Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“Yes,” Gansey replied precisely.

“DOES THAT DOG WANT WATER?”

They all looked at the Dog. The Dog looked a bit faint.

“Oh, if it’s not too much trouble,” Malory said.

Jesse went to get water. Gansey exchanged a look with Blue. “This has turned unexpectedly ominous.”

“Do you think there’s a curse?” she asked.

“Of course there is,” Malory replied. “It is on a ley line. Apparitions and lightning storms, black beasts and time slipping.”

“To us, just the ley line. To everyone else, a curse,” Gansey finished wonderingly. “Of course.”

Jesse returned with a chipped glass mixing bowl full of water. The Dog drank ravenously. The Camaro had an exhaust leak, which had a dehydrating effect upon its occupants.

“WHAT IS IT YOU WANT WITH THE CAVE? I RECKON THERE ARE PLENTY OF CAVES WITHOUT CURSES HERE.”

Gansey replied, “We’re exploring another cave system and we’ve reached a section that’s blocked. We’re trying to find another way into it, and we think your cave might do it.”

How neatly the truth worked.

Jesse took them out the back door, through another screen porch, and into the mist.

Outside, he was even bigger than Blue had thought he was. Or possibly, now it was easier to compare his size with the house and find the house wanting. As he led them across a vast cow pasture, he didn’t duck his head against the rain. This lack of concern struck Blue as noble, though she couldn’t quite convince her own head to follow his lead as rain dripped off her earlobes.

“This weather reminds me of this dreadful climb I went on with this fellow Pelham,” Malory muttered, producing an umbrella from his person and sharing it with Blue. “Fourteen kilometers each way, and all for a standing stone that looked like a dog in certain lights. The man went on and on about football and his girlfriend — a terrible time was had by all.”

With great, sloped strides, Jesse led them to a barbed-wire fence. On the other side, a ruined stone structure of indeterminate age grew out of the rocky hillside. It was roofless and about twenty feet square. Although it was only a single crumbled story, something about it gave the impression of height, as if it had once been taller. Blue struggled to imagine what its original purpose might have been. Something about the tiny aspect of the windows seemed wrong for a residence. If it had not been Virginia, if it had been someplace older, she would have thought it looked like the ruin of a stone tower.

“THIS IS IT.”

Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Gansey’s look said, We did tell him “cave,” right? Blue’s said, We definitely did.

Jesse used a stick to push down the top string of the barbed wire so they could step over — all except the Dog, who remained pissily behind. Then, feet slipping on damp leaves, they climbed up the hill. On the backside of the building, a considerably newer door had been set into the old door frame. A padlock held it closed. Jesse produced a key, which he handed to Blue.

“Me?” she asked.

“I’M NOT GOING INSIDE.”

“Gallant,” Blue observed. She wasn’t exactly nervous; it was just that she hadn’t set out that morning with the intention of broaching a curse.

“ONLY KILLS DITTLEYS,” Jesse reassured her. “UNLESS YOU HAVE DITTLEY BLOOD IN YOU?”

Blue said, “I don’t reckon so.”

She fit the key into the lock and let the door fall open.

Inside were saplings, crumbled stones, and then, amid the debris, a hole. It was nothing like the inviting cavern opening Cabeswater had provided for them. It was smaller, blacker, more uneven, steeper from the outset. It looked like a place for secrets.

“Look at that cave, Gansey,” Malory said. “I wonder who said there was a cave here.”

“Leave the smugness to Jane,” Gansey told him.

“Don’t come in here,” Blue warned him, picking her way through the rubble. “In case there are nests or something.”

“IT LOOKS BAD WHEN YOU LOOK IN,” Jesse said as she peered in the hole. It was utter black inside, blacker because there was no sun. “BUT IT’S NOT STEEP. JUST CURSED.”

“How do you know it’s not steep?” she asked.

“BEEN IN IT BEFORE FOR MY DADDY’S BONES. CURSE DOESN’T TAKE YOU UNTIL IT’S READY.”

It was difficult to argue with this brand of logic.

“Do you think we could go in?” Gansey asked. “Not now, but coming back with proper equipment?”

Jesse peered at him and then at Malory and finally at Blue. “I LIKE THE LOOKS OF YOU, SO —”

He shook his head.

“NO.”

“Beg your pardon, did you say no?” Gansey asked.

“COULDN’T IN ALL GOOD CONSCIENCE. GO ON NOW, COME OUT OF THERE. LET’S LOCK IT BACK UP.”

He accepted the key from Blue’s shocked fingers.

“Oh, but we’d be very careful,” she told him.

Jesse locked the door again as if she hadn’t spoken.

“We could pay for your expenses?” Gansey suggested carefully, and Blue kicked his leg hard enough to leave a muddy scuff on his pants. “Jesus, Jane!”

“DON’T TAKE THE LORD’S NAME IN VAIN,” Jesse said. “YOU KIDS HAVE A GOOD TIME EXPLORING SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW.”

“Oh, but —”

“SHORT WAY IS ACROSS THE FIELD. HAVE A GOOD ONE.”

They had been dismissed. Impossibly, they’d been dismissed.

“Just as well,” Malory said as they headed back across the damp field, shoulders hunched miserably. “Caves are terrible places to die.”

“What now?” Blue asked.

“We’re supposed to hurry, apparently. Hurry, hurry,” Gansey said. “So we find a way to persuade him, I guess. Or we trespass.”

After he got into the car, she realized he was wearing his Aglionby uniform, shoulders spattered with rain, just as his spirit had been when she saw it on the ley line. He could have died in that field and she would have been warned. But she hadn’t even thought about it until afterward.

It was so impossible to live life backward.

14

This one says ‘grass-fed organic cheddar from New Zealand,’ ” said Greenmantle, shutting the door behind him. The empty hall immediately fell dark without the evening light from outside. Holding his parcel close to his face in order to see the label, and speaking loudly to be heard through the house, he continued, “ ‘A mild cheddar cheese made from grass-fed, farm-fresh organic milk. Ingredients: cow’s milk, salt, starter cultures’ — so, like, Dave Brubeck, Warhol, things like that — ‘coagulating enzyme,’ oh, that is mainstream media.”