The Raven Boys

Gansey cut off the recorded voice mid-word, his pulse tripping. For a long moment he debated, and then he dialed another number. This time, it was Adam’s voice that answered, low with sleep and caution. "Gansey?"

"Ronan’s gone."

Adam was quiet. It was not just that Ronan had vanished, it was that he had vanished after a fight with Declan. But it wasn’t an easy thing to leave the Parrish household in the middle of the night. The consequences of getting caught could leave physical evidence, and it was getting too warm for long sleeves. Gansey felt wretched for asking this of him.

Outside, a midnight bird cried, high and piercing. The little replica of Henrietta was eerie in the half-light, the die-cast cars parked on the streets appearing as though they had just paused. Gansey always thought that, after dark, it felt like anything could happen. At night, Henrietta felt like magic, and at night, magic felt like it might be a terrible thing.

"I’ll check the park," Adam whispered finally. "And, uh, the bridge, I guess."

Adam hung up so softly that it took Gansey a moment to realize the connection had ended. He pressed his fingertips to his eyes, which was how Noah found him.

"You’re going to look for him?" Noah asked. He looked pale and insubstantial in the yellow, late-night light of the room behind him; the skin beneath his eyes was darker than anything. He looked less like Noah than the suggestion of Noah. "Check the church."

Noah didn’t say he would go along, and Gansey didn’t ask him to. Six months ago, the only time it had ever mattered, Noah had found Ronan in an introspective pool of his own blood, and so he was exempt from ever having to look again. Noah hadn’t gone with Gansey to the hospital afterward, and Adam had been caught trying to sneak out, so it was only Gansey who’d been with Ronan when they stitched his skin whole again. It had been a long time ago, but also, it was no time at all.

Sometimes, Gansey felt like his life was made up of a dozen hours that he could never forget.

Pulling on his jacket, he headed out into the greenish light of the chilly parking lot. The hood of Ronan’s BMW was cold, so it hadn’t been driven recently. Wherever he’d gone, he’d gone on foot. The church, its spire illuminated by dusky yellow light, was within walking distance. So was Nino’s. So was the old bridge with the fast current rushing away beneath it.

He started to walk. His mind was logical, but his traitorous heart stuttered from beat to beat. He wasn’t naive; he carried no illusions that he’d ever recover the Ronan Lynch he’d known before Niall died. But he didn’t want to lose the Ronan Lynch he had now.

Despite the strong moonlight, the entrance to St. Agnes lay in total darkness. Shivering a bit, Gansey put his hand on the great iron ring that pulled open the church door, unsure if it would be unlocked. He’d only been to St. Agnes once, on Easter, because Ronan’s younger brother, Matthew, had asked them all to come. He wouldn’t have thought of it as a place someone like Ronan would go in the middle of the night, but then again, he wouldn’t have pegged Ronan as a churchgoer at all. And yet all of the Lynch brothers went to St. Agnes every Sunday. For an hour, they managed to sit next to one another in a pew even when they couldn’t meet one another’s eyes over a restaurant table.

Stepping through the black arch of the entrance, Gansey thought, Noah is good at finding things. He hoped that Noah was right about Ronan.

The church enveloped Gansey in an incense-scented pocket of air, a rare enough smell that it instantly evoked half a dozen memories of family weddings, funerals, and baptisms, every one of them summer. How strange that a season should be held captive in one breath of trapped air.

"Ronan?" The word was sucked into the empty space. It echoed off the unseeable ceiling far overhead so it was only his own voice, in the end, that answered him.

The subdued aisle light made peaked shadows of arches. The darkness and uncertainty crushed Gansey’s ribs as small as a fist, his breathless lungs reminding him of yet another long-ago summer day, the afternoon he first realized there was such a thing as magic in the world.

And there Ronan was, stretched out on one of the shadowed pews, an arm hanging off the edge, the other skewed above his head, his body a darker bit of black in an already black world. He wasn’t moving.

Gansey thought, Not tonight. Please don’t let it be tonight.

Edging into the pew behind Ronan, he put his hand on the other boy’s shoulder, as if he could merely wake him, praying that by assuming it so, it would be true. The shoulder was warm below his hand; he smelled alcohol.

"Wake up, dude," he said. The words didn’t sound light, though he meant them to.

Ronan’s shoulder shifted and his face turned. For a brief, unchained moment, Gansey had a sudden thought that he was too late and Ronan was dead after all, and that his corpse woke now only because Gansey had commanded it to. But then Ronan’s brilliant blue eyes opened, and the moment dissipated.

Gansey let out a sigh. "You bastard."

Ronan said plainly, "I couldn’t dream." Then, taking in Gansey’s stricken expression, he added, "I promised you it wouldn’t happen again."

Gansey tried again to keep his voice light, but failed. "But you’re a liar."

"I think," Ronan replied, "that you’re mistaking me for my brother."

The church was quiet and full around them; it seemed brighter now that Ronan’s eyes were open, as if the building had been asleep as well.

"When I told you I didn’t want you getting drunk at Monmouth, I didn’t mean I wanted you drunk somewhere else."

Ronan, with only a little slurring, replied, "Pot calling the kettle black."

With dignity, Gansey said, "I drink. I do not get drunk."

Ronan’s eyes dropped to something he held near his chest.

"What is that?" Gansey asked.

Next to his chest, Ronan’s fingers curled around a dark object. When Gansey reached down to uncurl his grip, he felt something warm and living, a rapid pulse against his fingertips. He snatched his hand away.

"Christ," said Gansey, trying to make sense of what he’d felt. "Is that a bird?"

Ronan slowly sat up, still holding his cargo close. Another whuff of alcohol-laced breath drifted toward Gansey.

"Raven." There was a long pause as Ronan regarded his hand. "Maybe a crow. But I doubt it. I … yeah, seriously doubt it. Corvus corax."

Even drunk, Ronan knew the Latin name for the common raven.