The Raven Boys

"I don’t have a brother, ma’am," Adam replied. But Blue saw his eyes dart to Gansey.

"Do you want to ask a question?" Maura asked.

Adam considered. "What’s the right choice?"

Maura and Persephone conferred. Maura replied, "There isn’t a right one. Just one you can live with. There might be a third option that will suit you better, but right now, you’re not seeing it because you’re so involved with the other two. I’d guess from what I’m seeing that any other path would have to do with you going outside those other two options and making your own option. I’m also sensing you’re a very analytical thinker. You’ve spent a lot of time learning to ignore your emotions, but I don’t think this is a time for that."

"Thanks," Adam said. It wasn’t quite the right thing to say, but it wasn’t entirely wrong, either. Blue liked how polite he was. It seemed different than Gansey’s politeness. When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.

It seemed right to leave Gansey for last, so Blue moved on to Ronan, though she was a little afraid of him. Something about him dripped venom, even though he hadn’t spoken. Worst of all, in Blue’s opinion, was that there was something about his antagonism that made her want to court his favor, to earn his approval. The approval of someone like him, who clearly cared for no one, seemed like it would be worth more.

To offer the deck to Ronan, Blue had to stand, because he still stood by the doorway near Calla. They looked ready to box.

When Blue fanned the cards, he scanned the women in the room and said, "I’m not taking one. Tell me something true first."

"Beg your pardon?" Calla said stiffly, answering for Maura.

Ronan’s voice was glass, cold and brittle. "Everything you’ve told him could apply to anybody. Anybody with a pulse has doubts. Anybody alive has argued with their brother or their father. Tell me something no one else can tell me. Don’t toss a playing card at me and spoon feed me some Jungian bullshit. Tell me something specific."

Blue’s eyes narrowed. Persephone stuck out her tongue slightly, a habit born of uncertainty, not impudence. Maura shifted with annoyance. "We don’t do specif —"

Calla interrupted. "A secret killed your father and you know what it was."

The room went deadly silent. Both Persephone and Maura were staring at Calla. Gansey and Adam were staring at Ronan. Blue was staring at Calla’s hand.

Maura often called on Calla to do joint tarot readings, and Persephone sometimes called on her to interpret her dreams, but very rarely did anyone ask Calla to use one of her strangest gifts: psychometry. Calla had an uncanny ability to hold an object and sense its origin, feel its owner’s thoughts, and see places the thing had been.

Now, Calla pulled her hand away; she’d reached to touch Ronan’s tattoo right where it met his collar. His face was turned just slightly, looking to where her fingers had been.

There might have only been Ronan and Calla in the room. He was a head taller than her already, but he looked young beside her, like a lanky wildcat not yet up to weight. She was a lioness.

She hissed, "What are you?"

Ronan’s smile chilled Blue. There was something empty in it.

"Ronan?" Gansey asked, concern in his voice.

"I’m waiting in the car." Without further comment, Ronan left, slamming the door hard enough that the dishes in the kitchen rattled.

Gansey turned an accusatory gaze on Calla. "His father’s dead."

"I know," Calla said. Her eyes were slits.

Gansey’s voice was cordial enough to pass straight through polite and on to rude. "I don’t know how you found out, but that’s a pretty lousy thing to throw at a kid."

"At a snake, you mean," Calla snarled back. "And what is it you came for, if you didn’t believe we could do what we’re charging you for? He asked for a specific. I gave him a specific. I’m sorry it wasn’t puppies."

"Calla," Maura said, at the same time that Adam said, "Gansey."

Adam murmured something directly into Gansey’s ear and then leaned back. A bone moved at Gansey’s jawline. Blue saw him shift back into President Cell Phone; she hadn’t been aware, before, that he’d been anything else. Now she wished she’d been paying better attention, so she could’ve seen what was different about him.

Gansey said, "I’m sorry. Ronan is blunt, and he wasn’t comfortable coming here in the first place. I wasn’t trying to insinuate that you were less than genuine. Can we continue?"

He sounded so old, Blue thought. So formal in comparison to the other boys he’d brought. There was something intensely discomfiting about him, akin to how she felt compelled to impress Ronan. Something about Gansey made her feel so strongly other that it was as if she had to guard her emotions against him. She could not like him, or whatever it was about these boys that drowned out her mother’s psychic abilities and filled the room to overflowing would overwhelm her.

"You’re fine," Maura said, though she looked at glowering Calla when she said it.

As Blue moved to where Gansey sat, she caught a glimpse of his car at the curb: a flash of impossible orange, the sort of orange Orla would definitely paint her nails. It was not exactly what she’d have expected an Aglionby boy to drive — they liked new, shiny things, and this was an old, shiny thing — but it was clearly a raven boy’s car nonetheless. And just then, Blue had a falling sensation, like things were happening too fast for her to properly absorb them. There was something odd and complicated about all of these boys, Blue thought — odd and complicated in the way that the journal was odd and complicated. Their lives were somehow a web, and she had somehow managed to do something to get herself stuck in the very edge of it. Whether that something had been done in the past or was going to be done in the future seemed irrelevant. In this room with Maura and Calla and Persephone, time felt circular.

She stopped in front of Gansey. This close, she again caught the scent of mint, and that made Blue’s heart trip unsteadily.

Gansey looked down at the fanned deck of cards in her hands. When she saw him like that, she saw the bend of his shoulders and the back of his head, and she piercingly remembered his spirit, the boy she’d been afraid she’d fall in love with. That shade hadn’t worn any of the effortless, breezy confidence of this raven boy in front of her.