Blue Lily, Lily Blue
“Only three or five times,” she said. “Was it your father’s blood that choked me to silence?”
“DID YOU KILL MY WIFE’S CAT?”
“That,” she sang, “was an accident. Was it your grandfather’s blood before that?”
“TAKE HER OUT OF MY HOUSE,” Jesse said. “PLEASE.”
As the boys bundled the woman out the other side of the house, Malory and the Dog hurrying after, Blue stayed behind. She stood by Jesse as he drew aside a shabby curtain to watch the boys persuading the woman to get into the Suburban. Blue got a good glimpse of her biting the Dog.
She felt a little less afraid now that she was no longer standing right next to the woman, although she couldn’t stop seeing Chainsaw’s beak eerily parted in false song, or forget the jump of her heart when the body first moved within the coffin. This crooked enchantment felt nothing like Cabeswater’s organic magic.
“THAT ONE’S NOT ALL THERE.”
Blue said, “She’s been awake for hundreds of years. Somehow, when a Dittley died in the cave, it must’ve shut her up for a little bit. But we have her now. She was the curse. You don’t have to go into the cave and die now.”
Jesse let the curtain fall back into place. “DO YOU RECKON YOU CAN LOSE A CURSE AS EASY AS THAT?”
“Maybe. Probably! She’s been in there for a really long time,” Blue said. “As long as there have been Dittleys here. You heard her say she did those things.”
“BUT WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH HER?”
“I dunno. Something.” She patted his arm. “You should call your wife, or your dog.”
Jesse scratched his chest. “YOU REALLY ARE A VERY GOOD KIND OF ANT.”
They shook hands.
Blue saw him watching out the window as they left.
They took the woman to 300 Fox Way, of course, where they found an extremely unimpressed Calla and a rather alarmed-looking Jimi and a fascinated Orla. Persephone took one look at the woman, nodded firmly, and then disappeared upstairs. Malory drank footy tea in the reading room. Adam and Ronan lurked in the hall, eavesdropping, too cowardly to face Calla’s wrath.
And Calla was indeed in fine form. She barked, “Do you remember how I said that there were three sleepers, and Maura’s job was to not wake one of them, and your job was to wake one of the others? Remember how I didn’t say anything about the other one? I did not mean bring her to my kitchen.”
Blue felt equal parts relief and annoyance. The former because she had been worried that the woman might have been the sleeper that was not to be woken. The latter because they were in trouble.
She demanded, “Where else are we supposed to take her? Mom would’ve said to bring her here.”
“Your mother has no common sense! We’re not a halfway home.” Calla walked right up to the woman, who gazed around the kitchen with something between bewilderment and regal insanity. “What’s your name?”
“My name is that of all women,” the woman replied. “Sorrow.”
One of Calla’s eyebrows momentarily considered punching the woman. She said, “Why didn’t you just leave her?”
From the hall, Ronan shot a superior look at Gansey.
“Look, I understand she can’t stay here,” Gansey said. “But she’s clearly more like you than like …”
Calla’s expression turned volcanic. “Like what, sir? Like you, Richard Gansey? Is that what you were going to say? You think she’s going to get her crazy on you but we’re immune? Well, you’ve got another think coming, mister.”
Gansey blinked rapidly.
A slow smile spread over the woman’s face. “He’s not wrong, witch.”
Lava spilled over Calla’s eyelids. “What did you just call me?”
The woman laughed and sang, “Blue lily, lily blue, you and I.”
Both Blue and Calla scowled at the eerily familiar words. This woman must have been the one who had possessed Noah, just as she had possessed Chainsaw. Blue hoped this skill didn’t extend beyond dream birds and dead boys.
“It’s not too late to put her back,” Ronan said.
“YOU TWO,” roared Calla. Both Adam and Ronan winced. “Go to the store and get some supplies for her.”
Adam and Ronan exchanged a wide-eyed look. Adam’s look said, What does that mean? and Ronan’s said, I don’t care; let’s get out of here before she changes her mind. Gansey frowned after them as they scrambled to the front door.
Persephone reappeared then, holding the sweater with mismatched arms. She peered at the woman in an appraising sort of way; it would have seemed rude if it hadn’t been Persephone. The woman appraised her back, with a lot more of the whites of her eyes showing.
Finally, Persephone seemed satisfied. She offered up the sweater. “I made you this. Try it — oh! Why haven’t they untied you yet?”
“We thought she might be … dangerous?” Gansey answered lamely.
Persephone cocked her head at him. “And you thought tying her hands would change that?”
“I …” He turned to Blue for help.
“She’s an uncooperative witness,” Blue provided.
“This isn’t how we treat guests,” Persephone said, faintly chastising.
Calla retorted, “I was unaware she was a guest.”
“Well, I was expecting her,” Persephone said. She paused. “I think. We’ll see if the sweater fits.”
Gansey cut his eyes over to Blue; she shook her head.
“You should untie me, little lily,” the woman said to Blue. “With your little lily knife. It would be very fitting and circular.”
“Why would it be fitting and circular?” Blue asked warily.
“Because your father is the one who tied me in the first place. Oh, men.”
Blue was abruptly awake. She had been awake before, but she was now so much more than she had been the second before, that she felt as if she had been sleeping.
Her father.
The woman was suddenly in her face, hands still tied behind her back.
“Oh, yes. Suitable punishment, he said. Artemusssssssss.” She laughed at the shocked faces in the room. “Oh, the things I know! Behold the way in which it glows, within a ring of water, within a moat, upon a lake, all in a ring of water!”
Earlier that year, when Blue had first met the boys, there had been a moment when she had been suddenly struck by how she was being drawn into their tangled lives. Now she realized that she had never been drawn in. She had been there all along, together with this woman, and all the other women at Fox Way, and maybe even Malory and his Dog. They were not creating a mess. They were just slowly illuminating the shape of it.