The Raven Boys

Blue was about to tell him how Orla’s ideas got everyone into trouble at her house, too, but then she realized he would say something else and then she would reply and it could go on all night. Something about Adam told her that this was a boy she could have a conversation with. Out of nowhere, Maura’s voice was in Blue’s head. I don’t have to tell you not to kiss anyone, right?

And just like that, Blue was done. She was, as Neeve pointed out, a sensible girl. Even the very best outcome here could only end in torment. She blew out a breath.

"It wasn’t about what he was saying about you, anyway. It was that he offered me money," she said, putting her foot on the bike pedal. The thing was not to imagine what it would’ve been like to stay and talk. When Blue didn’t have enough money for something, the worst thing in the world was to imagine what it would’ve been like to have whatever the something was.

Adam sighed, as if he recognized her retreat. "He doesn’t know. He’s stupid about money."

"And you aren’t?"

He just leveled her with a very steady look. It wasn’t an expression that left room for folly.

Blue tipped her head back, staring up at the stars. It was strange to imagine how quickly they wheeled across the sky: a vast movement too far away for her to detect. Leo, Leo Minor, Orion’s Belt. If she had been her mother or her aunts or her cousins, scrying up through the heavens, would she see what she ought to say to Adam?

She asked, "Are you coming back to Nino’s?"

"Am I invited?"

She smiled in reply. It felt like a very dangerous thing, that smile, like something Maura wouldn’t be pleased with.

Blue had two rules: Stay away from boys, because they’re trouble, and stay away from raven boys, because they were bastards.

But those rules didn’t seem to apply to Adam. Fumbling in her pocket, she pulled out a tissue and wrote her name and the phone number for 300 Fox Way on it. Heart thumping, she folded it up and handed it to him.

Adam said only, "I’m glad I came back." Turning his long self around, he began to push his dolefully squeaking bike back the way he’d come.

Blue pressed her fingers to her face.

I gave a boy my number.

I gave a raven boy my number.

Hugging her arms around herself, she imagined a future argument with her mother. Giving someone your number doesn’t mean you’re going to kiss him.

Blue jumped when the rear door of the restaurant cracked open. But it was only Donny, his expression clearing when he saw her. In his hand was a tantalizingly fat leather-bound book that Blue knew instantly. She’d seen it in President Cell Phone’s hands.

Donny asked, "Do you know who left this behind? Is it yours?"

Meeting him halfway across the lot, Blue accepted the journal and flipped it open. The journal didn’t immediately choose a page to open to; it was so well-worn and well-stuffed that every page claimed seniority. It finally split down the middle, obeying gravity instead of use.

The page it opened to was a mishmash of yellowed clippings from books and newspapers. Red pen underlined a few phrases, added commentary in the margins (Luray Caverns count as spiritual place? crows = ravens?), and jotted a neatly boxed list titled "Welsh-Influenced Place Names Near Henrietta." Blue recognized most of the towns listed. Welsh Hills, Glen Bower, Harlech, Machinleth.

"I didn’t really read it," Donny said. "I just wanted to see if there was a name in there to return it. But then I saw that it was — well, it’s your stuff."

By this, he meant it was what he expected of a psychic’s daughter.

"I think I know who it belongs to," Blue said. She had no immediate thought other than wanting to spend more time flipping through its pages. "I’ll take it."

After Donny had returned inside the restaurant, she flipped the journal back open. Now she had time to marvel at the sheer density of it. Even if the content hadn’t immediately caught her, the feel of the thing would have. There were so many of the clippings she’d noticed before that the journal wouldn’t stay book-shaped unless tied shut with leather wrappings. Pages and pages were devoted to these ripped and scissored excerpts, and there was an undeniable tactile pleasure to browsing. Blue ran her fingers over the varied surfaces. Creamy, thick artist paper with a slender, elegant font. Thin, browning paper with spidery serif. Slick, utilitarian white stock with an artless modern type. Ragged-edged newspaper in a brittle shade of yellow.

Then there were the notes, made with a half-dozen different pens and markers, but all in the same business-like hand. They circled and pointed and underlined very urgently. They made bulleted lists and eager exclamation points in the margins. They contradicted one another and referred to one another in third person. Lines became cross-hatching became doodles of mountains became squirrelly tire tracks behind fast-looking cars.

It took her a while to make sense of what the journal was really about. It was organized into rough sections, but it was clear that whoever had created it had run out of space in some and begun anew later in the journal. There was a section on ley lines, invisible energy lines that connected spiritual places. There was a section on Owain Glyndr, the Raven King. There was a section about legends of sleeping knights who waited beneath mountains for discovery and new life. There was a section of strange stories about sacrificed kings and ancient water goddesses and all of the old things that ravens represented.

More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it.

A familiar shape stood out from the rest of the doodles. Three intersecting lines: a long, beaked triangle. It was the same shape Neeve had drawn in the churchyard dust. The same shape her mother had drawn on the steamed shower door.

Blue flattened the page to get a better look. This section was on ley lines: "mystical energy roads that connect spiritual places." Throughout the journal, the writer had doodled the three lines again and again, along with a sickly-looking Stonehenge, strangely elongated horses, and a labeled sketch of a burial mound. There was no explanation of the symbol.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

There was no way this journal could possibly belong to that presidential raven boy. Someone must’ve given it to him.

Maybe, she thought, it’s Adam’s.