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300 Fox Way smelled too much like bacon and butter and not enough like sweets, and the longer Blue stayed in the house the more her heart began to ache. Her mother was back and things were supposed to be better now. Finding Maura Sargent was supposed to solve everything, but Persephone was gone.
Permanently.
And Blue couldn’t bear it.
She biked to Monmouth and didn’t bother knocking. She let herself in like she had done it many times before, even though she hadn’t. It was usually Noah or Gansey who opened the door when she arrived, but today she didn’t have the patience for knocking. All of her movements felt suddenly urgent, though she wasn’t sure what she was racing towards.
Gansey looked up in surprise at her barging in, but his mouth immediately tipped up in his powerfully polite Richard Gansey smile when he saw who was entering.
“Jane!” he said brightly, straightening from where he sat at his desk. “Did I know you were stopping by?”
“No,” she answered, scanning the main room of Monmouth for its other residents and finding it free of them. Looking Gansey in the eye felt like it would reveal too much, so she settled for stalking towards the pool table, idly clacking the colored balls together but making no effort to rack them up and play. Gansey must have sensed her uneasiness, because he let her continue her fidgeting without complaint. For several minutes they cohabitated in companionable silence, Blue with her billiards balls and Gansey with his journal, before finally he finally approached her. She could feel him looking at her but wouldn’t look up. Couldn’t look up.
“You don’t look well, Jane,” Gansey said.
“Just what every girl wants to hear,” Blue deadpanned.
Gansey was unperturbed. “I think you know what I mean.” He let the silence stretch about between them once more. When his hand reached out to close around one of hers, still holding a ball, she finally met his gaze. His hand was warm. “Are you doing okay?”
Blue had heard this question multiple times in the past week, phrased in a variety of ways, and her answer was always the same: “As fine as I can be.” It was an answer that made people like Maura or Calla or Jimmi linger for only a moment before returning to their own grief. But the pull of Gansey’s eyebrows towards his hairline, the slight dip of his chin, the downward slope of his mouth all led Blue to believe that this question was genuine, not just a placeholder for concern, and she wasn’t prepared for it.
She thought of Persephone’s closed red door and felt her throat begin to burn. She swallowed thickly and allowed her head to swivel left then right, almost imperceptibly. But he was Gansey, who was oblivious about a lot of things but not the ones that were important, and his arms were wrapping around her before the small, sorrowful hiccup could escape from her.
And so for the second time, Gansey held Blue while she cried.
“I can’t sleep,” she told him some time later, her voice small. Every time she tried her mind would dredge up Persephone’s broken body, like an image rising through muddy water to the surface. The second Persephone’s features became recognizable between the two mirrors, Blue’s eyes would snap open. The fatigue she felt was unrelenting, but it was no worse than the horrors that awaited her in unconsciousness.
“You can stay here for the night, if you’d like,” Gansey said, pushing his wireframes up higher on his nose from where they had begun to slip. “You can use my phone to call home and tell them where you are.”
Up until now, the thought of spending the night at Monmouth Manufacturing had always felt tempting and dangerous. But the raw cavity that had been carved in Blue’s chest made it difficult to care about the forbidden-ness of this place or what the implication of staying the night with Gansey could mean.
She looked at Gansey then. He was distracted, trying to find his cell phone for her among the mess that was Monmouth, and the arch of his neck and the slumped look of his shoulders reminded her of the first time she saw him on St. Mark’s Eve. Soon he would be gone, too.
She didn’t think she could feel heavier, but suddenly it felt as if her stomach might bottom out of her entirely. This was not the place to come for comfort.
She stood up. “No. No, I can’t stay.”
Gansey looked up at her, his face scrubbed of all mirth. He tried not to show his disappointment, but as good as he had gotten at hiding his emotions, Blue had become just as good at noticing them. But she couldn’t stay here, looking at him, knowing that soon she would be feeling this way again and she would have no Richard Gansey to turn to for comfort. She had spent so long actively avoiding the imaginary image of Gansey, dead, but now she couldn’t stop seeing it. Death was real, and it could strike at any time, whether she was ready for it or not.
She wiped her eyes, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
Gansey couldn’t have known what was really making her upset, but his eyes showed that he had a deeper knowledge of something than he was letting on. It was a look that showed how many sleepless nights he’d experienced, reflecting a loneliness she couldn’t describe. It was the Glendower search, weighing heavily on his shoulders, no doubt. But it felt like more. For a moment, Blue’s anxiousness seemed to be mirrored in his own posture. Like he knew.
But between wet blinks, it was gone, and Gansey was himself again, apologetic and regretful.
“I understand,” he said kindly. “Ronan will be back soon, anyway. He’s not a very good slumber party host.”
Blue sputtered out a laugh, still soggy around the edges, but the joke stripped away some of her grief, enough to keep her from bowing under the weight of it.
Gansey walked her down to the parking lot, where she’d leaned her bike against the building. She looked up at him once more, the sun setting behind him in a fiery display oranges and blues. She’d do everything in her power to save him. She wouldn’t let him die.
He put a hand on her shoulder as she mounted her bike. “Just—just call if you need anything. Please.”
The way he said “please” was unlike his usual politeness, which felt like it robbed you of something. This was breathless in its urgency, insistent in his desire to be helpful. He’d do anything to stave off Blue’s grief, though he had no idea what that could possibly entail.
Please don’t die.
She hoped it. She prayed it.
She needed to find Glendower, and soon.