Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The dust cleared on a mess, but less of one than they’d gone into things expecting. 

For one, Gansey was alive. Cabeswater was gone, but Gansey wasn’t. All of them that had started the day alive had stayed that way, despite how close it had come, but Gansey was a specific triumph. He had been preparing to die for a better part of a year, and Blue and Adam had spent much of that time wondering how they could keep him from doing so, fearing the worst all the while: that he who had brought them together would leave them shattered apart. That he would be taken from them when they loved him so much. It was an image almost too painful to touch, like a wound you flinched from when you tried to change the bandages. 

But loving him so much had saved him, in the end. It hadn’t kept him from dying, but it had brought him back home to them. And the five of them were intact, though hurting, and exhausted enough to sleep for a week, and full up on fuel for nightmares that could last years.

Five of them, because Noah was nowhere to be found.

At first, Blue had thought he’d just vanished in the usual way. Cabeswater was gone, the line was strange, and Noah had been increasingly unstable for weeks now. She’d hoped the darkness in him would be better, without the evil that had been roused from the earth. She had seen how it had affected him. 

But he didn’t come back. 

He didn’t come back. 

And they called for him, and looked at the places he tended to show up, and -- there was nothing. It was over a week before Blue was ready to consider that maybe he wasn’t going to come back. That maybe he’d dissolved with Cabeswater, that he was gone for good this time.

It only took a few days after that for each one of them to agree they couldn’t just accept that. They’d fought tooth and nail to keep Gansey, and they’d brought him back, they’d saved him, so how could they just roll over and take Noah as an acceptable loss? 

They couldn’t. He wasn’t. Not a single one of them would be. There were ways to beat death, at least temporarily; they each knew that with a certainty many people would beg for. There were at least ways to try. With the power of the ley line, and the way Noah’s ghost had been tied to it, and all the knowledge and magic they had at their fingertips… there had to be something. If not a sure success, then enough hope to float on. Especially here, in Henrietta, where so much that was unbelievable had already come to pass.

So they stayed.

Well, most of them stayed. 

The fall curved around towards winter, and then spring, and summer, and nearly fall again, and their lives were put on a temporary hold. Travel plans paused, applications put off, all for the sake of staying in Henrietta just a little longer. They weren’t sure how long, but each of them knew there had to be some kind of deadline -- if it didn’t work, if they didn’t make any progress, they couldn’t stagnate forever. They still had to live. But trying was no hardship. Staying, just for now, wouldn’t kill a single one of them. Ronan had already intended to, but Blue wasn’t sure what any of the others might have picked, once they had time to consider a future beyond Gansey’s imminent death and the destruction of the world around them.

Adam didn’t stay in Henrietta. Adam worked with them in the time they had left before graduation, spent the summer digging in his heels like he was hoping they could solve everything before he had to go, but in the end, Adam left for Harvard right on time, like the university would change their mind about him if he turned his back for even a second, and particularly if he deferred for a year. Like they’d call him ungrateful and tear their scholarship funding from his grasp for daring to look a gift horse in the mouth. He promised to text, to call, to research on his own time, and he seemed just as committed as any of them, just as worried about what might happen if they let Noah slip out of existence for too long. But he did leave. Blue couldn’t blame him. She probably understood what he was feeling better than any of the others.

Blue loved her mom. She loved Calla, and Jimi. She even loved Orla, most of the time. But every day she stayed in her family home after graduating, Henrietta tightened around her neck like a noose. She was supposed to be seeing the world.

But the idea of seeing a world that didn’t have Noah anywhere in it, not at all, turned the whole idea sour. All she could think about was how much she’d think of him, if she left now, even if she took all the others with her. How they would all feel the absence like a missing tooth in your mouth, a great big hollow gape. 

Blue could be happy, without Noah. She knew that was what happened; people grew, and healed, and moved on. His family had managed, when he’d died the first time. She even was happy, sometimes — when she and Henry bantered back and forth, or Ronan nudged a sharp elbow into her ribs mid-laugh, or Adam took time from his packed schedule to text first, or Gansey looked at her a little too long when she was sitting passenger seat in the Pig. But she couldn’t imagine trying to move on without seeing what they could do to bring him back. She didn’t think any of the boys could, either. It wouldn’t be right. Not when he’d try to save them, if their fortunes were reversed. Not when he’d hardly had a chance to actually live.

It might be useless. The dead were normally supposed to stay dead. But Gansey was living proof that wasn’t always the case, and if Blue was going to give up on Noah Czerny, she was sure as hell going to exhaust every possible option first.

And they most definitely had not exhausted every option yet. It had been months, but they were still slogging through a heavy sea of research, with no defined progress towards a real answer. It wasn’t as simple as waking the line. It wasn’t as basic as pulling tarot cards and guessing at their meaning. There was no guidebook for this, and no more talking trees in Cabeswater to whisper answers. They didn’t even know where Noah was, or if he’d need a body to come back to, or how to put him into it if he did. 

Blue was getting antsy, and she could tell Ronan was too -- Hell, everyone probably was. Even so, she didn’t think Gansey was wrong about taking their time. They at least had to know where to start, and there were so many different possible points of entry and so little concrete information that it was hard not to feel overwhelmed. Raising the dead was no easy task.

But the days were passing at an alarming rate. And they were running out of time. They couldn’t put their lives on hold forever, and while she doubted they’d give up anytime soon, their efforts would take a hit the instant more of them left Henrietta. And they would leave, eventually. 

The rest of the school year had been one thing. The summer, though unexpected, was easily excusable to onlookers like Gansey’s family. But more than the gap year they were taking now would be pushing it. Other people took gap years. That could be waved away, even if not everyone in their lives was happy about the decision. Any time after it would be an uphill battle every step of the way. 

Blue just hoped they were getting closer. It was hard to tell. 

Tonight, Blue was meeting Gansey and Henry at Monmouth. It was meant to be half check-in, half hangout, as much of their time together was. All five of them kept in fairly constant contact, weaving it through the days via text messages and calls and hours in Fox Way, or Monmouth Manufacturing, or the farmhouse at The Barnes. It wasn’t hard to make time for each other, considering Adam was the only one among them with a set schedule. And he made time for them as well, despite his classes. He called when he could, responded to their group chat, had promised himself to them for breaks. 

Blue was fairly certain they all still missed him like a limb.

She wanted more to do, more ways to help, a more concrete role in all of this. She almost wished for a schedule of her own to follow, something she’d never expected when she was dragging herself through the last months of high school, thinking of nothing but what she might do afterwards. 

But a schedule was honestly least important, of all the things Blue wanted. It wasn’t as if they’d be doing this for the rest of their lives. She knew she’d have work or school or travel or all three in the aftermath, whenever that came. But she hated feeling useless. The most help she could give was amplifying other people’s abilities, and with Adam away, her options for that were limited. 

It sort of made her want to punch something. But that wouldn’t help either: she’d tried. So she just helped Gansey and Henry comb through books on death and mythology, and she rearranged Ronan’s dreams in the barn with him while he looked for something of use, and she had the same conversation with Adam a hundred times about how video calls didn’t count as having a spotter for scrying, because she couldn’t stab him from so far away. 

(And then they inevitably got into it about whether or not stabbing was a truly necessary part of the process. It was a ritual -- the debate, not the stabbing. The stabbing, luckily, had still only happened the one time.)

So that was how Blue could help. By lending a hand to the rest of them. Like going to Monmouth with Henry tonight. Like reading and re-reading Gansey’s ever-growing collection of books on ghosts, death, and the afterlife. 

Right on cue, Henry’s horn started up outside, as obnoxious as it was familiar. Blue had been ready and waiting, but his arrival gave her a reason to actually go downstairs. She yelled from her open bedroom window first; “I hear you! Shut up!”

That was rewarded with a couple more short beeps, for good measure. Blue stuck her middle finger through the window, and then slammed it shut. 

When Blue got downstairs, her mom and Calla were seated at the kitchen table. Her mom was reading over a letter that Blue knew, by the handwriting on the envelope, had to be from Mr. Gray, and Calla was shuffling one of her decks of cards. There was a conspicuous gap between them. Everyone was still sort of working around Persephone’s favored spot at the table -- even Orla wouldn’t sit in it. 

“Is this a new thing,” Calla asked, her dark-lipsticked mouth quirking up at the corner, “where you dress ineffectively for all the seasons, rather than just winter?” 

Blue scoffed on instinct, though she couldn't argue she wasn’t dressed unseasonably warm for the early fall weather, when it was still bright outside most days. She had just finished the alterations on this sweater: painstakingly snipping off the original sleeves and replacing them with a set from a different sweater, slicing holes throughout and stringing them through with multicolored ribbon but leaving the round circles of her shoulders fully exposed, cutting open spots in the torso to fill in with fabrics in other colors. The first set of sleeves were still waiting in her closet to be repurposed.

It was a new look. She was proud of her work on it. And she was hoping it might warrant one of those hungry stares Gansey sometimes gave her. They hadn’t really talked about it after their deadly kiss in what was once Cabeswater, too focused on their new mission and full up on other things to deal with, but the stares hadn’t stopped coming. Neither had Henry’s newly lingering gaze, something which had initially been rare but was happening more and more frequently these days. 

Blue hadn’t decided what she wanted to do about it yet, if she should do anything at all -- what she wanted to do about any of them, all of these people that she wanted to be friends with forever, or be with forever, or know like she knew herself (both in mind and possibly, for some of them, in body), or all of the above in whatever orientation fit. But she liked feeling wanted. 

She especially liked it because it happened most when she was dressed like herself, regardless of how much skin she was or wasn’t showing. In that way, it didn’t feel like she was being objectified as much as seen. Seen and found wantable, in her entirety. 

“I’m experimenting,” she sniped back at Calla, fixing a loose hair clip. “I’ll be home late. I’ll text if I end up crashing there.”

“Tell that boy to honk a little louder, next time,” Calla said, not looking up from her work. She turned over a card, made a displeased sound, and shuffled it back into the deck. “It’d serve the neighbors right.”

“They already hate us,” Blue protested.

“Exactly,” Calla agreed, with quiet wickedness.

“I know you’re an adult now,” Maura cut in. She was smoothing down the edges of her letter, but her eyes were fixed and dark on Blue’s face over the top of it. “So I’d hope I don’t have to remind you to be safe.”

“This isn’t a sex talk, is it? If it’s a sex talk I’m definitely sleeping over. Forever, maybe.”

“More a talk about whatever else it is you’re all meddling with over there,” Maura said, and Blue tried not to wince. They hadn’t exactly explained the specifics, in part because she knew her mom might not approve. Blue had mentioned more magic worth looking into in Henrietta, for just a little while longer, and left it at that. But it wasn’t easy keeping secrets in a house full of psychics. They knew something was up, even if they didn’t know what. “But yes, use condoms,” Maura added, cutting right through any guilt Blue might have felt for hiding things.

“I don’t have any use for them!” Blue protested, feeling herself go red at the edges. She snatched up her book-laden backpack, desperate to escape before they could ask further questions. “Bye!”

“I love you!” Maura called as she fled out the front door, and Blue could tell she was being laughed at. 

When Blue slid into the passenger seat of Henry’s sleek, expensive car, he gave an excited little whoop. There was music playing over the radio, upbeat and manufactured, as silky smooth as the car. 

"There she is!” he said, ebullient. “Now it’s a party!”

“Were you expecting someone else?” Blue asked, pulling on her seatbelt. “This is my house. You texted me before you left.” Henry started down the street before she was even finished; a sudden, lurching increase in speed that would make an older, louder car groan. The Pig would’ve been howling, even with its magically missing engine.

“Could’ve always stood me up,” Henry said. His eyes were mirthful when they locked with hers in the rearview mirror.

“Well, that’d just be stupid,” Blue replied. On autopilot, she reached out to fiddle with the dials on his radio, flipping through channels until she found a rock song with a grungy, fuzzy bassline in the background. Henry didn’t protest, tapping his fingers in time on the wheel. “For one, you’re not the only one expecting me, so I’d have to stand up Gansey simultaneously.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Henry said. “You’d stand me up, but not Gansey.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I’m a fluent speaker of subtext,” said Henry. “It’s one of my many talents.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be hanging out with either of you if you were the type of person I’d stand up,” Blue bit back. Right away, it felt uncomfortably telling, so she continued. “For another, if I was going to stand you up, I would never do it at my house. Now you know where I live.”

“I already knew where you lived.”

“Well, for argument’s sake. Imagine you didn’t know, and then we made plans that involved you having my address. I’d never be so idiotic.”

“Imagining,” Henry said, making a face at her like he was having to try incredibly hard to fathom a world in which he’d never been to her house, even though he hadn’t even known who she was a year ago. 

“Besides,” Blue continued, “if I really wanted to stand you up, I could always have my mom tell you I moved. To Venezuela.”

“True viciousness!” Henry exclaimed, abandoning his recommended two-handed grip on the steering wheel to press one to his chest as if shot. “You standing me up and going on our trip to Venezuela without me would really be the killing blow, Blue.”

“Good thing I didn’t stand you up, then,” Blue replied. 

They spent the rest of the ride to Monmouth Manufacturing taking turns choosing the music and talking about nothing particularly important. Blue knew their mission was probably on both of their minds, even as Henry reenacted what Cheng 2 had said when he’d called Henry during his most recent shrooms trip and Blue made disapproving noises in her throat to cover her laughter. 

When they arrived at Monmouth, The Pig was parked in the gravel drive, and Ronan’s BMW was not. Henry took its usual space, despite there being room enough for him to park elsewhere. The front door was unlocked, so they proceeded uninhibited to the top, where people actually lived -- though Blue paused to lock the front behind them, a habit she hadn’t grown up with but which had become more relevant as hitmen and demons had come into her life. 

The door to the living space was unlocked, too. Blue let that one be.

Gansey had known they were coming, of course, but when they came in he was also sitting on his bed, hunched over a book with a pile of similar tomes next to him, and so engrossed that he couldn’t have been reasonably expected to get the door. Presumably that was why he’d left it open for them. He didn’t even look up when they entered, not until Henry flung himself onto the unmade mattress with a dramatic clearing of his throat, sending several books to the floor with a thump. Henry looked unrepentant. 

Gansey’s head snapped up all at once, and he blinked several times, looking rather like someone who had just woken up from a long dream. 

“Oh,” he said. He marked his place in his book and closed it, and then shoved his glasses up to rub at his eyes. The bags underneath them made it clear he hadn’t been sleeping well, but that was nothing new. “Oh, is it that time already? My apologies.” 

“Where’s Ronan?” Blue asked, crossing the room to perch at the edge of the bed as well. Ronan hadn’t technically been involved in the invitation, but he was often around anyway when they came over, even if he didn’t participate. He still lived at Monmouth most of the week.

Blue picked up one of the books scattered across the rumpled bedspread, glancing at the title. The Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends, Part 1. It was as heavy as one would expect, with a thin strip of notebook paper sticking out the top as a makeshift bookmark.

“He’s at The Barns tonight,” Gansey said. She watched, pleased, as his eyes flickered over the bared skin of her shoulder and then away.

“Dreaming?” she asked. On Gansey’s other side, Henry had stretched down to grab at one of the books he’d displaced, and was flipping through it, likely too fast to be internalizing anything of value.

“I wish he could be,” Gansey responded, sounding a little mournful. “I know one of his dreams could help beyond anything I can do myself. But I don’t know what to ask him to dream. I want to be sure, and I’m not sure yet." Gansey ran a hand through his hair and left it ruffled, and Blue warmed a little at the show of his comfort with them. If he was more on his guard he would have smoothed it down right away, worried about how it might look. "I think he just wanted to be there for the night. Or he’s going through his collection again, I don’t know.” 

Ronan's collection of past dreams, both his own and his father's. He'd been looking through them again and again for something that could help, for lack of much else to do. Blue supposed they had that in common. Ronan would be instrumental when they actually knew what they needed, but for now he was as restless as her. And probably felt as helpless. 

"It won't actually help to have him dream without any idea of what we need, you know," Blue said, scooting closer to let her arm press up against his.  "Not that I'm sure he isn't trying anyway."  

"I know," Gansey said, though he didn't look any less miserable. "I just would like to have something for him. A goal. An idea. All I have now is --" He spread his hands to encompass the entire room and everything in it: what looked like half a ghost hunter's library haphazardly arranged in stacks, cut-outs from newspapers and journals and Gansey's own notes pinned to the cork-board over his desk, sheafs of print-outs from online research. Any remnants of the hunt for Glendower, save for the information about the ley lines, had been replaced with accounts of real-life hauntings and the afterlife mythology of hundreds of cultures. Gansey's obsession wasn't with a Welsh King anymore: it was with pawing through those books for old stories and legends that might be rooted in truth, and any way to apply them. "All I have right now is this," Gansey finished. "And it's not nothing. But it's not very helpful either, is it? I have no idea what among this we can give any credence to. And there's not exactly much room for trial and error in bringing someone back to life, but there's also no way to guarantee success before we try it. We have to prepare something, and soon, and have it be good enough to be fairly certain it will work. I wish I had a better idea of what might help.”

Blue worried about what would happen with Gansey when (if) they succeeded, if they finished this. It wouldn't be possible for him to just move on and devote all his focus to the next shiny magical mystery forever. He certainly wouldn't give up on magic in his life, or at least she hoped he wouldn't, but he couldn't keep letting it be his life. He was alive for good now, no looming countdown. He had to start looking towards the future. 

She wasn't sure he had come to terms with that yet. But it wasn't exactly something she could bring up here, now, even if she had known what to say. 

It could be best to wait until they actually didn't have something to pursue. So he couldn't run from it. 

"It isn't nothing, though," Blue agreed. None of them had been sitting on their hands twiddling the days away, but Gansey had been reading and researching with a fervor that bordered on mania.  

"I'm still looking into it on my end," Henry promised. He was still upside down, the book he'd been leafing through now spread open across his face. He clearly wasn't reading it. "Asking around. Calling in favors. Following up on leads. I'll let you know if I find something promising."

"You really don't have to do this, you know. Delving into your mother's world like that. Not if it's too much."

"Yes, Gansey," Henry said, and Blue could somehow hear his eyes rolling, even though she couldn't see them. "For the hundredth time, I am well aware you're not holding a gun to my head." He shoved the book up enough for his grin to be visible. "I've got this. You'd be surprised how little danger there is when people know there might be a payday in it for them at the end of the line. I am looking to buy, after all."

“I still feel a little strange about giving money to those people,” Gansey said, making a face like he’d tasted something not quite right. “Even if I am willing to do it, for Noah.”

“They're not all bad,” Henry replied.

“They’re not?” Gansey asked. Henry shrugged one shoulder.

“I mean, statistically they can’t all be, right? Technically I’m one of ‘those people’, and I came out great, if I do say so myself.” From his position upside-down and halfway off the bed, Henry wordlessly waggled an arm at Gansey, like an indolent emperor. After a moment of confusion, during which the waggling increased in speed and impatience, Gansey grasped his hand and helped Henry haul himself back up onto the mattress. The book slid off Henry’s face and down his chest. “That being said, though, I can’t guarantee that whoever ends up owning what we need will be numbered among them. I’m not putting out a Craigslist ad for magical artifacts that says ‘evil bastards need not apply’ at the bottom. What matters is that they have what we want.”

“And what exactly is it that we want?” Blue asked. Henry shrugged again.

“Well it’s not specific. ” He ticked the answers off on his fingers as he listed them out. “Something to amplify, something to help connection with the afterlife or the dead, something to locate lost things -- anything like that. Something that helps. I’ll know it when I see it. But it’d make it easier if we had a better idea of what the rest of the ritual will look like.” 

“I’m working on it,” Gansey said. He pressed his thumb against his lower lip, his leg bouncing. “Did you know that Randall Reinstedt suggested that ghosts are the echoes of the living person’s energy, because when you die it all has to go somewhere? He theorized that hauntings are the energy left behind by that person repeating actions they took in life.” 

“Well, that can’t be right,” Blue pointed out. “Noah could do all sorts of things. He clearly wasn’t just repeating what he’d done when he was alive, or we never would have known him.”

“No, yes, absolutely, but he did have the --” He waved a hand, long fingers fluttering as he searched for the right way to say it. “He reenacted his death over and over, didn’t he? So maybe there’s something to it. Maybe the energy does have to go somewhere, and we just have to find out where. Call him to us. And then… bring him back, somehow. The right magic might reform his old body, even if it’s decayed -- you see that in some stories, things growing back and healing. But if not that, maybe we can find a body for him.” He paused an instant, winced. “That wasn’t meant as gruesomely as it came out, I just mean… somewhere for him to go. Something that would mean he’s living. Perhaps if we give it enough of a root, a body for him will form around it. I’m not intending to go Victor Frankenstein on you and start digging up the corpses of people we don’t know.”

“A magic magnet,” Henry said, like an epiphany.

“What?” Blue asked, unsure how that was related to the possibility of needing to find Noah a body.

“To bring him to us. I don’t know. It’s a thought. Something that can call something specific to the right place. Noah’s energy.”

“There might be something there,” Gansey mused. “But it would still be a matter of figuring out how to attune anything to Noah’s spirit without having him here with us, and where to look for it.” 

“Isn’t Parrish looking into that?” Henry asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Gansey responded, thoughtful, measured, like he was eager not to misrepresent Adam’s efforts. “In a way. He’s looking into scrying. How you can see beyond the planes of normal life, the ways it might make magic visible. He’s wondering if he can find where Noah might have gone through that.”

“If he’s still out there anywhere,” Blue said, though she hated even having to think about it, and the words dragged over her tongue like sandpaper. Gansey reached for her hand, squeezed lightly at her fingers, the barest hint of pressure.

“If he’s not, we’ll find him,” he vowed, and it was the voice that could make you believe anything, if he just kept talking. It was the voice that woke the dead and warned Ronan off a fight when he wouldn’t listen to anything else and inspired firm devotion in each of them. “We’ll find him and bring him home.” Gansey was easy to listen to, when he spoke like that. He could make just about anything feel real. 

There was a moment of easy quiet, with Blue’s fingers held in Gansey’s hesitant grip. 

“So,” Henry said, breaking the silence. He wiggled slightly across the mattress and slung an arm around each of their shoulders, shoving his head in the space between theirs. “Shall we, then? An in-depth investigation of--” He paused to crane his head towards one of the books he had unceremoniously toppled earlier. “The Hauntings of the Arthur Allen House? Why, Gansey boy, you shouldn’t have.”

“It’s one of Virginia’s most haunted sites, supposedly,” Gansey answered, almost sheepish. “I have books on quite a few of them, and I’ve reached out to several experts about the supposed authentication of some sightings.”

“Did you get a list?” Henry asked, sounding eager. “Even better, did you make a list? VA’s top hundred ghost-infested manors, or something?”

“A hundred is far too many,” Gansey said, his voice a blatant attempt at regaining dignity even as he avoided the question. “It’s just… we already know ghosts can exist, even if we’ve only seen one. Presumably Blue’s family has seen more of them.” He looked to Blue for confirmation. After a moment, she nodded. 

“I mean, some of them aren’t exactly dead yet -- like on St. Mark’s Eve.” It wasn’t as if Gansey didn’t know all about that already, but she didn’t want anything unclear. “But that is still a spirit.”

“Exactly. Presumably the more sensitive psychics in this world have seen quite a few spirits, even if Noah might be a special case -- they must have seen some, at least.” He sounded convinced of this, insistent. It reminded Blue of arguments she’d heard for the likelihood of extraterrestrial life; that with all the planets there were, it would be short-sighted and self-centered to assume only one held life. “It seems unlikely Noah could be the only one of his kind,” Gansey continued. “And the theme seems to be a connection to the ley line, or presence along it. The amplification of supernatural energy, I suppose. So… odds are, some of these hauntings may be genuine, in one way or another. Even if it’s not in the manner that observers may assume. I figure there may be a concentration of powerful energy of some kind in those areas.” Gansey picked up the book Henry had indicated, flipped it over in his hands. “If such spaces are home to a higher level of spiritual power, I’d like to know why. I’d like to know what, if anything, makes them any different from other spots along the line that aren’t host to such sightings. Perhaps it can give us some insight into how to find wherever Noah might be now.” 

“It’s stalling us out a little bit, isn’t it?” Blue asked, careful. “Not knowing if he’s still around in the same sense.” Before Gansey could protest (and he looked about ready to), she continued speaking. “I know you believe he’s somewhere, somewhere accessible, somewhere where we might be able to call him to us. I’d like to think so, too. But it can’t be in the same exact way as he was before, or he’d be here with us, unless he just doesn’t have the energy to manifest anymore.” That would be an entirely separate problem. Blue twisted one of her rings in circles around her finger. “Not knowing where exactly he is, not knowing where spirits go, if they aren’t as present as Noah was -- that’s keeping us in limbo.” 

“I wouldn’t say it’s ‘stalling us out’,” Gansey said, his brows knitting. He looked reluctant to consider the possibility. “I’m still doing quite a bit of research, as are we all. We’re making progress.”

“But it would help to know already, wouldn’t it? So we could move on?” Blue demanded.

“Well… yes,” Gansey admitted, finally. “It would help quite a bit. We do need a way of finding where he might be, if we’re to bring him back. At the very least, it would help us to focus our efforts in the simplest way. If it’s a matter of physical location, for instance, we could find the best space to work out of. If it's a spiritual location, we could try to find something to bring him nearby.”

“Like my magic magnet idea,” Henry put in. 

“Yes,” Gansey said. “Quite like that. Though I’m not certain a magnet, specifically, is the most viable solution. But it is in the right ballpark.” 

“Well, it doesn’t have to be a magnet in the literal sense,” Henry said. He was sounding increasingly serious about the idea every time he brought it up. “Just something that functions similarly.”

“Knowing more about how spirits interact with the ley line, though,” Blue pressed. “Knowing where they end up. That would make a difference? Could we make more progress if we had a better idea of it?”

“Yes,” Gansey replied. His face was caught in a strange hybrid between confusion and concern. Blue saw him glance at Henry, as if asking for the key to whatever he was missing. Henry didn’t seem any more enlightened. “Jane, what’s going on?”

“I’m just thinking,” Blue said. “You haven’t had much luck looking for those sorts of answers in your research, have you?” 

“Not those, no,” Gansey said. “There’s things I can infer, of course, but it’s not definitive. Especially not regarding our very own line in Henrietta.”

“And you don’t know anything either, do you?” Blue asked, turning her eyes on Henry. 

“I know some things,” Henry said. “But about this? Not really, no. The mechanics of ley lines are not exactly my area of expertise.”

“They are mine,” Gansey said. “And Adam’s, albeit in a different way. But all I’ve truly been able to find is, you know... Maps of line locations. Records of potentially supernatural events that have taken place along them. The surrounding mythology. Nothing I’ve seen deals very heavily with the spirits of the dead, even though we already know the line had a profound influence on Noah and what he could do -- as well as his death in the first place.” The way his words faltered before continuing wouldn’t have been noticeable to anyone that didn’t know Gansey as well as she did. It was a flicker of a pause, and then he said; “Both of our deaths. His and mine. Blue, is something the matter?””

“No,” Blue said, and it was mostly true. Nothing was wrong, exactly, not yet. Maybe nothing would be wrong at all, but she couldn’t be sure. “I told you. I’m just thinking.” It wasn’t as if Blue hadn’t known from the beginning that they’d need knowledge of this sort, but she had really hoped some of that specific information might be easier to come by. Gansey certainly had no problem tracking signs of magic from continent to continent before. But she supposed some things couldn’t be found in books. 

“About?” Henry asked, knocking his knee into hers.

“About what I might be able to do to help.” 

The three of them passed several more hours with research and discussion (and, when they became too distracted, with a bad horror movie on Henry’s recommendation) before Henry dropped Blue back off at her front door. 

“Thank you,” Blue said, unhooking her seatbelt. Half her mind was already inside the familiar walls of 300 Fox Way. The other half was very aware of Henry’s presence, the way she always was when she was with her boys. She was positive they were almost all equally conscious of each other. It was part of the nature of their relationship; a desperate, grasping sort of beginning that was slowly settling, giving way to forever. 

She hadn’t known friendship could feel like this. (And it was friendship at the base, no matter what else might be building on top of it.)

She also hadn’t known you could be so certain something would last and still want it so badly at the same time. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Henry asked, while Blue was still detangling her backpack, heavy with borrowed books, from the backseat. She glanced up at him to judge his seriousness, fingers working at an inexplicable knot in her bag’s strap. Henry was staring at her, his face lit on one side by the nearest streetlamp, quiet and undemanding in the fuzzy darkness between them. 

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Blue asked in return, and his mouth twisted slightly. 

“I can think of quite a few reasons, if we’re getting philosophical,” Henry said, but it didn’t carry his usual humor. He looked at her a moment more, waiting to see if she would answer, and she looked back at him, not sure what her answer should be. 

Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to her cheek -- not quite a kiss, just a long, silent instant of his mouth on her skin, soft and warm and surprising enough that Blue’s hands dropped into her lap, limp. 

When Henry pulled back again his face was strange. Maybe it was the lighting. He looked naked, more lost for things to say than she’d ever really seen him. Blue wanted to find the words to let him know it was alright, but her tongue had gone dull and heavy in her mouth.

She could see the exact moment her silence ticked too long, and he pulled a smile on again like a pair of sunglasses.

“Like the French!” Henry chimed, suddenly cheerful again. “I’m Canadian, you know how intimate we are with the French. Goodnight, Blue!” He reached over, plucked the last of the knot from her backpack strap, and pressed it firmly into her hand.

Blue’s body opened the car door and stepped out without much input from her mind, but she hadn’t thought of anything to say yet, anyway. She waved at Henry through the window, and in return he gave her a two-finger salute and a smile that had to be at least partly real, and then he was spirited away by his fast, silent car. 

She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, clutching her backpack in her hands. 

Then, with a deep, steadying breath, she turned towards the house. 

The lights in the front windows were still on. Blue had thought they would be. There wasn’t exactly an early bedtime at 300 Fox Way -- there was hardly a bedtime at all, not even when Blue was a kid. 

The front door was already unlocked when Blue marched in, following the trail of lit lamps and open doors to the source. Her mother, Calla, and Jimi were spread across the mismatched couches and armchairs in the sitting room. They hadn’t had clients today, as far as Blue knew, and certainly not this late, but there were cards strewn across the low table they sometimes used for it when the reading room was occupied.

Her mom was sprawled over the couch with her feet up and her head in Calla’s lap, holding a mug of tea that she could not possibly drink in that position. She tilted her head back to smile at Blue when she came in, and Calla grumbled in response.

“Keep your head still,” she chastised. “You’re gonna mess me up.” 

It made them look oddly young, Blue thought, to watch Calla braid her mom’s curly hair like they were teenagers at a sleepover. But Blue was very familiar with the comforting feeling of Calla’s firm hands separating chunks of hair to twist them together, pulling down to straighten it enough to make them even.

Blue claimed one of the armchairs for herself, her backpack heavy in her lap, her heart heavy in her mouth. 

It would be far too easy to swallow the words, so she spat them out before she could.

“We’re looking for a way to bring Noah back. It’s not crazed grief. We’ve thought this out. We want to try. I’m telling you because we need information on how death and spirits work with the ley line.”

There was a disconcertingly silent moment. Jimi’s hands even paused on her knitting.

Then Maura was sitting up, and Calla was letting her, despite the unfinished braids. She set her mug on the floor, and turned to face Blue. The inhale she took in was the slow-and-steady of someone trying very hard to make it that way.

“How long has this been going on?” Maura asked, and Blue had known she probably would, but she hadn’t expected it to be first.  

“A little while,” she said, because that could mean anything.

“And you didn’t mention it previously, because?”

Because I didn’t know how you’d react. Because I didn’t want you to tell me not to do it. Because I didn’t want to have this conversation.

“We didn’t need help before,” Blue said, very reasonably, in her own opinion. Maura took another practiced, careful breath. Blue wasn’t sure what book on meditation or parenting or whatever she’d read about that one in, but she didn’t think it was working.

“Blue,” Maura said.

“What?” Blue asked, though she was fairly certain she knew.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that sort of thing is? There’s a reason every psychic from Bangkok to Sacramento isn’t advertising resurrection as one of their services! It might not even be possible. And even if it is, you’ve seen what happens when you get in over your head with this sort of thing. You know what happens when it goes too far.” 

“We’re being careful!” Blue protested, because they were.

“Sometimes with this sort of thing there’s no amount of careful that matters!” Maura snapped. “The fact that your Gansey dodged death is unbelievable enough -- no one gets that lucky!” 

“Clearly some people do,” Blue said. “If we do it right it won’t be about luck. It’ll be about -- research, and planning, and doing it correctly, and then we’ll just have done it.”

“You’re not listening to me,” said Maura. “Listen to me, Blue. This sort of thing isn’t safe.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Blue said, her frustration crashing over her fast, like riptide. “It’s not about safe.”

“Of course it is!” Maura exclaimed. “How could it not be?”

Blue didn’t answer, instead zeroing in on Calla, who had been watching them both with shrewdly narrowed eyes. “What do you think?” she asked her. She didn’t bother searching out Jimi — her mom loved Jimi, but Blue knew she respected Calla’s opinion like no one else’s. No one else that was still alive, anyway. “Do you think it’s stupid, too?”

“I think,” Calla said, measured and steely, “that I don’t like you doing that. Tapping me in like this is tag-team wrestling against your mother.”

“I’m really asking,” Blue said. “I want to know.” 

“Will it make any difference what I think?” Calla asked. “From where I’m sitting, you already know what you want to do.” 

Maura cast Calla a look that was somehow both betrayed and scalding. “People can change their minds when confronted with new information. This isn’t -- it’s not a fixed path. Blue, you know what meddling too much in powers they don’t understand does to people. Look at Neeve.”

“I’m not Neeve,” Blue said. “And I’m not doing this alone. And I’m not just giving up on him.”

“It wouldn’t be giving up! This isn’t like Gansey undoing a prophecy right after it came true with dumb luck and magic that had started being woven into him nearly a decade beforehand. Noah was dead for years before you even met him, and you’re only trying to change it now. That’s entrenched. That’s rooted. That’s harder to undo.”

“So you do know something,” Blue challenged, her hands tightening into fists, nails pressing crescent moons into the meat of her palms. “You know something and you’re not telling me.” 

“I don’t know how to bring someone back to life,” Maura said, her voice rising in pitch. “Because it’s just not that simple!”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not possible,” Blue pointed out. “We know it’s possible. We’ve seen it firsthand. Since when do we shy away from something just because it’s complicated? That’s not how you raised me.” 

“I didn’t raise you with the understanding you’d try to arm wrestle the afterlife!” Maura shot back. “It’s not cowardly to keep yourself safe.”

“It’s cowardly to give up just because you might fail,” Blue retorted.

“It isn't. Not when you have no idea what failure might cost you -- not when I don’t even know what failure might cost you.” Maura closed her eyes for a brief moment, looking tired and drawn. Blue felt a pang in her heart, but not enough to make her give up, not when it mattered so much. “Blue, I don’t want to fight with you about this.” 

“Well, maybe I want to fight with you!” Blue exclaimed. “None of this is convincing me not to try, it’s just telling me to do it in secret. You have no idea what this means to me.” 

“You think I have no idea what -- You don’t think I wish every day that Persephone was still here?” 

The instant she said it, the room went quiet again. Jimi, who had been watching in a way that implied a severe aversion to getting in between them, dropped her knitting needles entirely. Calla’s face did something complicated and uncomfortable to watch, but she reached for Maura’s hand nonetheless. 

“Then you should understand,” Blue finally said, through the lump that had risen in her throat. Her eyes stung. “You should understand why we have to try. Maybe it won’t work. But I’ll regret it for the rest of my life if I don’t.” 

“You can’t bring back everything that’s dead,” Maura said, her voice just as tight with the promise of tears. “That’s not how it works.”

“But I can try to save some. I can try to save Noah. He was killed for magic, and he was killed so young, and he hardly had a chance to live -- it’s not fair.”

“Death isn’t fair,” Maura said.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Blue responded, fierce. “But I can try to make it better. You can’t tell me that being a ghost for so long, dying on the ley line and for it -- you can’t tell me that doesn’t make someone like Noah a more likely prospect than someone like Persephone. You know his circumstances were special. You know that.” 

Blue could see her mom take that in, could see Maura’s mind latching onto it in a way she couldn’t quite hide. It made sense to her. Blue could tell. 

“Still,” Maura said, which all but confirmed Blue’s suspicions. “A sliver of possibility doesn’t make it less dangerous. It doesn’t mean you should, just because I can’t guarantee that you can’t. I understand it hurts, Blue, I know that. But this isn’t -- you can’t go your whole life trying to undo what’s done instead of healing from it.”

“Just this once,” Blue said, disappointment bubbling up inside her. She’d thought, for a second -- she’d thought her mom had understood. “Just for him. I know we could move on, I know that, but we want to try first. Is that wrong? Isn’t it easier to heal if I’m not wondering for the rest of my life if I could have fixed it?”

“You say that now, but you don’t know how tempted you could be down the line -- to do something like this again, to meddle with death instead of moving your life forward. You don’t know what that temptation could do to you. And that’s if it works. If it doesn’t ruin your lives, if it doesn’t take more of them from you -- it’s not worth the risk.”

Blue was suddenly angry again, ferocious as flame. 

“You don’t get to decide for us what we get to risk! That’s for us to choose! We know it’s not easy, and we know it might not work, and we know it could be dangerous, but we’ve decided it’s worth it, and I don’t want platitudes about how I should just move on with my life without giving it a second thought when you yourself admitted there’s a possibility! We’re not going to get drunk on power because it’s not about the power, it’s not about seeing how far we can push or controlling death or any of that, it’s about -- It’s about Noah. Until we try, until we see, I will never be able to stop thinking about what I could’ve done differently. Every step I take, I will think about the ones he didn’t get, if I don’t know that there was nothing else we could have done. He’d do it for us. He practically did. And if you think it’s possible, and we think it’s possible, then we are going to try until we know it won’t work, because if we don’t we won’t be able to live with ourselves!”

“Blue--” Maura started, but Blue was already standing, hauling her backpack over her shoulder, and making for the stairs. Calla called after her too, but she didn’t turn around. She raced up the steps as quickly as she could, her eyes burning with the vicious onset of tears. 

In her room, Blue slammed the door shut behind her, and then flung herself face-first onto the bed. Right away she felt childish, like it might have proved her point more effectively if she had excused herself gracefully so they could stew in it, marinate in guilt until they realized they were wrong. But she hadn’t been thinking that far ahead, not much beyond slamming the door specifically because her mom hated it when she did. 

Her phone immediately began vibrating merrily in her pocket, crushed between her and the mattress. With some reluctance, she dug it out: Adam.

Blue picked up the call, saying in lieu of greeting; “Exactly how psychic are you supposed to be, again?”

“Pardon me?” Adam said, his voice familiar and warm even through the phone. He sounded like he was smiling. Blue could almost see the bemused little crinkle on his forehead. 

He seemed to be rubbing his accent stone-smooth with his time at school. Blue sort of thought it was a pity, hoped time with them at home would resurrect it for breaks. She wished he didn’t hate it so much, and not just because it was her accent, too. 

“Nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “You called at a weird time, is all. What did you need?”

“I was just callin’ to check in, honestly, but --” he faltered a moment. “Wait. Are you crying?” Adam asked, and she could hear his concern plain as day. A little bit of discomfort, too, probably -- Adam didn’t always know what to say when people cried. He’d gotten much better at it since she’d met him. 

“Only a little bit,” she said. Adam was clearly waiting for more, so she told him. “I told my mom. About what we’re doing. She wasn’t happy.”

“Why did you tell her?” Adam had known exactly how much Blue hadn’t told Maura, and why. Blue sniffled again, digging for the remnants of her anger.

“I thought they could help,” she said, and she didn’t pretend there was no bitterness in it. “We need more information about death and the line. We need something to make it easier to find him. The books aren’t turning up shit about it.”

“If you’d let me scry,” Adam said, after a pause where he was probably deciding whether or not to say it, “I bet I could turn up somethin’ for it. If I went looking with that as a goal.”

“You can scry when you’re here,” Blue said, too burnt out to properly snap. “On visits. It isn’t safe alone.” Blue realized, abruptly, that she sounded a little bit like her mother. That only turned the bright well of her irritation up higher. “You know you can stray too far sometimes. We’ve both seen it. If someone isn’t spotting you -- I don’t want you to end up like --” Like Persephone. Blue couldn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. They both knew.

“Okay,” Adam said, fast enough to either placate or cut her off. His breath left him in a rush, a sigh that she could feel through the phone. “Okay. I understand, Blue. Promise.” 

“I wish you were here,” Blue said. She hadn’t planned to say it until it was already out of her mouth. 

“I know,” Adam said, and then, “Or -- Christ, that wasn’t meant to sound as conceited as it did. I just mean… I understand. I do too. I mean, I don’t necessarily wish I was in Henrietta, specifically, at least not for longer than it takes to visit, but with all of you? Sure. Maybe I wish you were here. Or that we were all somewhere else.”

“I’m sure Boston is lovely this time of year,” Blue responded. Her voice still rasped, but a private sort of smile had started to grow around her mouth as Adam talked.

“Hell,” he said, sounding properly put off. “Don’t remind me. It’ll only get colder when winter rolls around. Why’d I do this, again?”

“Because you got accepted into one of the most prestigious Ivy League schools in the country and they offered you a hell of a scholarship package?”

“Right,” Adam said. “Yeah, that’d be why.”   

“Is there anything new over there?” Blue asked, settling more comfortably atop her mattress. “With your friends, in your classes?”

“It’s not exactly the most interesting,” Adam said.

“Come on. You know I’m living vicariously through you. I’m never going to a school like that.” 

“I’m not sure you’d even like a school like this. You’d probably do real well at one of those liberal arts schools where you can craft your own major. The type with a million different kinds of art classes.” 

God, that image was nice. Blue wasn’t sure she’d ever get to go to a school like that, either, but it was a good thought.

“Who says I want to be an art major?” she asked anyway, just to be contrary.

“Well, you don’t have to,” Adam said. “That’s sort of the whole point of a liberal arts education. You could take all sorts of art classes and still major in biology.”

Blue hummed her assent and closed her eyes, focusing on the sound of his voice and his gentle breathing on the other line.

“Still. Just because I might not like Harvard doesn’t mean I don’t like new experiences. Let me experience it. Tell me what you’re doing.”

“Well, alright,” Adam said, though Blue knew this was no hardship. “If you insist.”

“I do,” she said, as authoritative as she could muster. 

“I have this professor for one of my pre-reqs,” Adam started, after a moment to gather his thoughts. “And he’s just about obsessed with the entire concept of ethnographies. It’s not a class that’s dependent on ethnographies, but that doesn’t seem to be a deterrent. He brings them up in every class.”

Blue hiccuped out a little laugh. “Yeah?” she asked, her eyes still closed. She could almost see him, like that. It almost felt like she wasn’t alone in the bedroom she’d had since she was born.  

“Yeah,” Adam affirmed, sounding amused. “He thinks it’s the be-all-end-all of cited sources. Even other primary sources. Apparently the anthropological process makes all the difference.” 

“Alright,” Blue said. “Now, what’s an ethnography?” She didn’t feel silly asking like she might’ve if it were Gansey, even though he wouldn’t mean to do it.

“Oh, shit, right,” Adam responded, like he was the one who had messed up, not like she was stupid. “It’s a sociology concept. Or anthropology, I guess -- there’s overlap. A lot of overlap, actually, I’m fairly sure my professor in the sociology department is married to another one in the anthropology department. It’s like… a systematic, in-depth study of a specific culture. A description of it. People immerse themselves somewhere and report on it.” 

“Maybe you can do one on Henrietta psychics,” Blue said.

“Might hit a little too close to home,” Adam returned, amusement in his voice. “And I’m not sure psychics count as a single distinct culture, anyhow.” 

“What else?” Blue asked. She didn’t feel like changing into her pajamas, or getting up to turn off the light, but she did kick her boots off her feet and pull one of her blankets over her.

Adam hummed, thoughtful. His voice had pitched a little quieter, and she wondered if he could tell this was turning into a lullaby. They did that, sometimes, when he was not-exactly-homesick and could spare the time; fall asleep on Skype voice chat together. It was always unplanned, or at least not planned aloud, and they didn’t really talk about it in the light of day. 

They didn’t usually do it on the phone, either, because that could accidentally ring up a hell of a bill, so she knew that if she dozed off tonight he wouldn’t, would hang up when her breathing evened out, but she didn’t feel like getting up to search for her secondhand laptop among the piles of clothes strewn over her floor. She didn’t feel like moving much at all.

Blue wondered if Adam ever did this with Gansey, or Ronan -- talked each other into sleep. She kind of hoped so. She knew he and Gansey Skyped semi-regularly, at the very least. Gansey might benefit from hearing Adam’s voice on his worst insomnia nights, especially when Ronan wasn’t at Monmouth. Might sleep easier knowing he wasn’t alone, or maybe specifically knowing Adam was there.

At the same time, she doubted they had done it, at least not on purpose. And if they had, they wouldn’t mention it, wouldn’t let themselves think about it when the morning came. 

They were sort of awful that way. At least Blue let herself think about it.

Finally, Adam spoke; “I’ve told you about all my classes, and I’m not feelin’ like describing the homework I should be doing right now. So. I got a story for you instead about my friend Gillian.”

“Oh, fire away,” Blue said, curling into herself a little tighter. “She sounds fun.”

She fell asleep like that, curled into a half moon under her blanket with Adam’s voice a low murmur in her ear.

When Blue woke, the phone was still clutched close to her face, but the call had long since ended. She was tangled up in her quilt, and she’d somehow worked her socks off her feet in her sleep, leaving them cold. 

It took her a few disoriented moments to realize she’d been woken by knocking on her door. The clock on her bedside told her it was past eleven, which was at least generous, but she couldn’t think of a single person she wanted to speak to right now that’d be at her bedroom door.

She wasn’t given a choice, though. After another knock, the door swung open, and her mom stuck her head through. She looked tired, which made Blue feel first a little vindictively triumphant, and then guilty.

“We talked,” Maura said, and then clarified: “Calla and Jimi and I.”

“Okay,” Blue said, unsure where this was going.

“Jimi made pancakes,” Maura said.

“Okay,” Blue said again. Her mom heaved a sigh and gave her a look like she was being very difficult, but it was the usual kind, not one of the looks she’d given Blue while they were fighting.

“You’re clearly going to do this whether I like it or not. I still don’t, just to be clear -- but I do understand why you’re doing it. So. I’ve decided the best way I can keep you safe, if you’re going to do this, is arm you with as much knowledge as I possibly can.”

Blue sat up in bed so fast she made herself dizzy, hope blooming in her stomach.

“Wait, do you mean--” she began, tossing the mountain of blankets aside. Maura nodded.

“Come downstairs,” she said. “Have some pancakes. I can’t claim to know much, mind, and certainly not anything that’ll pull off necromancy all on its own. But what we do know, you and your boys can have.” 

“Thank you,” Blue said, even as she scrambled to pocket her phone. She really meant it, in a shaky, genuine kind of way. It must have shown on her face, because her mom softened further.

“Well. Sometimes our children make decisions we don’t understand. Or so I’m told,” Maura said. “I know I’ve been pretty lucky with you so far.” 

“It’s only fair,” Blue responded. “Sometimes mothers make decisions we don’t understand, too.”

Maura’s wry, answering smile led the way downstairs.

Chapter Text

Henry was no longer living at Litchfield House.

He had enjoyed his time there, but the lease had run out with the school year, and Henry knew his fondness had been as much a product of the people as the place, so he didn’t feel like renewing it on his own when the rest of the Vancouver crowd had fled Henrietta for the summer. A few of them had circled back in the fall for another year or two of plumping out Aglionby’s diversity resume, but the majority of them had graduated the year before and, unlike Henry, had probably left Virginia behind long-term. 

Henry was still in Henrietta, however, and didn’t know how long that would last. So, not wanting to rent at Litchfield alone after graduation, he’d taken up residency in the newly renovated apartment above a little flower shop. Locally owned. Family owned, even -- the very best type of charming small town storefront. The previous owner had lived there when he was running things, but his daughter, who had inherited the shop, had her own home, and a family too big for the apartment. She’d decided to fix it up and rent it out for a little extra income, and Henry was happy to take it off her hands.

Henry sometimes wondered if the old man had died in what was now his bedroom. He supposed it didn’t matter, really. People had died everywhere. You couldn’t go your entire life wondering what ghosts were trailing you in the halls -- not in such broad, nonspecific strokes, anyway. Henry’s current supernatural scholarship was focused on one specific ghost.

Henry hadn’t really known Noah Czerny personally. He thought about it, sometimes, wondered if he’d ever seen him among the others and missed it somehow, glanced right over him despite his occasionally single-minded study of Gansey and his royal court. If Henry could scroll back through his memories, would Czerny be there, overlooked? 

But, honestly, he didn’t really need to have met him or known him. He’d heard enough about him by now to feel like he had. 

Even before Henry’s intimacy with Gansey, he’d heard Czerny’s name. Lee Squared had a brother who had gone to Aglionby years before, and one of Aglionby’s prodigal sons going missing in the middle of the school year had caused a stir that rippled outward into an assortment of tasteless theories and urban myths. Lee’s brother had repeated one of these myths to Lee when he approached Aglionby age, and Lee had repeated it to his new friends upon arrival. 

It wasn’t until Gansey and the others that Henry had really received a true read on what Noah Czerny the person had been like, though, rather than Noah Czerny the missing persons case. Dynamic and shining at his most alive, quiet and retiring at his least. Affectionate and mischievous and loyal, but wounded and withdrawn. Cowardly and brave in turns. The kind of contradictions that must come from being dead, Henry supposed. 

The way they talked about him made Henry feel like he was someone he would have liked to meet. And most importantly: the others missed him desperately, so Henry cared because they did. 

Magic had been in Henry’s life a long while, but it had never felt as welcoming nor as benevolent as it did after being granted entry into Gansey’s inner circle. Obviously dangerous, still, considering all that had happened, but that was a matter of individual circumstance, not a broader truth. Excluding Robobee, Henry hadn’t had much previous experience in the way magic could be beautiful and wondrous, something worth pursuing. His mother’s business had sort of soured the idea for him, truth be told, made it about buying and selling and the exchange of tightly kept secrets. Magic for magic’s sake was a luxury he’d felt discouraged from wanting. 

Richard Gansey and the others had changed that for him. And if the lack of their Noah was hurting them, Henry wanted to lend himself to the cause. 

The best way for him to do so was via the one thing he had that none of the others really did; the contacts and know-how to navigate the magical black market. It was Seondeok’s world, but Henry had been born into it. He had a perspective on it that the rest of them didn’t. 

Right now, he was applying that perspective to a Skype call.

Through the speakers on Henry’s sleek laptop, Blue’s voice crackled. 

“It’s not much,” she said. “I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

“Anything is more than what we had previously, Jane,” Gansey said, encouragingly. There was an additional noise on his end of the line, which he translated with: “Ronan agrees.”

“If I didn’t agree they’d fucking know it by now, Gansey,” Ronan said, a little too distant to have been meant for the others. “Stop interpreting.” Ronan was only on the call via in-Monmouth proximity to Gansey. If Lynch had a computer, Henry had never seen it, and even if he had been willing to download the badly-functioning Skype app onto his phone, Henry doubted he’d use it. 

“Go on, Blue,” Adam said. “What did they tell you?” He had a laptop, but only because it was a university necessity. Henry wasn’t certain how old the model Adam had eventually decreed serviceable was, but it certainly wasn’t Apple’s latest release. Parrish would probably ride that machine until its last gasping breaths, and then open it up and drag its life expectancy out a little longer while it begged. Henry admired that, even if he couldn’t personally understand it. 

Blue’s end of things made a tapping sound that Henry guessed was likely a metal spoon on a table. This was not because the sound was distinctive as such, but because he’d seen her do it before. 

“The bulk of it was about how psychics and magic interact with the ley line. It makes everything stronger, obviously. Amplifies it. But we knew that. The thing they mentioned that interested me most was a theory about why it does that. You know, what things like scrying and seeing the soon-dead on St. Mark’s Eve have to do with the lines, how it all interracts. My mom implied that the line kind of…” She paused, and the tapping increased in speed before she picked back up again. “Blends things together, I guess? Blurs the lines between the living and dead, blurs the directions of time and space, pushes everything a little closer. Magic doesn’t care about where you are, or the order things come in. It just cares about energy. Intention. That’s why we -- or, well, a general we, not me-- can see ghosts of people who aren’t dead, why psychics can scry into places that don’t physically exist, places they couldn’t go with their bodies. It’d be possible for them to do some of that already, but the line makes it easier by thinning the spaces between. It doesn’t have to make sense. It follows its own rules. Which I do kind of hate, for the record. It’s so nonspecific. I wish I knew what rules it’s following.”

“Kind of sounds like the rules are that there are no rules,” Ronan said, and he was clearly leaning closer to the speakers to be heard. 

“Maybe for you,” Blue bit back, but there wasn’t any heat in it. “Not everyone is only limited by the power of their imagination.”

“They sure aren’t,” Ronan said, and it was smug enough, even without seeing his face, that Henry snorted.  

“That’s a help, though, isn’t it?” Henry asked. His pen was in his mouth, and he was talking around it. He wasn’t sure when it had gotten there. “Knowing that it doesn’t have to make sense, I mean. Makes it less about the physical locations and more about the --” he wiggled his fingers in the air as he fished for a way to end the sentence, even though the others couldn’t see him. “More about the magic bits. We don’t have to find the precise coordinates of Czerny’s murder, or anything, we just have to get him where we are.”

“And how do we plan to do that?” Adam asked.

“It’s a work in progress,” Henry admitted. “But I’m sure the proper ingredient for our recipe is out there somewhere. Preferably with a price tag.”

“I can try to scry for him,” Adam said. “When I visit next, I mean. I’ll look for whatever form his spirit is in now, see if I can find some trace of it. I don’t know how it works exactly, but it makes sense to me that if I can feel him somehow, if we have something specific to focus on, then bringing him somewhere we can reach might be easier.”

“And I’ll look for a magnet!” Henry said, with a triumphant thrust of his slightly damp pen. “Or a magnet-type item, to attract whatever Parrish tells us to focus on. From there, I suppose it’s a matter of the actual resurrection and physicalization business. Putting him in a fancy new body, and all that.”

“I was sort of hoping we could manage to give him some version of his old body, really,” Gansey said. “Not the exact original one, of course, as we’re not trying to create a horror film zombie, but you know -- I want it to be his. Not anyone else’s, not even previously. I’m wondering if it’d be possible for it to reform around his spirit. Something of that sort.” 

“A refurbished old-new body, then,” Henry said. “What’s old is new again, reuse and recycle, all that. His old body but slightly less decayed and a little more living. We don’t buy without proof of a heartbeat. Like when you purchase something online.”

“Right,” Gansey said. “I don’t suppose you could keep your eye out for something that might help with that too, Henry?”

“Well, it may not be as simple, Richardman,” Henry replied. He was turning it over in his head as he spoke. “Finding something, even bringing it closer -- that’s broad, nonspecific. All sorts of applications, all sorts of possibilities. There’s options there. But reforming a body, especially around the dead… Well, that’d be a hot ticket item, that much I can tell you for sure. If it’s out there, it’s expensive, exclusive, and that’s only if an owner is willing to part with it. We’re not crawling with specifically necromantic artifacts. At least not to my knowledge. But I’ll see what I can find.”

“It’s alright if it’s not possible,” Gansey said, but Henry could hear him sagging, just a bit.

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time,” Adam put in. “Finding Noah first. Figuring out what kind of ritual to try. Logistically, we need all of that decided before we can even consider putting him into a body of any kind.”

“It might be the most difficult part, though,” Blue said. “Giving him a body, getting it to live. He was already a ghost, so we at least know that’s possible. Wouldn’t it be smart to start now?”

“I’d argue we already know resurrection is possible as well,” Gansey pointed out, rather dryly. 

“Special circumstances, man,” Ronan muttered, barely audible. And then, louder; “Parrish is right that we have to figure out the rest of this shit first, though. So let’s say we can think about the body, try to puzzle it out, but it probably shouldn’t be our focus until we know we can even get that far.” 

“I suppose you’re right,” Gansey said. “Still, this has all been very enlightening, Blue. Thank you. I think keeping this in mind during my research will be a great help. We can narrow down our options significantly.”

“Jesus, you have no idea how glad I am to hear that,” Blue said, relief high in her tone. “I thought maybe it’d all be for nothing, and we’d be back at square one.”

“I think I can use it too, honestly,” Adam said. “I mean, even knowin’ I don’t have to worry so much about where he is physically gives me more room to work. Thanks, Blue.”

“Yeah. You did okay, Sargent,” Ronan said, and Blue scoffed before it finished leaving his mouth.

“Thanks, Ronan, I absolutely needed your lukewarm validation to feel good about my decisions.” 

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “I know, that’s why I made sure to stamp my approval on it as soon as possible. So you wouldn’t have to squirm. You’re welcome.” 

“You’re such an asshole,” Blue said. She didn’t sound mad, and Henry wouldn’t expect her to. They did this sort of thing all the time. 

“Look who’s talking,” Ronan replied.

“I have class in fifteen,” Adam said. “Is there anything else we need to go over?” 

“Not that I can think of,” Gansey said.

“That’s all I have,” said Blue. “For now, at least.”

“Bases covered,” Henry chimed in. “Playbook explained. Other sports metaphors. I’ve got an appointment I should be getting to, myself.” 

Ronan just grunted, which the group universally accepted as agreement. 

“Great,” Adam said. “It was good talking to you guys. I’ll text later.”

“We’re on for our call this weekend?” Gansey asked. It came out rushed, probably because Adam would be hanging up any second. “To discuss our research?”

“Yeah, Gansey,” Adam said, a little softer. “Of course.” And then; “You could just message me to ask, you know.”

“Right,” Gansey said. He cleared his throat. “Of course. Good luck in class, then.”

“Talk to you all soon,” Adam said, and his icon blipped off the screen.

Only a few minutes later, all goodbyes had been said, and all calls had been left, and the only voice in Henry’s room was his own. 

And he had work to do. 

Rolling onto his stomach in bed, Henry readjusted his laptop, pulled his cellphone from his pocket, and directed RoboBee to perch on his shoulder. 

Henry had been taught early on to understand some of the codes dealers in his mother’s industry used for buying and selling. Not until after his kidnapping, but he doubted it would have been of much use there anyway. It was, however, invaluable for his rarer role as a set of eyes and ears. 

Seondeok largely used him as an excuse, a cover, a reason for a doting mother to visit locales that her son had been sent ahead to. But on occasion, Henry could see and hear things that an adult in a black suit would be barred from. He could roam as a lost tourist or a local schoolboy, could innocuously pass by all manner of people, chattering loudly enough on the phone that they assumed he was paying no attention to them. And that was when the codes came in handy. Or, that was how they had previously come in handy, before he started looking to buy himself. 

Most sales were done in person only, seen and verified before any amount of money changed hands. A viewing first, auction second, exchange third. But people talked. People always talked. Online, on the phone, in rippling whispers. And Henry had gotten quite good at knowing where to listen. People advertised, at times, too -- the buyers had to find out where and when and what somehow. It was bad business to hold a sale if the right people didn’t know about it.

Henry was one of those right people, and he knew about one or two happening now.

The market moved, but the trades were ongoing. Private collections were seen and sold off in bits, even outside of the bigger events, though you usually had to know the owner. Offers were made for items that hadn’t actually been put on the market yet. Coded descriptions were passed from hand-to-hand. 

It was a regular game of telephone.

The market was your best bet if you didn’t have a specific item in mind, the best option in terms of variety. And right now, the market was in New York for the weekend. 

Also in New York was Henry’s contact (her ticket fully paid as part of their deal, of course), wearing a present Henry had mailed her. 

Well. Present was likely the wrong word. He did want it back, after all. But she would be well-compensated for her efforts, so Henry doubted it’d be any great loss.

Henry wouldn’t say Ronan had leapt at the opportunity to be helpful, but he certainly hadn’t grumbled as much as Henry would have expected from him even a couple of months ago. Maybe he was glad to have something to do, or maybe Lynch was finally warming up to him now that it had become clear that Henry’s presence in Gansey’s life wasn’t destabilizing the Gansey-Lynch bond. Whatever the reason, when Henry had gone to Ronan with RoboBee and a request, he had done his level best to make it so. And he’d come back a few weeks later with something beautiful in-hand.

The result of Henry’s concept and Ronan’s dreaming was this: a bee-shaped brooch, all dainty curved metal and refracting gems, designed to clip into clothing and stay put. Nice enough to be proper jewelry for someone with money, but not visibly magical enough to attract the attention of poachers. 

And here was the best part: it interfaced with RoboBee, extended its reach so Henry could be significantly further away from the brooch than he could be from RoboBee, without severing the mental connection. 

Henry had gotten the idea from extension cords. 

In direct response to his thoughts, RoboBee gave a whirring flutter of wings.

On his computer screen was a compilation of coded listings, drawn and transcribed from all manner of sources. On his phone screen was the rainbow glow of RoboBee’s app. 

Henry tossed a thought into the void, and his phone screen flickered to beautiful, high-definition life, the image swaying on the collar of a sensible suit jacket.  

BeeCam was a go, just as brilliant as she had been during his tests. And the broadcast ran both ways. 

“Why, hello there,” Henry said aloud. The suit jacket huffed.

“You’re lucky I’ve got a bluetooth in,” Nasri murmured, quiet enough not to be heard in her corner of the conference center lobby. “No one else can hear you, and thank God for that, but we’d have some trouble if anyone got the impression I was speaking to an invisible guest.” 

Roxine Nasri had a reputation for being both discreet and capable, willing to not ask too many questions and aware of the professional benefits of being careful with the privacy of her clients. Henry wasn’t the first person to hire her for a job like this, and he wouldn’t be the last. Best of all, his mother had never hired her, had hardly ever dealt with her at all. Henry had gone all Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to find her, starting at his mother’s closest contacts and moving onto those further and further away, so it would be harder to trace back to him. Nasri hadn’t actually fulfilled the terms of their contract yet, but Henry was pleased with her so far. 

He also liked her accent.

“I’m perfectly visible,” Henry replied, cheery. “I’m just in absentia. And we know full well that I’m not the only prospective buyer not appearing in person.”

“But most absentee buyers aren’t meant to have a camera.” Her voice dipped low on the last word, a hissing whisper that Henry only picked up because BeeCam was designed to do so. 

“Other people have cameras,” Henry argued.

“Just because people do it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a problem if we get caught,” Nasri said, and she did have a point. A camera was one of those unspoken sorts of allowances that was only acceptable as long as no one knew for sure that you were doing it.

“Then don’t get caught,” Henry said. He thought that was very reasonable advice. 

“I’m charging extra for this,” Nasri reminded him, and flipped open the conference schedule. Henry pressed his thumb to his phone and thought about what he wanted, and BeeCam zoomed in to give him a better look.

“Curios and trinkets might be a good spot to start. Room 204. The things that don’t fit anywhere else. I certainly don’t think I want to try the rooms with the live specimens or ingestibles. Remember, we’re looking either for something that finds or something that pulls.”

“You’re truly not going to tell me what you need to find or pull?”

“No,” Henry said. “It honestly might work best if it’s a little more general. I don’t think they’ll have something there designed solely to locate what I’m looking for. Hint: it’s not an oil deposit or a secret diamond mine.” 

“Do you believe we’re swimming in secret diamond mines?” Nasri asked, even as she started towards the elevators. She didn’t sound like she wanted a response. Henry gave one anyway.

“You never know. They’re artificially valuable, you know? All market inflation. Not actually all that rare.”

“It’s incredible,” Nasri said, her finger visible on the elevator button, “what people will do for the artificially valuable. Die. Kill.”

“Maim,” Henry added, helpfully. “Torture.”

“And maim and torture,” Nasri agreed, her tone dry. “Room 204 coming up directly, boss.”

The curio room, as promised, was packed with magical artifacts of all types and pedigrees. As Nasri walked her first circle of the room, Henry saw snatches of the full variety: a table lined with pill bottles, a self-propelling metal mobile that was spinning in eternal circles, what looked like a stained glass flute, rich with color. 

“Any thoughts?” Henry asked, though he wasn’t expecting to have found anything yet, really. The first pass was just to get a sense of the options. Further investigation was likely needed.

“You tell me, boss,” said Nasri. “I’ve hardly been told what you’re looking for.” She didn’t bother lowering her voice as much as she had in the lobby. If anyone looked at her, they’d see the bluetooth, which was perfectly acceptable here. In this business, there were regular buyers that had never even shown their faces at a sale. 

That was the whole problem with cameras, really. Faces. Identifying marks. Potential proof. But BeeCam didn’t look anything like a camera, because it technically wasn’t one. None of its delicately arranged pieces contained film or circuit boards. It didn’t connect to the WiFi. 

It was pure magic running on magic, exactly how Henry liked it. 

“Something to find or something to pull,” Henry reminded Nasri. She hadn’t forgotten, but it bore repeating. “Let’s try there. Yes, in the flashy sports coat.” 

Flashy was a good word for it, and unfortunately not even in the way Henry was fond of, patterned in a lurid magenta that this man didn’t have the confidence to pull off. Henry hadn’t met many traders of illegal magic that reminded him of used car dealers, but something about this one was really calling to mind cable television commercials that promised low-low prices and high-high quality. 

The salesman straightened up as Nasri approached. Henry couldn’t be sure if it was in response to the possibility of a customer, or the woman herself. Through BeeCam’s feed, Henry eyed up his table: neat to a fault, military rows of objects arranged by size. 

“My employer,” Nasri said, voice smooth and crisp, “is looking for items with a certain functionality. An item that can find something that’s been lost, or pull it to you.” 

“Your employer should consider one of those tiles you can clip onto a keychain,” the salesman said, with a laugh that was both jovial and fake. “With an alarm? Saved my ass more than once when I lost my keys.” Attempted rapport established, he leaned over his assorted wares and into a segue. “What kind of thing is he missing, then?” 

Henry was a ‘he’, but Blue’s voice in his head wasn’t pleased that the guy had assumed it. 

“That’s not needed information,” Nasri responded, which Henry thought was a very professional way of saying she had no idea. “I don’t believe he’s looking for something that can find only one sort of thing.”

“Is that, like, a wall sconce?” Henry asked, zooming in on a medieval-looking metal torch. “Why is that here?” Nasri rightly ignored him. The wall sconce was not likely to find any Noahs. The salesman rubbed his hands together like a fly. 

“Something for lost items,” he mused. The view was a little on the low side, with BeeCam clipped onto Nasri’s lapel, but Henry got the sense he was examining his offerings, so he did the same. A lot of it was decorative in some way: the wall sconce, some small statues in wood and metal, a stack of papers in the corner. The big-ticket art would be in another room, so clearly this guy’s stuff hadn’t made the cut. “I do think it depends, a bit, on what you’re tryin’ to find,” the salesman said, just a tad apologetic.

“It really doesn’t,” Henry said, even though no one but Nasri could hear him. 

“It’s not intended to be that specific,” Nasri said. “My employer wants options. If you don’t have anything…” She trailed off, making her meaning clear by beginning to step away.

“Wait, wait!” the salesman called, and Nasri paused. “Why not take a better look around, since you’re here already?” It was smarmy, coaxing, cough-syrup sweet. Henry didn’t think he liked this guy. He held up a round little vial, shook it in Nasri’s direction. “If what he’s lookin’ to attract is a woman, a couple drops of this will do the trick, on my honor. Not as strong as you’d find in one of the other rooms, but not as expensive as that, either, mind you. Or this one’s real good!” He pointed to the torch-y thing Henry had noticed before, and with a flick it was lit with blue flame. “Doesn’t go out except by request, doesn’t require any fuel, doesn’t burn your things. Ain’t that something?”

“That one is actually kind of cool,” Henry said, a low hum in Nasri’s ear, “but not enough to make me shop here. Also definitely not what I’m looking for.” That was enough for Nasri, and she kept on moving, not bothering to acknowledge the salesman’s final pitch. Henry kind of wished he could watch the guy’s face drop. “I didn’t like that dude,” Henry informed her, and she huffed in response.

“Plenty of worse characters here,” Nasri said. 

“Okay, yeah,” Henry said. “I know that. But at least some of them are a little more genuine about it. There are plenty of people in this business that know they’re bad and just don’t care. I’d take that over pretending any day.” 

“Where to next?” Nasri asked, because apparently she didn’t care about Henry’s preferences.

“Let’s browse the area, I guess,” Henry said. “See what’s right around here, keep going if nothing catches my eye.” Without a word, Nasri did so, making a slow pass by the nearby tables in order to allow Henry a chance to look. Some things were labeled. Some weren’t. Henry would check with every seller in the place if he had to, or at least those in potentially applicable rooms, but he couldn’t exactly just ask Nasri to stand in the center and yell out a description of what he was looking for. She wouldn’t do it even if he asked. 

Carried on Nasri’s collar, Henry passed stacks of old books, gleaming jewelry in unnaturally vivid colors, a collection of miniature cog-and-wire robots that moved as he watched. None of it seemed likely to bring them a ghost. They stopped at a few tables anyway, to ask, but left underwhelmed. Henry flicked through the conference schedule in his mind again, beginning to wonder what other room was likely to have something of use.

At the farthest side of the room from the entrance, Henry sat straight at the appearance of a busy-looking table being manned by a woman in a headscarf. The table was covered in richly embroidered fabric in jewel tones, and heavy with trinkets of different sizes and colors. 

“Let’s try here,” Henry said. “With her.” Nasri followed his lead, approaching the table with steady steps so he had a chance to observe what was on it more thoroughly. There were more books here, hard-bound. More jewels, too, sparkling in the bright fluorescents of the convention center. But there were other things, too. Unlabeled bottles with different tints and shapes, lined up in a holding rack. A curved white knife with intricate carvings. A whole collection of differing metal gadgets that looked like they could have been rescued from a treasure chest on a sunken galley. They probably weren’t, but they wouldn’t have been out of place there.

“Hello,” Nasri said, and the woman manning the table looked up at her, her painted-red mouth quirking up in the corners.

“Hello,” the woman responded. “I like your brooch.”

“Thank you,” Henry said, even though she wouldn’t hear him. 

“Thank you,” Nasri said, even though it wasn’t really her brooch.

“It doesn’t quite seem your style, though,” the woman said, looking Nasri up and down. 

“I’m experimenting,” Nasri responded. 

“I think you could probably get her number,” Henry told Nasri. “I mean, if you were interested in that.” Nasri ignored him.

“My employer is looking for an item of a specific use,” Nasri told the woman. “Something to find or something to pull. Nonspecific. Multi-use. Do you have anything like that?”

“Wait,” the woman held up her palm. “I don’t do business without introduction.” Nasri shifted on her feet.

“My employer prefers to keep their privacy. I’m here as a proxy. If that’s not acceptable, we’ll try elsewhere.” 

The woman flashed a white-toothed grin at her, revealing one hidden dimple. “You’ll do,” she said, and extended her hand. After a moment, Nasri shook it.

“Do you need a full name, or?” Nasri asked, sounding just a little hesitant. 

“No,” said the woman. “Whatever you’d like to give. I just don’t deal namelessly.”

“You’d be an outlier here,” Nasri said, withdrawing her fingers from the woman’s grasp. “I go by Nasri.” The woman nodded, looking pleased.

“Nasri,” she repeated. “A pleasure. I’m Reza. Now, you said something to find or pull? When you say pull, you mean…” She trailed off, expectant.

“Bring something to me,” Henry answered, in Nasri’s ear. “Bring it closer.”

“I mean to bring something closer to the user,” Nasri responded. The woman --Reza-- tapped her fingers on the silky corner of her table, leaning forward to examine her offerings. 

“I’m not sure about bringing closer,” she admitted. Nasri had looked down as well, so Henry saw when Reza’s dark fingers closed around something round and coppery. A watch? “But I may have something to find. To lead you, at the very least.” She held out the item. 

It was an old-fashioned compass, the metal weathered and browned in some spots, about the size of an orange. If an orange was flat.

“May I?” Nasri asked, reaching for it.

“Of course,” said Reza, and handed it to Nasri to try. Nasri pressed the button to open up the face, and the glass front tilted back on its hinges.

“How does it work?” Nasri asked.

“Ask for what you’re looking for,” Reza said. “It should help guide you. Unfortunately not the most useful for extreme distances, but it should adjust as you get closer. You can try to follow it as far as you’d like, it just may be difficult.”

“Find Reza,” Nasri said, to Reza’s clear delight.

“You could definitely get her number,” Henry said. “I think you should ask.”

The arrow on the compass spun, and swung to face in the correct direction, directly to Nasri’s front. Nasri gave a thoughtful hum. “Find the live specimens room,” Nasri said. The compass spun and stopped again, this time off at a diagonal. Nasri quickly pulled out her map of the convention hall. “...It’s right,” she said, after just a moment, sounding more disbelieving than Henry thought she had a right to, as a woman that helped people procure magic. 

“It is,” Reza confirmed, sounding pleased. “Would you like to try again?”

“Find…” Nazri begun, unsure. “My employer.” 

Henry’s face was practically pressed to his phone. The arrow spun. It came to a spot pointing southward, where Virginia would indeed be in relation to New York.

“Ask how much it is,” Henry breathed out, his eyes fixed on the screen. “I want it.”

“I can’t confirm for sure,” Nasri began, “but I do believe my employer would be interested in this item. Maybe we can arrange something?”

Reza smiled. 

A few days later and several thousand dollars poorer, Henry recovered a hand-delivered package from a pre-arranged drop-site outside of Henrietta. Wrapped in the brown parchment paper was the compass, heavy and cool, and BeeCam in her own little bag. He had already wired Nasri her payment this morning, a requirement for handing over the merchandise. 

Henry dropped a kiss to BeeCam’s little metal head, and then fixed her to his own blazer. She had served him well. Then he wrapped the compass carefully back up in the paper for transit. 

He walked back to his car (a bit away, in case anyone was watching the drop) with a spring in his step.

The first thing he did when he climbed into the driver’s seat was turn on the radio. The second thing he did was hit Monmouth Manufacturing’s saved address in his Maps app, and ride the outer edge of the speed limit the whole way there. 

Gansey and Ronan were both home when Henry arrived, their cars sitting pretty in the gravel drive like fraternal twins. He didn’t bother knocking, just careened up the steps at top speed, the package under his arm and BeeCam bouncing on his collar. 

“Look alive, boys!” Henry called, as he flung open Monmouth Manufacturing’s upstairs door. He was lucky it wasn’t locked, or that would have been much less triumphant than he’d intended. 

Both of the building’s current inhabitants startled. Gansey was sitting halfway in model Henrietta, surrounded by a pile of books that had been carefully arranged as to not encroach on any of the cardboard buildings. Ronan was sprawled out on his back across Gansey’s unmade bed, tossing a rubber ball up and down.

Upon Henry’s entrance and pronouncement, he missed catching it, and it bounced on his chest, off the bed, and then across the floor before it rolled to a stop against a wall. He cursed, and Chainsaw gave a cackling caw from her spot in the wastebasket. 

Ronan sat up, shooting a glare in the wastebasket’s direction. “Traitor,” he muttered, and then turned towards Henry. “Why are you here, Cheng?” 

“You are so rude,” Henry responded, cheerily. “You’re very lucky I find it charming.” With a flourish, he unearthed his compass from its packaging, turning it this way and that like the lovely assistant in a magic show. “For your perusal, Messrs Gansey and Lynch, is my recent acquirement from New York’s magical market.” 

Gansey was on his feet in an instant, dog-earing his book and setting it aside as he came to join Henry by the door. Ronan ambled over at a more sedate pace, but Henry waited for him anyway, because Henry was very nice. 

“What does it do?” Gansey asked, his fingers hovering over the compass like he was considering touching it but hadn’t quite made up his mind, or wasn’t sure he was allowed.

“It finds things,” Henry said. “Here, let me show you.” He gestured to Gansey and Ronan to step back a bit, so he was less crowded. When they did so, he cupped the compass in his palms, realizing as he did that he had never actually tried it out himself -- just watched Nasri do it through a screen. He sent up a little prayer to the gods of wayfinding, or whatever would be appropriate, and spoke with authority. “Find model Henrietta.”

The compass spun. All three boys watched with bated breath until it came to a stop, pointing unerringly at model Henrietta. Gansey made a small noise of delight. Ronan raised his eyebrows halfway up his forehead, which was about all Henry could expect from him in regards to showing that he was impressed. Chainsaw showed her interest by flapping across the room and alighting on Ronan’s shoulder.

“That’s wonderful,” Gansey said, with genuine admiration.

“Isn’t it just?” Henry asked. 

“I wonder how it works,” Gansey said.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Henry responded. “But that’s not what’s important.” He took a deep breath, tightening his fingers on the compass. Alright. Moment of truth. “Find Noah Czerny,” he commanded, and the compass spun. 

It was a longer spin this time, and strangely jerky; it slowed facing one direction, almost to a stop, and then picked up speed again like it’d changed its mind. Maybe it was getting stage fright: all eight eyes in the room were fixed to the spinning needle, waiting for its answer, including Chainsaw’s. 

After a few more rotations, the needle stopped, facing forward, towards where Gansey and Ronan were standing. Henry hummed, and followed its lead, between and past them to the middle of the room. “Find Noah Czerny,” he said again, and again the compass spun, still faltering. But this time it pointed in the opposite direction, back where Henry had come from. Henry knit his brows, and retraced his steps, stopping in between Ronan and Gansey. “Find Noah Czerny,” he tried, and the compass gave another shaky attempt. 

When it stilled, it was pointing to Henry’s right. Towards Gansey. “Well,” Henry said, “that’s not right.” He shook the compass gently, took a few more steps, and gave it another shot, speaking louder this time, like the compass might have hearing troubles. “Find Noah Czerny.” The needle twisted again, and again pointed in Gansey’s direction. 

Gansey himself was beginning to look a little panicked.

“What does that mean?” he asked. “I don’t--” He stopped, looked down at himself a moment. “I know I was brought back from the dead, but I certainly don’t feel like Noah. Or some kind of… Gansey imposter.” 

Ronan was less concerned, though he was starting to get that pissy expression Henry was so used to.

“It means the stupid thing’s broken,” he said, petting the soft feathers under Chainsaw’s beak. “Good going, Cheng. You fucked it up.”

“Well, okay, rude,” Henry said. “Let’s think about this logically. It obviously was able to find other things, like--” He looked back down at the compass. “Find Ronan Lynch.” It spun more easily, and pointed home, right at Ronan’s black-clad form. “Find Gansey,” Henry said, and the compass turned, and landed unerringly in Gansey’s direction. Gansey’s expression went a little relieved in response. “So it’s not broken. It’s possible it just can’t find the dead. Maybe a ghost is too incorporeal. It went looking and found the next closest thing.” He glanced at Gansey, apologetic. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Gansey said, very quiet. He still looked a little shaken.

“Then it’s still pretty fucking broken,” Ronan said. “Considering its one job is to find the dead.” 

“You try searching for this needle in a haystack, Lynch, see how well you do,” Henry snapped. Then he didn’t like how the words sounded out of his mouth. He took a steadying breath, recomposed himself. Ronan wanted a fight. Ronan almost always wanted a fight, these days. “Alright,” Henry said. “It’s fine. It’s cool. This isn’t the one. There’s no shortage of magic items on the market, I’ll keep looking. Who finds true love on the first date, right?” He wrapped the compass back up in the paper it’d come from. He sort of didn’t want to look at it right now. “Sorry, guys. Back to the drawing board, I suppose. Or magical Ebay. I’ll try again.” He tucked the package under his arm again, a little forlorn. “At least it’s cool. I’ll never forget where I parked my car again.”

“It is cool,” Gansey assured, gentle. “Thank you for the attempt. It was very close.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ronan said. He dug into his pocket and unearthed his car keys, his spine straight as a steel beam, coiled with new tension. “Better luck next time.”

“Where are you going?” Gansey asked.

“Out,” Ronan responded, and Henry wasn’t sure if he actually rolled his eyes, but he could practically hear it anyway. “I’ll be back by curfew, mom.” He shouldered his way out the door without waiting to see if Gansey had a response to that. 

“I should probably head out too,” Henry said. 

“You can stay,” Gansey said. “If you want.”

“Nah,” Henry said. “I mean, I appreciate it, and I’ll take a raincheck, but I should get back on the darknet and see what else is out there. You take care of yourself, Richardman. I’ll text.” He touched knuckles with Gansey on the way out the door, at a slower pace than Ronan. He heard the BMW screech out of the driveway on the way down the stairs. 

Back in his car, Henry took a moment. He pressed his palms into his eyes, hunched over. He breathed. After a long couple of minutes, he straightened back up, pulled out his phone. 

Nasri’s number might have been a burner phone. Henry wasn’t sure. It was stored in his contacts under just the letter N. Initially, he hadn’t stored it at all, but then he’d gotten a couple of spam texts about deals on sunglasses, and realized the danger of getting two unmarked numbers mixed up.

If it was a burner, Henry hoped she hadn’t dumped it yet. He texted her. 

Henry: I may still be in need of your services. I don’t suppose the woman from the market does refunds? Store credit?

Chapter Text

Gansey’s late-night sleeplessness took place on the backdrop of the rustling of Cabeswater’s leaves, now. Not always. But when he was alone. 

Henry had left abruptly, disappointed by the outcome of his first attempt, and Ronan had stomped his way out of Monmouth with his car keys. Gansey knew he was upset about the compass, but he had felt Ronan’s black mood coming like an encroaching storm well before that. Stomping seemed to be his default state these days.

And he hadn’t come home yet, even though the sun had faded into inky black sky. So Gansey was alone. And Cabeswater was rustling in the back of Gansey’s mind, even though it was gone, even though it had been gone for months. He couldn’t be sure if it was his imagination or a side effect of being granted his life by the magical forest.

He wasn’t sure what that said about him, either way. If imagining it was wishful thinking, or guilt that he had been the one to take it away. If it being real and a magical side effect meant that he wasn’t who he had been before he had died, or that there was something of Cabeswater living inside him now. 

Gansey had loved Cabeswater. He still loved it, maybe more now that he knew it had come from Ronan. But he wasn’t sure how to feel about the concept that he might be only part himself, now, and that the rest was filled in by the forest. It was hard to know how any of this worked, even harder to explain it. He felt like himself, still, mostly, felt like he had all the right memories and the right feelings, but -- if he wasn’t, if he didn’t, would he actually know? Would it still feel right because it was designed to feel that way? Was he the same boy, or just a memory of him, a well-loved echo? 

It was possible it didn’t matter. He was who he was now, even if it was different from before, and he was alive when he hadn’t been meant to be, and he had to work with what this new life was. But Gansey had spent so much time striving to be himself, to find out who that even was, and he didn’t like the idea that maybe he wasn’t anymore and wouldn’t even know. 

There was no way to be sure. Gansey supposed he’d just have to move on with things. Every other option was worse. But he didn’t like the way being alone sunk him into these thoughts, the way a part of him whispered that he better make the most of this second chance he’d been given, when Noah had practically died to let him have it. 

In his head, heavy branches were rustled by an invisible wind, and none of it was real. Outside, the moon was a sliver in the autumn sky, and Ronan could be anywhere at all. Gansey dove back into his research. 

The Hauntings of the Arthur Allen House was filled with supposedly true accounts of supernatural events in one of Virginia’s most ghost-filled locales, along with the storied history of the place. Being the oldest documented brick building in the United States, it had a lot of history. It was the type of place Gansey might like to visit. But with every page, he wondered how much of the stories were true, what their connection might be to the ley line, what it meant for Noah.

He wondered if Ronan was drinking, and then forced the thought aside. He wondered if Adam was eating enough at school. 

He wondered where Noah was. He wondered if he was scared.

Gansey switched books. 

To consult with their dead ancestors, Mayan leaders performed a ritual known as the Serpent Vision ceremony. 

He wondered if Noah knew they were looking for him, if he thought he was alone. 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead gave instructions for the soul to follow on its journey between death and rebirth.

He wondered if Noah was conscious enough to think much of anything.

The Pueblo people of the American Southwest have stories that say the dead become rain clouds. Some indigenous people in the Southeast believe that the dead end up either in the heavens or in the west.

Familiar thoughts were creeping up behind Gansey, an easy road to follow even when he was safe at the foot of his own bed.

European Christianity is another religion that focuses on an afterlife located in the sky -- or at least an afterlife with an association to it, even if Heaven isn’t always considered to be a physical location.

Gansey wasn’t sure any of this would help. He couldn’t do much with the sky, unless he wanted to include Helen and a helicopter. 

(It was still so easy to remember how it had felt. The demon unmaking the world around them.)

The Celtic people pictured an afterlife that was sometimes underground and sometimes an island in the west.

(Adam’s hands, no longer his own.)

A large number of cultures associated death with a world beneath the ground, sometimes in caves and caverns. Christianity, again. The Ibo people of Nigeria. The Romans and the Greeks. Ancient Mesopotamia. People in Melanesia and New Guinea. 

(Ronan, being broken down to nothing. Like his mother had been.) 

Indigenous Polynesian people have pinpointed the location of their ancestral island to the west, and believe that spirits of the dead can return there. 

(The feeling of knowing he was going to die, of having accepted it as a fact, and ending up alive again anyway.)

Gansey closed his book.

It was late enough that he couldn’t be sure who else would be awake. Ronan probably was, but Lord only knew when he’d be home, or if he’d come back to Monmouth at all. It was possible he’d drive to the Barns, stay there, and show up again late the next day, rumpled and unwilling to discuss it. Blue had just just fought with her mother over what they were doing. He didn’t want to burden her. He didn’t want to burden any of them.

Maybe he didn’t have to. If he could just hear another voice --

He texted Adam. 

Gansey: Are you awake?

The response was almost immediate.

Adam: yeah

Gansey hit the call button before he could talk himself out of it. 

“Gansey?” Adam said when he answered, his voice low through the phone.

“Yeah,” Gansey breathed out, and then belatedly tried to come up with a reason for calling. “I was thinking about, ah, the ley line. About how if the line’s magic has to do with energy and intention, like Blue said, then maybe we can utilize historical myths as a method to increase our chances. We could try to revive Noah in a space that’s mythologically connected to death and the afterlife. Underground, for instance. Or, well, I mean. We probably wouldn’t actually do it underground, but that’s an example.” 

Adam responded with a low hum. Gansey closed his eyes, wished he was here. Then, because Adam wasn’t here, Gansey imagined him instead sitting hunched at his small dorm room desk, the same one every freshman living on campus had, books and notebooks spread across the surface. 

“Worth a try, I think,” Adam said. “We want to use every tool in our arsenal, to make this feasible.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Gansey agreed.

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked, a sudden left turn into a different conversation, and Gansey’s heart stuttered.

“What?” he responded. His voice was a little too high in his own ears. “Nothing. I just wanted to tell someone my idea. Get feedback. Peer review, and all that.”

“Gansey,” Adam said. “It’s well past midnight.”

“Scholarship never rests,” Gansey said. “You can’t tell me you weren’t studying.”

“I was studying,” Adam admitted. 

“I thought as much,” Gansey said.

“But it still feels like something’s wrong,” Adam continued. “You don’t… sound right. Or. Feel right, maybe.”

“I don’t feel right?” Gansey repeated.

“You’re stalling,” Adam said.

“I’m confused,” Gansey clarified. Adam huffed out a frustrated breath that Gansey could practically feel through the speaker. 

“You don’t feel right,” he said, again. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. It’s just a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?” Gansey pressed. 

“I know you, Gansey.” 

Something sharp and bright seized in Gansey’s chest.

“I suppose you do.” 

“So?” Adam prompted. 

Adam had asked what was wrong, but so much was wrong, and Adam knew most of it already. Gansey wasn’t sure it would help either of them to go over it again. 

There were a thousand different possible answers. Some of them seemed too much to say out loud. But Adam did know him, and he was still waiting at the opposite end of the line.

“How did it feel?” Gansey found himself asking, the words tripping over his tongue instead of the answer Adam had probably expected. “Your connection to Cabeswater,” Gansey clarified. “How does it feel now?” He wasn’t sure he should have asked. He had wondered for a long time now, but the nature of Adam’s relationship with Cabeswater had been at first contentious and then private. Something exclusive that the rest of them couldn’t entirely fathom. But it had been harder not to think about it, recently, now that Gansey was trying to determine if he had his own newly special relationship with Cabeswater, one different from Adam’s or Ronan’s. 

Adam didn’t speak right away, just long enough for Gansey to begin to doubt himself. When he did speak, Adam’s voice and his response were a matching set: both cautious. “Is that related to what’s wrong?” Adam asked, quieter than he had been just a moment ago.

“No,” Gansey said, automatic. Then he corrected himself. “Well. Maybe. I’m not entirely certain. You don’t have to tell me.”

“You’re wondering if I still feel it,” Adam ventured. “If it’s gone, now.”

“I suppose that’s part of what I want to know. I’m also just… curious, I guess. If that’s alright.” 

“It’s alright,” Adam affirms. “I’m just thinking about how to say it. It wasn’t something that involved all that many words. So it’s not always obvious, the words to use for it.”

“Take your time,” Gansey said, his head tucked tight against the phone. “I’m listening.”

Adam did take his time. Gansey imagined that if he tried hard enough, he might feel Adam thinking through the phone lines. 

“Cabeswater feels…” Gansey heard Adam falter. “Cabeswater felt like… that thing in the room animals will look at but you can’t see. It’s that feeling in your chest when a storm is coming, but you’re not afraid.” Adam’s exhale was just slightly shaky. Gansey didn’t speak, not wanting to interrupt if Adam still had more to say. “It was like… a place to rest. A guiding star. Something like comfort, or a place to lay down after a long day.” There was a tight clench around Gansey’s heart at the sound of Adam’s voice, like nostalgia, like mourning. “Not always, mind,” Adam added, with a little huff of breath that made things brighten, ever so slightly. “Lord knows it scared the hell out of me often enough, especially at first, when it had to go further to get me to listen. I don’t think it necessarily… knew, though. What it felt like. It wasn’t human enough for that. It was just trying to get my attention the best way it knew how. Like a clumsy animal knockin’ something over.” He stopped speaking suddenly, with a sound in his throat that Gansey couldn’t place. “I guess it sounds kind of silly. If you haven’t experienced it yourself.”

“No,” Gansey said, urgent, rushing to fill the quiet before the idea could even solidify. “No, it doesn’t sound silly at all.” He wished he could see Adam’s face, but at the same time he wasn’t sure it would help him know what to say, even if he could. It had never helped him before. “Is it strange?” Gansey asked. “Having that gap where it once was?”

“Well,” Adam said, hesitating. The space between words stretched long. “It’s not exactly empty, now.”

“Really?” Gansey asked. This was one thing he was sure Adam hadn’t mentioned before. “What’s there instead?”

“It’s… complicated,” Adam responded. “That might be even harder to explain than Cabeswater was.”

“I’m happy to listen, though,” Gansey said. “If you do ever want to try.”

Gansey heard Adam take in a breath, like he was about to speak, but whatever he had meant to say was cut off by the sudden sound of Monmouth’s interior door banging against the wall. Gansey had been so engrossed he hadn’t heard Ronan coming up the stairs. He was home, evidently. And he was bleeding. His shirt was torn, his knuckles raw, blood drying dark under his mouth and nose, a nasty bruise rising high on his forehead. 

“Jesus,” Gansey said. 

“Was that Ronan?” Adam asked, but he sounded like he already knew. Gansey eyed Ronan as he stalked through the entryway, as he slammed the door behind him, as he prowled like a carnivore towards his bedroom door. If he got through there, he’d be lost for the night, Gansey knew it. 

“Yes,” he admitted, keeping his voice low. “But we’re -- I don’t want to interrupt our discussion.”

“Go,” Adam said. “I should sleep, anyway. We’ll continue this later. Sweet dreams, Gansey.” 

He hung up before Gansey could say anything else, making his choice for him. Gansey threw his phone down and leapt to catch Ronan by the wrist before he could cross the threshold into his room.

“What happened to you?” he asked, his fingers closing on Ronan’s forearm. Up close, his fingers were worse: red and swollen, purpling at the edges. Gansey wouldn’t be surprised if something was broken. 

“The fuck does it matter?” Ronan growled, and his eyes were the type of dangerously icy that made other people recoil.

Gansey tightened his grip.

“That doesn’t work on me,” he said. “It never has. You know that.” Gansey took stock, his eyes flicking from Ronan’s bruised face and bloody lip to his split knuckles. “Were you in a fight?” Gansey asked, though he knew that had to be the only answer. “Why?” 

“I wanted to make your day worse,” Ronan retorted, vicious, biting. “Obviously. What single action could I possibly take that didn’t revolve around the great Gansey?” Gansey didn’t flinch. He refused to. He knew what Ronan was doing; he wanted to make this into an argument, he wanted an excuse to storm off and for Gansey to be hurt and stop asking, and Gansey didn’t want to let it happen. Not least because he was sort of worried Ronan might be heading for a black eye. He stared Ronan down, tilting his head up slightly to meet his eyes, and kept his hold on his wrist. After a long moment, Ronan’s glare faltered, and he let out a frustrated hiss like an angry cat. “Why do you think?” he asked, which was some progress, at least. “Not all of us just sit with our thumbs up our asses when we don’t like something.”

“I fail to see what getting into a fist fight has to do with whatever you’ve decided you don’t like today,” Gansey said, and Ronan shook his wrist out of his grip, wincing as he did it, but didn’t leave.

“Of course you don’t,” he said, with a derisive little snort that couldn’t really sting all that much, coming from someone with blood on his teeth. “I don’t expect you to fucking get it.” 

“You could at least try to explain it to me before deciding I won’t understand,” Gansey retorted, frustrated despite himself. Ronan was always good at that; riling him up, in one way or another. Ronan threw up his hands. 

“Fuck, were you not here for Cheng’s disastrous trial earlier?” 

“So Henry’s first try didn’t work,” Gansey said, trying to choose his words carefully enough to not scare Ronan off, but fast enough that he wouldn’t vanish in the meanwhile. “He’s going to try again. He went back right away to do so. And you were angry beforehand, anyway. What does that have to do with this? And how is it helped by punching strangers?” A sudden thought froze him, of all the more dangerous people Ronan did know that he could have gone after. “They were strangers, right?”

“Yes,” Ronan admitted, though he didn’t sound all that willing. “I don’t have a fight club on call or some shit.” 

“Thank God for that,” Gansey said. “Are you planning to answer the rest of my questions?”

“I wasn’t,” Ronan said. “But it seems like you’re going to hold me here for your inquisition until I do.” He shook his hands out, a movement Gansey had seen before, back when Ronan would practice boxing with his father’s punching bags. This time Gansey was the one who winced, looking at the darkened skin around Ronan’s bones, how careless he was in moving them. Ronan was quiet for a moment that wasn’t exactly thoughtful, and then it burst out of him. “We’re not getting any fucking closer. Nearly a year, Parrish off to college like he doesn’t give a shit, the one thing Cheng’s tried a total failure, and Jesus, Gansey, you think I don’t know you’re not staying? We don’t have forever. We hardly have now. Pretty soon it won’t just be Parrish that’s bailing. Next thing anyone knows, I’m fucking alone here, and we get back together once a year to try for Noah like a goddamn high school reunion, if that.” He was breathing hard, tense and tight and trembling.

Gansey wasn’t sure he could quantify all the feelings that were welling up inside him. There were too many to count. 

“You’re such an asshole,” he said, with something that was nearly a laugh. It was not disbelieving. Ronan looked ready to argue, but Gansey barrelled forward before he could. “Even if I do plan to leave Henrietta, even if I don’t stay here forever, do you truly think I wouldn’t come back for you? That I wouldn’t visit? That I wouldn’t take you with me if you’d let me, at least some of the time? You think I wouldn’t bring you with me wherever I went, if you’d go? You think that doesn’t go for all of us? And, honestly, Ronan, do you really think I have any intention of giving up on Noah? Because if you think I could, you don’t know my priorities as well as I thought you did. God.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. Ronan exhaled hard through his nose, his own busted hands curled into fists at his side. The silence stretched thin for a moment.

“Okay,” Ronan said, finally, quiet and low. It was the closest thing to an apology that Gansey was likely to get. It was enough, really. “Okay.”

“We are getting closer,” Gansey insisted. “Every day, we get closer.”

“I still don’t know what to fucking dream,” Ronan said. 

“I know. I promise I’m working on it. But it won’t help if I just guess, with no real understanding of what we need from you.” Gansey glanced down again at the state of him, Ronan’s ripped shirt and bruised knuckles. He reached for his wrist, again, more gently this time. “Let me help.”

Ronan eyed him, wary, but the animal facade he’d been wearing since he entered Monmouth was dropping, fast. “How?” he asked, and Gansey tugged on his arm in answer. 

“I’ll clean you up,” he said, like it was decided -- and Ronan didn’t argue, so he supposed it was. Gansey guided Ronan towards the washing machine in the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room, and Ronan trailed behind him without complaint, despite the fight that wasn’t yet gone from his body. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Gansey had done something like this -- bandaging Ronan after fights, shaving down Ronan’s hair when it got too long, even rubbing lotion on his tattoo when it was still raw and new. 

Gansey tapped the lid of the washing machine with two fingers, hoping Ronan would understand what he wanted. He was fairly certain he did, but Ronan just raised one sharp, dark eyebrow at him anyway, and Gansey sighed. “Up,” he said, tapping the washing machine again. Ronan’s eyebrow stayed raised, but Gansey tapped a third time, and Ronan finally complied, hoisting himself up onto the machine ass-first, facing Gansey. He was particularly tall, like this, his inscrutable eyes flickering back and forth over Gansey’s features. 

Gansey retrieved the first aid kit from its home on a nearby shelf, set it open atop the neighboring dryer, and nudged himself in between Ronan’s spread knees. He studied him as he wet a cotton ball with water from the sink, reaching across Ronan’s body to the spot where it was set into the wall.

“What,” Ronan asked, too flat to really be a question.

“Just deciding where to start,” Gansey said. Ronan didn’t look convinced.

“And?” he prompted.

“You always do this,” Gansey said, after a moment. He leaned in with his cotton pad to dab at the blood under Ronan’s nose.

“Knew it,” Ronan muttered, but he didn’t move away.

“You do. You always let it build until you’re boiling over and then explode. You never come to me beforehand.”

“Maybe because there’s nothing you can fucking do about it?” Ronan challenged, and Gansey frowned.

“I don’t think that’s as much an immutable fact as you seem to think,” he said. “You could at least let me try.” 

“Like you talk to me about all the shit you’re dealing with?”

“I--” Gansey began, his fingers freezing. “...No,” he admitted, with a bitter shock of guilt. “But I try to tell you the important things, unless I think it’ll cause more harm than good. Or if I don’t have the words to explain it.”

“Well, maybe my bullshit will cause more harm than good. Maybe I don’t have the words. Ever think of that?” 

It was meant to ensnare him. To stop Gansey in his tracks. He swallowed. He pressed his fingers to Ronan’s sharp jawline and tilted his head for better access to the blood on his face. Then he pushed forward, one last time, a little more subdued.

“I’d still like to try,” he said. “We can’t know if we don’t try. You’re my best friend. I want to be able to help you when things are bad. And not just like this.” 

“Jesus,” Ronan said, staying very still for him. “Fine, alright. I’ll take it under advisement.”

“That’s all I ask,” Gansey said.

“You’re such a goddamn nag,” Ronan responded.

“So I’ve been told,” Gansey said, and discarded the bloody cotton ball to the side. He pressed his fingers, softly, to the bridge of Ronan’s nose. “Well, your nose isn’t broken, at least. We should put some ice on the bruise by your eye, though. And your fingers. I’ll clean the cut on your mouth, and then clean and wrap your knuckles. Alright?” 

“Yeah,” Ronan said, and his eyes were fixed on Gansey’s fingers as he wet another cotton ball, this time with a small bottle of antiseptic, and pressed it ever-so-gently to Ronan’s split lower lip. Ronan went a little cross-eyed to track the movement towards his face. And then: “Shit,” Ronan hissed, when the antiseptic touched the cut.

“Hold still,” Gansey said. “This may sting a little bit.”

“You couldn’t have fucking said that before you did it?”

“Hold still,” Gansey insisted. “Besides, you know by now what antiseptic feels like.” 

“I know what getting punched in the face feels like too,” Ronan mumbled, as clearly as he could while keeping his mouth mostly still. “Still prefer it when the other guy broadcasts the intention first.” Gansey rolled his eyes, carefully removing the tacky drying blood to reveal the source. It wasn’t as bad as it had looked. It always amazed Gansey when he stopped to actually consider it, how much blood could come from a tiny puncture. 

“You watched me do it,” Gansey said. “I assumed you knew it was coming.”  

“Well, you know what they said about assumptions in primary school.”

“I don’t think that’s a primary school saying. It includes the word ass.” Gansey dabbed again at the bloody lip, until the cut was clean, and then discarded another cotton ball, the start of a little bloodied pyramid atop the dryer. 

“Kids know the word ass,” Ronan said. Gansey hummed, more focused on pulling bandages and neosporin out of the first aid kit than debating the prime age to learn curse words. 

“I’ll do your fingers now,” he said, and Ronan huffed out a little breath and offered up his left hand. The swelling was more concerning to Gansey than the split and grazed knuckles, but he still needed to clean the cuts, and wrap them, before Ronan could tape a bag of frozen peas to his fingers and go to sleep. He held Ronan’s hand with his own, his palm up to meet Ronan’s palm down, steadying it with his fingers at the wrist. With his other hand and a wet cotton swab, he began to clean grime and small quantities of dried blood from each finger, one knuckle at a time, occasionally maneuvering Ronan’s warm fingers to get better access, or a better grip. Ronan’s face was very near, but Gansey couldn’t read his expression. “Does that hurt?” Gansey asked.

“No,” Ronan said, low. Gansey could feel his breath. It had been some time since he’d seen him so close up. It made him feel somewhat discomfited; examined, picked apart. He carefully refocused on Ronan’s swollen fingers, getting lost in the repetitive movement of it. 

“Oh,” Gansey said. “Good, then.” When he gestured for Ronan’s other hand, he gave it to him easily, and Gansey repositioned and proceeded to give it the same treatment, with a new cotton ball. He shifted Ronan’s index finger to get at something that would be a scab come sunrise, and felt Ronan’s sharp inhale at the same moment he heard it. His gaze flickered back up to his face, eyebrows crinkling. “It still doesn’t hurt?” 

“Jesus, Gansey, I can take more than that.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Ronan groaned. “It’s fine. Finish what you started.”

So Gansey did. He cleaned every single finger, even the thumbs, just in case, and then he reached for the bandages and neosporin he had set aside. There was something soothing about this; the methodological way it could be done, maybe, or the knowledge that he was being allowed to take care of someone he loved. 

He hadn’t bandaged Ronan up in quite a while. Part of that was because he’d stopped getting into so many fights, and part of it was because he’d started taking care of it himself so Gansey couldn’t disapprove. It was concerning that he’d wound up seeking out strangers tonight, but Gansey told himself that at least the lack of alcohol on his breath was a win. 

“I hope I haven’t lost my touch,” Gansey said, wry, as he dabbed neosporin on a cut. “With the bandages, I mean.”

“Remind me again why the bandages are necessary?” Ronan’s voice sounded strange somehow, but Gansey couldn’t put his finger on why.

“I’m deathly afraid of minor cuts getting infected,” Gansey answered, which was largely a joke. “It’ll help with the swelling, and keep you from bending them too much in case any of them are sprained or broken, which I would bet they are. Which you very well know, because you know boxing.”

“Boxers mostly wrap their fingers to prevent injury,” Ronan retorted. 

“Well, then you should’ve asked me to do this before you went out,” Gansey responded, matter-of-fact. 

Ronan scoffed. “And you would’ve done it?”

“I might’ve,” Gansey said. “If you had asked.” With cautious tenderness, Gansey began winding the pale bandages around Ronan’s bruised fingers, dabbing neosporin on the worst of the cuts. Ronan had rather nice hands, in Gansey’s opinion. Long fingers, short round nails that Ronan tended to bite down rather than cut. There was something graceful about them even now, with bloodied knuckles and swelling around the bone. 

“What, I could’ve come up to you like hey Gans, I’m about to try to get the shit beaten out of me, will you wrap my fucking fingers, and you wouldn’t have tried to make me stay home?” Ronan’s voice still didn’t sound entirely right, but he didn’t sound upset, and he was listing this hypothetical with the sort of savage delight he usually took in making that sort of point. Despite his usual habit of talking with his hands, he left them still in Gansey’s loose grip. He just didn’t sound quite normal in some way Gansey couldn’t pinpoint. Gansey was reminded of Adam telling him he didn’t “feel right”, just under an hour ago. It felt like longer.

“I can’t make you do anything,” Gansey said, which really was largely true -- and more to the point, he didn’t want to make people do things, even if they were things he thought would help them. He might ask , or argue if he was desperate enough, but neither love nor power was really about making people do things, not even if you were right. All you could do was suggest, and love people anyway whether or not they listened. “Who says I couldn’t bandage your fingers while arguing an alternative? That way you’re set up if you still decide to go, ah, ‘get the shit beaten out of you’, as you put it, which… it’s a little concerning that you apparently weren’t even trying to win, but alright, anyway, that way you’re fully prepared if you do decide to go, but have all the facts in case you don’t.”

“What facts?” Ronan asked, apparently ignoring everything else Gansey had said. Gansey’s fingers had slowed to a stop on Ronan’s, which wasn’t right, because there was still a hand and a half to bandage, but they were talking, and it wasn’t as if there wasn’t something kind of nice about just holding them in place in preparation.

“Facts about other options to deal with the feelings you were getting out via your fists, I suppose.” 

“Like what?” Ronan challenged. “Meticulously gluing words on another sign in model Henrietta?”

“Not what I was thinking about, no,” Gansey responded, and tightened his grip on Ronan’s wrist so he could go back to wrapping the next finger. Ronan made a rough little sound in response, not quite a protest. “There are options between my fiddly crafts and going out to get your nose broken by a stranger, you know. I’ll come up with a selection. In case you decide to speak to me beforehand next time.”

“You said my nose wasn’t broken,” Ronan said, and Gansey raised his head so Ronan could see him rolling his eyes, because that was just him being contrary. 

“It isn’t,” Gansey replied. “You’d know. Now, come on, I’m trying to finish up your fingers.” 

Ronan shifted, settled, quieted, and let Gansey take control again.  

The deliberate, steady rhythm of bandaging Ronan’s swollen fingers overtook most of Gansey’s other thoughts, giving him something to do with his hands that occupied the parts of his mind that usually spun themselves in circles overthinking. Without realizing it, Gansey had almost lost himself in the motion, in the pressure of Ronan’s warm hands against his at each point of contact, as the pace of his work slowed to a crawl. He kept his eyes fixed on Ronan’s hands, on what he was doing with the sterile, white strips of bandages, but he could feel Ronan’s eyes on his face like a physical touch, and Ronan was the one who was injured, Ronan was the one he was taking care of, but somehow Gansey felt as flayed open and vulnerable as if he was on an operating table with his ribs exposed. It was odd. In his previous experiences doing this for Ronan, it hadn’t felt quite like this. Sometimes it felt like there were things unsaid, lurking under the surface like the sea monsters drawn on the edges of old maps, but he didn’t usually feel so defenseless. 

Maybe it was the new body. He was the same (he hoped), the same person he’d been before his second death and resurrection, but the body was different in at least some ways. It had life breathed into it from places the life hadn’t come from before. It was possible it had felt like this, or similarly, after he was meant to die the first time, but being ten years old felt as far away as someday being fifty, and he had been vulnerable in so many other ways at that time that he couldn’t possibly be sure. Whatever the reason, it was uncomfortable, but in some strange, awful way, he didn’t want it to stop. He didn’t want to go back to sitting alone on his bed, wishing for someone to talk to. He didn’t want to go back to being untouched. 

He chanced a glance up at Ronan’s face. He hadn’t griped at him to hurry up yet, and Gansey wasn’t sure why, wasn’t sure if making eye contact would break the spell and send Ronan off into his own bedroom to sleep it off.

The movement of his fingers froze entirely. 

Ronan was looking at him, he had been right about that much, but it was how he was looking at him that gave him pause. Ronan’s eyes flickered from Gansey’s hands to his face again, and then back, and caught on his face once more, but he stayed silent, his breath a little unmeasured, his gaze foggy. Gansey felt incredibly self-conscious suddenly about the shape of his fingers on Ronan, but not enough to move, and he couldn’t find it in himself to look away. 

Ronan swallowed, and Gansey watched his throat move. Ronan’s mouth opened, red, still marked slightly by the slit of a scabbing cut, and Gansey feared the reprimand that might come.

Instead, Ronan’s voice came out a half-dazed rasp. “Gansey?” he ventured, and he sounded as wide open as Gansey felt. 

That, more than anything, was what made Gansey lean forward, tentative, unsure, just barely halfway, because the worst thing he could imagine right at this instant was being wrong, was misreading this and ruining everything when he’d already gotten more back than he’d thought he’d be allowed. If he didn’t go too far they could laugh it off, it could be something else -- but it wasn’t something else. They didn’t laugh. Ronan met him halfway. 

Ronan kissed Gansey like he’d been thinking about it. Like a dam breaking, like water surging over a barrier that had only barely been able to contain it. Gansey was too shell-shocked to stop Ronan from pulling his mostly-wrapped fingers from Gansey’s grip and winding them through his hair instead. All he could do was follow the press of Ronan’s mouth, stumbling forward into the spread V of Ronan’s thighs until he was kissing him close and thorough and searing, his fingers knotted in Ronan’s bloodied shirt. 

Gansey had thought about it, too. 

Kissing Ronan was like swallowing a piece of the sun. Gansey felt warmth blooming outward in his stomach, a feeling that spread all the way down into his curling toes. Ronan’s fingers hooked into the thin fabric of Gansey’s t-shirt, and he was failing to repress the sweet, hitched little sounds in his throat. 

Gansey was consumed by the feeling of it, by the slight tang of copper from Ronan’s split lip, by the tentative way Ronan’s hands were pressing against his sides, by the still-present smell of antiseptic, by how Ronan’s mouth was wet and hot and yielding under his. 

Ronan pulled back slightly, but he went for Gansey’s throat before Gansey could begin to worry he’d ruined everything, his mouth grazing over the fevered rush of Gansey’s pulse and making him shiver. 

The break from Ronan’s mouth, however, was enough to remind him where and who they were. Gansey cupped a hand, firm, on the back of Ronan’s neck, and took a half step back, keeping hold of him. 

“Ronan,” he said, his voice a raspy mess. Ronan’s eyes darted up to meet his, still heavy-lidded, all pupil, and if Gansey didn’t know Ronan as well as he did, he would have missed the flash of fear in them. He squeezed at Ronan’s neck, hoping it was enough to reassure him. “It’s okay. It’s just — if we’re going to do this, we need to talk about it. I need to talk about it.”

Ronan pitched forward until his forehead met Gansey’s collarbone. He was quiet for a moment. 

“If we’re going to do this?” he asked, finally. 

“Yes,” Gansey said, trying to sound assured. “I mean — if you want to. Yes. We can — we can… add things to how we work. Add this. But I need us to talk about it before anything changes permanently.” 

Ronan groaned. “Of course you do. Can’t just be in the fucking moment, for once.” Despite his words, the fear Gansey had spotted had lessened. Gansey thumbed at his own lower lip. 

“I just — I need to — I need to know what it means. I can’t do it if it doesn’t mean anything.”

Ronan pulled back to look at him, eyes narrowed, looking almost like Gansey had insulted him. “How the hell could it not mean anything, man? It’s us.” 

Gansey let himself relax incrementally, his breath rushing out. “That does help. I just — I’d like to talk about it a bit more than that.”

“I’d rather gnaw my own arm off,” Ronan said, but his fingers were winding into the hem of Gansey’s t-shirt again regardless, and he didn’t appear to be going anywhere. Or beginning to bite at his own limbs. “I fucking kissed you back, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Gansey admitted. “But that doesn’t tell me anything about why. I know you don’t like this sort of thing. We can do it in my bed if it’d be more comfortable.” Immediately, Gansey flushed. “That wasn’t meant as a — what I mean is —“

“I got it, man, no dick touching until you have a full essay in writing on the implications for our relationship, whatever.” Ronan glanced up from under his eyelashes from where he was slouched forward, his gaze searching and searing in equal measures. Gansey didn’t usually see him from above. 

Despite himself, Gansey snorted. Ronan was probably only putting it like that to fluster him. But he wasn’t the only one that could play that game. 

“I’m happy to touch you if I know we’re on the same page, yes,” Gansey said, delighted by the way Ronan’s mouth opened and his ears reddened in response. 

“What page is that?” Ronan finally asked, his eyes sliding closed, like this conversation might be easier if he could pretend it wasn’t really happening. 

Gansey didn’t mind. It was a little easier for him, too, not facing the full force of Ronan’s gaze. He took a steadying breath.

“I have feelings,” Gansey began, finally. Ronan gave a rough snort, and Gansey squeezed at the back of his neck again, admonishing this time. Whether Ronan could tell the difference between the comforting and the admonishing version remained to be seen. 

“And?” Ronan prompted, when Gansey spent too long mulling over his next words. 

“I have too many feelings,” Gansey added, unsure how to explain. “I suppose we should just begin with the most basic thing. If we were to add a – physical element to our relationship,” and he could almost see the mocking air quotes Ronan would put around ‘physical element, “would that be all it was? Would you – do you have any interest in something other than that? As in – romantically?” 

“This is the worst thing you’ve ever made me do, just so you know,” Ronan said. “Like, worse than making me get my ass to class all those fucking times.”

Gansey felt a pang.

“I apologize,” he said, hasty. “We don’t have to do this if you’re uncomfortable. I just… I don’t want to ruin things with you, Ronan. If I’m changing something, I need to know it’s not going to ruin things.” 

Ronan let out a low groan, mashing his face further into Gansey’s collarbone.

“Fucking hell, okay, hold on for a second. Just shut up for two goddamn seconds. Shut up.” 

Admittedly a little miffed, Gansey obliged, and shut up. Ronan’s hands flexed and tightened on his shoulders, and he held his silence for a long moment while Gansey tried not to fidget. 

“Okay,” Ronan said, “okay. First of all, it would take a lot more than this to ruin us. If your dumb ass dying on me couldn’t do it, I don’t see what could. If it gets weird, if we stop, whatever, we go back to how we are now — and keep your mouth shut, Gansey, I swear to God, if you interrupt my momentum right now I’m not saying shit.” Gansey stayed quiet, though he didn’t know how Ronan had known he might speak, with his eyes closed. “Maybe it’d be, I dunno, awkward or whatever for a bit, but we’d go back to normal,” Ronan continued. “There’s too much here for us to let something like that fuck it up.” Ronan straightened up to look at Gansey, expectant, more confidence in the set of his shoulders than Gansey was certain he actually felt. “Right?” 

Gansey gave him a nod, unsure if he was allowed to speak again yet.

“Right,” Ronan repeated, almost to himself. “So you’re not ruining shit. I’m not ruining shit. I won’t fucking let you, and you won’t let me. As for – you know, romance, or whatever, I don’t fucking know how that would even be different from what we do now. What, we spend time together like normal except I get to touch your cock instead of just thinking about it? That sounds like a pretty okay deal to me.” 

Gansey waited for a moment to see if he would be hushed again. When Ronan just looked at him, he took it as permission to speak, his words halting. 

“And if I did have feelings that were… potentially romantic, would that be a bad thing? Would you prefer it if I didn’t?” 

Ronan gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look. “For such a nerd, you can be really fucking stupid sometimes, Dick.” 

“I don’t know!” Gansey protested, throwing his arms up, not stepping out of Ronan’s orbit. “I never know! I hadn’t been close to anyone to this extent before you, and then I was so involved with you, and the others, and felt so much for all of you that I just thought perhaps everyone felt like that all the time and I wasn’t sure how it wasn’t killing them. I don’t know how you feel, Ronan. I don’t know how anyone feels. I’ve only barely figured out how I feel.” 

Ronan pressed his mouth to Gansey’s jaw, more a touch than a kiss, soft until he decided to bite at it. It wasn’t erotic as much as it was surprising, not a lovebite, just the hard shock of teeth like he just needed something to do with them, and then it was over. 

“It wouldn’t suck,” he said. “If you felt that way.”

“No?” Gansey asked.

“No.”

“You wouldn’t mind it, if I wanted – I don’t know, to go on dates? To tell people?”

Ronan’s head shot up, his eyes wide, as if that was surprising, among all the things Gansey had said tonight. “You’d want that?”

“I might. Yes. I mean, obviously, if we were to be… boyfriends, or something like that, I wouldn’t want to hide you.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t fucking blame you. I’m kind of a mess,” Ronan said, enough humor in it for Gansey to be unsure how serious it was. Before Gansey could refute it, though, he kept going. “What about Sargent? You two weren’t swapping spit all over the place after she kissed you to death, but I never really asked if anything had happened. Figured you’d tell me if you needed to.”

Gansey was glad Ronan had asked. He just also wished his own emotions were more tameable, so his answer could be different from what it would inevitably be. 

“Nothing happened, exactly. We just… didn’t really talk about it, after. There was no time, with everything happening with me, and with Noah, and with everything going on, it never felt appropriate. I didn’t plan to do this, either, it’s not somehow more appropriate, it just – happened. I don’t regret it, though.” He shifted in place, his gaze sliding down so he didn’t have to see Ronan’s face for this, guilt a thick coating on his throat. “I do still… I still have feelings for Blue, though. I’m sorry if that bothers you. I have feelings for you too, obviously, I just can’t seem to--”

“Okay,” Ronan said.

“Okay?” Gansey echoed, his eyebrows knitting. 

“Yeah. Okay. It’s Sargent.” Even Ronan seemed to understand this was not particularly explanatory, and he paused to struggle for the right words. He gave a frustrated shrug, seemingly coming up empty. “It’s Sargent,” he said, again. His gaze flicked over Gansey, measuring. “Doesn’t sound like it’s just the maggot, though.”

Gansey tried to keep breathing. He hadn’t really expected to ever say this part aloud. 

“It isn’t,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Parrish?” Ronan asked.

“Yes,” Gansey said.

“Noah?”

“Yes.”

“Cheng?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Ronan said, thoughtful, “they can’t all be winners.”

“Shut up,” Gansey said, with a half-hearted shove at his shoulder. “You don’t mind?”

“I don’t care who you have feelings for. Or, fuck, okay, that’s not exactly true. I don’t care as long as it’s–” Ronan gestured, something broad and expansive, out towards the rest of Monmouth, the rest of Henrietta. “You know. I don’t care what you do if it’s them. I get it. I mean, not with Sargent, but – I get it. Deciding you’re only allowed to be interested in one person at a time sounds fucking miserable, anyway. It doesn’t affect you and me, right?” 

“That’s right,” Gansey said, hesitant. “Of course it doesn’t.”

“Then why should I give a shit? Whatever you feel – hell, whatever you do , as long as it doesn’t change things for us, as long as I know about it, I don’t fucking care.”

“That’s shockingly generous of you,” Gansey said, before he could stop himself. He still remembered how Ronan had reacted when he thought Gansey might go somewhere else with just Adam, the heartsick lurch in Gansey’s chest at the idea that Ronan didn’t know he’d never want to leave him behind. 

Ronan laughed, rough. “No, it really isn’t. I’m warning you now that I’d still be a bitch about it if you wanted to bring in someone I didn’t already like. And this gives me a free license to feel however I want about them, too.”

Gansey had never truly considered this possibility, and now that Ronan was laying it out, it was a little dizzying. 

“You’d want to–”

“I mean, I’ve thought about it. Obviously. How the hell could I not? It’s not my fault you kept bringing home strays that incite fucking… gay thought crimes wherever they go. Hell knows if any of them would be interested in us or our weird shit, anyway, but that doesn’t mean I won’t think about it. Did you really think I hadn’t?”

“I hadn’t really let myself consider the possibility. I hadn’t let myself consider quite a few possibilities.” 

“Well, that’s your loss,” Ronan said, the sliver of his smile a dangerous thing. “You’ve got some catching up to do.” 

Nothing in the world could have prepared Gansey for anything that had happened tonight. He felt like he needed to catch his breath, even standing still. 

“So,” Gansey said, his restless hands drifting to rest on Ronan’s thighs, “did we – do we know what all this means for us?” 

“Didn’t we just go through all that?” Ronan asked, exasperation in every syllable. “Come on, Gansey, use those prized critical thinking skills. What the hell do you think it means?”

Gansey took a moment to be sure. 

Then he leaned in and kissed Ronan again, in answer.

Ronan kissed him back, softer and less fevered than the way it had begun. When Gansey pulled back, it was only far enough to press his forehead to Ronan’s, the two of them breathing together.

“Yeah,” Ronan said, his voice low. “Yeah, that’s what it means.” 

With Ronan’s knuckles finally wrapped and bags of frozen vegetables brought along, Gansey and Ronan burrowed together in Gansey’s bed. 

“I might not get much sleep,” Ronan warned. Gansey pressed the frozen peas to Ronan’s fingers, wondering what position would be best to keep them there, and Ronan stopped speaking for a moment to make a face at him. “I don’t want to – you know. Bring anything here that I shouldn’t.” 

“I’m not afraid of what’s in your head,” Gansey insisted. “It comes from you.”

“Well, that’s really fucking stupid of you,” Ronan said, but it felt gentle, his words already slightly slurred. 

Gansey tucked himself along Ronan’s side, the whole warm length of him, familiar and new all at once, nervous and relieved with the new awareness of Ronan, with the aftermath of honesty. Ronan was taller, but he curled himself until his face was buried in the crook of Gansey’s neck, one of his legs slung over both of Gansey’s. It was the kind of position that could quickly become uncomfortable if Gansey woke in the night and needed to get up and piss, but at the moment he thought he felt more restful than he had in a long time.

“Goodnight,” Gansey said, because there were no words for the enormity of this.

“When Noah comes back,” Ronan said, muffled, “I’m probably going to kiss him. If he’ll let me.”

Something in Gansey glowed warm. He felt so different than he had on this very bed earlier, alone and lonely, trying not to bother anyone he loved, waiting. A smile crept over his face, even with no one to see it in the dark.

“I probably will, too. If that’s okay. If he’ll let me,” Gansey said, and let his eyes fall closed.