The Dream Thieves

And he would never really have to explain it to Blue.

It was his something more.

Very formally, he said, “Yes, I do.”

“It could kill you,” Maura said.

Then there was the awkward moment that arrives when two thirds of the people in the room know that the other third is supposed to die in fewer than nine months, and the person who is meant to die is not one of the ones in the know.

“Yes,” Gansey said. “I know. I’ve done it once before. Die, I mean. Do you not like the fruit bits? That’s the best part.” He directed this last statement to Blue, who gave him her mostly empty yogurt cup. He was very clearly done with talking about death.

Maura sighed, giving up, just as Calla stormed into the kitchen. Calla was not angry. She merely stormed whenever possible. She ripped open the fridge and tore a pudding cup from it.

As Calla spun with the hated store-brand pudding in her hand, she shook it at Gansey and thundered, “Just remember that Cabeswater is a video game that everyone in it has been playing for a lot longer than you. They all know where to get the level ups.”

She plowed from the room. Maura followed her.

“Well,” said Gansey.

“Yes,” agreed Blue. After a second, she pushed back her chair to follow Maura, but Gansey stretched a hand out.

“Wait,” he said in a low voice.

“Wait what?”

With a glance out toward the hall and reading room, he said, “Um, Adam.”

Instantly, Blue thought of Adam losing his temper. Her cheeks warmed. “What about him?”

Gansey rubbed a thumb over his lower lip. It was a pensive habit, performed so frequently that it was surprising he had anything left to cover his bottom teeth. “Have you told him about that no-kissing curse thing?”

If Blue had thought her cheeks were warm before, it was nothing compared to the blaze raging in them now. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

He looked delicately aggrieved. “You told me not to!”

“Well, no. I haven’t.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

The kitchen didn’t seem very private, and they’d both unconsciously leaned as close as possible to keep their voices from carrying. Blue hissed, “It’s all very under control. I don’t really want to be discussing this with you, of all people!”

“ ‘Of all people’!” Gansey echoed. “What sort of all people am I?”

She had no idea, now. Flustered, she replied, “You’re not my — my — grandmother, or something.”

“You’d talk about this with your grandmother? I cannot possibly imagine discussing my dating life with mine. She’s a lovely woman, I suppose. If you like them bald and racist.” He glanced around the kitchen, as if he were looking for someone. “Where is yours, anyway? Isn’t every female relative of yours in this house somewhere?”

Blue whispered furiously, “Don’t be un — un —”

“Couth? Uncouth?”

“Disrespectful! My grandmothers are both dead.”

“Well, Jesus. What did they die of?”

“Mom always said ‘meddling.’”

Gansey completely forgot they were being secretive and let out a tremendous laugh. It was a powerful thing, that laugh. He only did it once, but his eyes remained shaped like it.

Something inside her did a complicated tug.

Oh no! she thought. But then she calmed herself. Richard C. Gansey III has a nice mouth. Now I know he has nice eyes when he laughs, too. This still isn’t love.

She also thought: Adam. Remember Adam.

“It makes sense that there’s a family history for your condition,” he said. “Do you eat all of the men in the family? Where do they go? Does this house have a basement?”

Blue shoved out her chair and stood up. “It’s like boot camp. They can’t hack it. Poor things.”

“Poor me,” he said.

“Yup! Wait here.” She was a little relieved to leave him at the table; her pulse felt like she’d been running. She found Maura and Calla still in the hall, conferring in low voices. She told her mother, “Look. We’re definitely all going to Cabeswater. This afternoon, when Ronan’s done. That’s the plan. We’re sticking to the plan.”

Maura appeared a lot less distressed by this statement than Blue had feared. In fact, she didn’t look very distressed at all.

“Why are you telling me?” Maura asked. “Why is your face so red?”

“Because you’re my mother. Because you’re an authority figure. Because you’re supposed to inform people of your travel plans when you’re hiking on dangerous trails. This is what my face always looks like.”

“Hm,” said Maura.

“Hm,” said Calla.

Suspiciously, Blue asked, “You’re not going to tell me not to go?”

“Not this time.”

“No point,” Calla agreed.

“Also, there’s a scrying bowl in the attic,” Blue said.

Her mother peered into the reading room. “No, there’s not.”

Blue insisted, “Someone’s been using it.”

“No, they haven’t.”

With an edge to her voice, Blue said, “You can’t just say it’s not there and no one’s using it. Because I’m not an infant and I use my own eyes and brain all the time.”

“What do you want me to tell you, then?” Maura asked.

“The truth. I just told you the truth.”

“She did!” Gansey called from the kitchen.

“Shut up!” Blue and Calla said at once.

Maura lifted a hand. “Fine. I used it.”

“For what?”

Calla said, “To look for Butternut.”

My father! Blue probably shouldn’t have been surprised — Neeve had been asked there to look for her father, and although Neeve was gone, the mystery of her father’s whereabouts remained. “I thought you said scrying was a bad idea.”

“It’s like vodka,” Calla said. “It really depends on who’s doing it.” With her spoon poised over her pudding cup, she peered into the other room, just as Maura had.

Blue craned her neck to see what they were looking at. It was just Adam. He sat in the reading room by himself, the diffuse morning light rendering him soft and dusty. He had removed one of the tarot decks from its bag and lined each of the cards faceup in three long rows. Now he leaned on the table and studied the image on each, one at a time, shuffling on his elbows to the next when he was through. He looked nothing like the Adam who’d lost his temper and everything like the Adam she had first met. That was what was frightening, though — there’d been no warning.