The Raven Boys

"I wonder," Adam mused aloud, "if we could electrify either the rods or the line. Hook up a car battery to them or something."

If you got a loan, you could stop working until after college. No, that would immediately birth an argument. Gansey shook his head a little, more at his own thoughts than at Adam’s comment. He said, "That sounds like either the beginning of a torture session or a music video."

Adam’s searching-for-devil-waitress face had given way to his brilliant-idea face. The fatigue melted away. "Well, amplification. That’s all I was thinking. Something to make it louder and easier to follow."

It wasn’t an awful idea. Last year in Montana, Gansey had interviewed a lightning-strike victim. The boy had been sitting on his ATV in the doorway of a cattle barn when he was struck, and the incident had left him with an inexplicable fear of being indoors and an uncanny ability to follow one of the western ley lines using only a bent bit of radio antenna. For two days, they’d trailed together across fields carved by glaciers and marked by round hay bales higher than their heads, finding hidden water sources and tiny caves and lightning-burned stumps and strangely marked stones. Gansey had tried to convince the boy to come back to the East Coast to perform his same miracle on the ley line there, but the boy’s newly pathological fear of the indoors ruled out all plane and car travel. And it was a long walk.

Still, it wasn’t an entirely useless exercise. It was further proof of the amorphous theory Adam had just described: ley lines and electricity could be linked. Energy and energy.

Matchy matchy.

As he moved up to the counter, Gansey became aware that Noah was lurking at his elbow, looking strained and urgent. Both were typical for Noah, so Gansey was not immediately troubled. He passed a folded-over packet of bills to the cashier. Noah continued to hover.

"Noah, what?" demanded Gansey.

Noah seemed about to put his hands in his pockets and then didn’t. Noah’s hands seemed to belong fewer places than other people’s. He eventually just let them hang as he looked at Gansey. He said, "Declan’s here."

An immediate scan of the restaurant offered nothing. Gansey demanded, "Where?"

"Parking lot," Noah said. "He and Ronan —"

Not bothering to wait for the rest of the sentence, Gansey burst out into the black evening. Scrambling around the side of the building, he skidded onto the parking lot just in time to see Ronan throw a punch.

The swing was infinite.

From the looks of it, it was the opening act. In the sickly green light of a buzzing streetlamp, Ronan had an unbreakable stance and an expression hard as granite. There was no wavering in the line of the blow; he had accepted the consequences of wherever his fist landed long before he began the punch.

From his father, Gansey had gotten a head for logic, an affection for research, and a trust fund the size of most state lotteries.

From their father, the Lynch brothers had gotten indefatigable egos, a decade of obscure Irish music instrument lessons, and the ability to box like they meant it. Niall Lynch had not been around very much, but when he had been, he had been an excellent teacher.

"Ronan!" Gansey shouted, too late.

Declan went down, but before Gansey even had time to form a plan of action, he was back up again, fist smacking into his brother. Ronan released a string of profanity so varied and pointed that Gansey was amazed that the words alone didn’t slay Declan. Arms windmilled. Knees met chests. Elbows rammed into faces. Then Ronan grabbed Declan’s suit coat and used it to throw him onto the mirrorlike hood of Declan’s Volvo.

"Not the f**king car!" snarled Declan, his lip bloody.

The story of the Lynch family was this: Once upon a time, a man named Niall Lynch had three sons, one of whom loved his father more than the others. Niall Lynch was handsome and charismatic and rich and mysterious, and one day, he was dragged from his charcoal-gray BMW and beaten to death with a tire iron. It was a Wednesday. On Thursday, his son Ronan found his body in the driveway. On Friday, their mother stopped speaking and never spoke again.

On Saturday, the Lynch brothers found that their father’s death left them rich and homeless. The will forbade them to touch anything in the house — their clothing, the furniture. Their silent mother. The will demanded they immediately move into Aglionby housing. Declan, the eldest, was meant to control the funds and their lives until his brothers reached eighteen.

On Sunday, Ronan stole his deceased father’s car.

On Monday, the Lynch brothers stopped being friends.

Ripping Ronan from the Volvo, Declan hit his brother hard enough that even Gansey felt it. Ashley, her light hair more visible than the rest of her, blinked at him from inside the Volvo.

Gansey took several strides across the lot. "Ronan!"

Ronan didn’t even turn his head. A grim smile, more skeleton than boy, was etched onto his mouth as the brothers whirled around. This was a real fight, not for show, and it played in fast-forward. Someone would be unconscious before Gansey had time to cry havoc, and he just didn’t have time to take someone to the ER tonight.

Gansey sprang, seizing Ronan’s arm in mid-swing. Ronan still had fingers hooked inside Declan’s mouth, though, and Declan already had a fist flying from behind, like a violent embrace. So it was Gansey who got Declan’s blow. Something wet misted his arm. He was fairly certain it was spit, but it was possible it was blood. He shouted a word he’d learned from his sister, Helen.

Ronan had Declan by the knot of his burgundy tie, and Declan gripped the back of his brother’s skull with one white-knuckled hand. Gansey might as well have not been there. With a neat flick of his wrist, Ronan smacked Declan’s head off the driver’s side door of the Volvo. It made a sick, wet sound. Declan’s hand fell away.

Gansey seized the opportunity to propel Ronan about five feet away. Jerking in his grip, Ronan jackrabbited his legs on the pavement. He was unbelievably strong.

"Quit it," Gansey panted. "You’re ruining your face."

Ronan twisted, all muscle and adrenaline. Declan, his suit looking more bedraggled than any suit ought to look, started back toward them. He had a hell of a bruise rising on his temple, but he looked ready to go again. There was no way of telling what had set them off — a new home nurse for their mother, a poor grade at school, an unexplained credit card bill. Maybe just Ashley.

Across the lot, the manager of Nino’s emerged from the front entrance. It wouldn’t be long before the cops were called. Where was Adam?