The Raven Boys

"Did you get Mom a birthday present?" Helen asked.

"Yes," Gansey replied. "Myself."

Helen said, "The gift that keeps on giving."

He said, "I don’t think that minor children are required to get gifts for their parents. I’m a dependent. That’s the definition of dependent, is it not?"

"You, a dependent!" his sister said, and laughed. Helen had a laugh like a cartoon character: Ha ha ha ha! It was an intimidating laugh that tended to make men suspect that they were possibly the brunt of it. "You haven’t been a dependent since you were four. You went straight from kindergarten to old man with a studio apartment."

Gansey made a dismissive hand gesture. His sister was known for hyperbole. "What did you get her?"

"It’s a surprise," Helen replied loftily, tapping some sort of toggle switch with a pink-nailed finger. The pink was the only fanciful thing about her. Helen was beautiful in the way a supercomputer was beautiful: sleek with elegant but utilitarian styling, full of top-notch technological know-how, far too expensive for most people to possess.

"That means it’s glassware."

Gansey’s mother collected rare painted plates with the same obsessive fervor that Gansey collected facts about Glendower. He had a hard time seeing the allure of a plate robbed of its original purpose, but his mother’s collection had been featured in magazines and was insured for more than his father, so clearly she was not alone in her passion.

Helen was stony. "I don’t want to hear it. You didn’t get her anything."

"I didn’t say anything about it!"

"You called it glassware."

He asked, "What should I have said?"

"They’re not all glass. This one I’ve found her is not glass."

"Then she won’t like it."

Helen’s face shifted from stony to very stony. She glowered at her GPS. Gansey didn’t like to think of how much time she’d invested in her non-glass plate. He didn’t like to see either of the women in his family disappointed; it ruined perfectly good meals.

Helen was still silent, so Gansey began to think about Blue. Something about her was discomfiting him, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Taking a mint leaf from his pocket, Gansey put it into his mouth and watched the familiar Henrietta roads snake below them. From the air, the curves looked less perilous than they felt in the Camaro. What was it about Blue? Adam was not suspicious of her, and he was suspicious of everyone. But then again, he was clearly infatuated. That, too, was unfamiliar ground for Gansey.

"Adam," he said. There was no answer, and Gansey looked over his shoulder. Adam’s headphones were looped around his neck, and he was leaned over beside Blue, pointing something out on the ground below. As she’d shifted, Blue’s dress had gotten hitched up and Gansey could see a long, slender triangle of her thigh. Adam’s hand was braced a few inches away on the seat, knuckles pale with his hatred of flying. There was nothing particularly intimate about the way they sat, but something about the scene made Gansey feel strange, like he’d heard an unpleasant statement and later forgotten everything about the words but the way they had made him feel.

"Adam!" Gansey shouted.

His friend’s head jerked up, face startled. He hurried to pull his headset back on. His voice came through the headphones. "Are you done talking about your mom’s plates?"

"Very. Where should we go this time? I was thinking maybe back to the church where I recorded the voice."

Adam handed Gansey a wrinkled piece of paper.

Gansey flattened the paper and found a crude map. "What’s this?"

"Blue."

Gansey looked at her intently, trying to decide if she had anything to gain by misdirecting them. She didn’t flinch from his gaze. Turning back around, he spread the paper flat on the controls in front of him. "Make that happen, Helen."

Helen banked to follow the new direction. The church Blue directed them toward was probably forty minutes’ drive from Henrietta, but as the bird flew, it was only fifteen. Without a quiet noise from Blue, Gansey would’ve missed it. It was a ruin, hollowed and overgrown. A narrow line of an old, old stone wall was visible around it, as well as an impression on the ground where an additional wall must have originally been. "That’s it?"

"That’s all there is left."

Something inside Gansey went very still and quiet.

He said, "What did you say?"

"It’s a ruin, but —"

"No," he said. "Say precisely what you said before. Please."

Blue cast a glance toward Adam, who shrugged. "I don’t remember what I said. Was it … That’s all there is?"

That’s all.

Is that all?

That was what had been nagging him all this time. He knew he recognized her voice. He knew that Henrietta accent, he knew that cadence.

It was Blue’s voice on the recorder.

Gansey.

Is that all?

That’s all there is.

"I’m not made out of fuel," Helen snapped, as if she’d already said it once, and Gansey had missed it. Maybe he had. "Tell me where to go from here."

What does this mean? Once more, he began to feel the press of responsibility, awe, something bigger than him. At once he was anticipatory and afraid.

"What’s the lay of the line, Blue?" Adam asked.

Blue, who had her thumb and forefinger pressed against the glass as if she was measuring something, answered, "There. Toward the mountains. Fly … Do you see those two oak trees? The church is one point, and another point is right between them. If we make a straight line between those two, that’s the path."

If it had been Blue he’d been talking to on St. Mark’s Eve, what did that mean?

"Are you certain?" This was Helen, in her brisk supercomputer voice. "I only have an hour and a half of fuel."

Blue sounded a little indignant. "I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure."

Helen smiled faintly and pushed the helicopter in the direction Blue had indicated.

"Blue."

It was Ronan’s voice, for the first time, and everyone, even Helen, twisted their heads toward him. His head was cocked in a way that Gansey recognized as dangerous. Something in his eyes was sharp as he stared at Blue. He asked, "Do you know Gansey?"

Gansey remembered Ronan leaning against the Pig, playing the recording over and over again.