here?"
Gansey frowned. "I don't think –"
"Please!"
To her surprise, it was Adam who spoke. "Adest mater eius?"
The girl regarded Blue with an odd expression for a moment. Then the corner of her lip quirked in the tiniest of smiles. "Non mater. Pater." She nodded in what seemed almost a friendly way. "Artemus."
Maybe Blue didn't know Latin, but she knew exactly what the girl had said. That was her father's name, and that meant –
"My father," she said. "I need to find him." She tried to rush past Gansey, but he seized her wrist and pulled her back towards the others.
"Not now, Jane." His fingers tightened around her wrist. There was a weird wrenching feeling, and she thought she might throw up. When she opened her eyes, she was on the floor of Monmouth Manufacturing, and her head ached like it was being split in two.
"My father," she whispered. She didn't care if the others heard her. "That's what my mother was doing, looking for him. He can help us find her. We have to go back."
"God, no," groaned Gansey. He dipped a finger into the bowl of coffee. "Ugh. I'll make some that's fit to drink."
"We have to go back," she insisted. "My father's there."
"I thought it was your mother you wanted to find," said Gansey, cool and pitiless. "We'll go back to Cabeswater – the Cabeswater in our world – and we'll go into the cave, and we'll find her."
And Glendower, she thought. That was what he cared about. But then he touched her cheek gently. "We'll find her, I promise. And then we can go back and find your father."
"All right," she said, strangely warmed by his touch. It would be so easy to tilt her face up and kiss him, she thought, and so she broke away from him. Ronan was sitting with his face in his hands, and Adam was leaning back against the wall, breathing hard. And Noah…
"Where's Noah?"
There was a gap in their circle where Noah had been sitting. "Noah?" said Gansey tentatively.
"He's not here," said Ronan. His voice was rough and rusty. "He didn't come back."
Blue thought for a moment. She remembered Noah's unsmudged face, his open, happy smile as he bent his head to talk in Latin with the girl of Ronan's dream. "No," she said. "I guess he didn't need to."
"He'll be all right," said Adam.
"I guess," she said again. It was going to be strange, being with the Raven Boys without Noah. Not having him play with her hair, not having his cold presence pressed against her in the back seat of the Pig. She looked at Ronan. "But you'll let us know, won't you?"
Ronan nodded. "I'll let you know."
The forest was beautiful, hushed. It felt subtly different, welcoming in a way it never had before, and he wondered if it was because of what he'd done, what he'd said, what he'd, finally, meant. Or maybe it was because he didn't want to take anything, this time.
"But you can take something, if you want." The words came from behind him; it was Orphan Girl. Only she looked different, too. She no longer looked drawn and haunted. She was smiling at him, an open, happy smile. And she had Noah by the hand, and he was smiling, too. "You brought me something."
"Fair payment," said Ronan, and the girl laughed, Noah laughed as well; and Ronan found, when he woke up, that there was a smile on his own face.