The Raven Boys

"Look," Adam said. He rubbed a finger over the dust of the back window. Next to a Blink-182 sticker was an Aglionby decal.

"Figures," Blue said.

Ronan tried the driver’s side door; it came open. He laughed, once, sharp. "There’s a mummified hamburger in here."

They all crowded around to see the interior, but apart from the dry, half-eaten hamburger on the passenger seat, still sitting on its wrapper, there was not much to see.

This car, too, was a riddle, like Blue’s voice on the recorder. Gansey felt as if it was directed specifically at him.

"Pop the trunk," he ordered.

The trunk had a jacket in it, and beneath that, an odd collection of sticks and springs. Frowning, Gansey withdrew the contraption, holding it by the largest rod. The pieces swung into place, several sticks hanging and twisting beneath the main one, and he understood all at once.

"It’s a dowsing rod."

He turned to Adam, wanting verification.

"Coincidence," Adam said. Of course meaning that it wasn’t.

Gansey had the peculiar sensation he had first felt in the parking lot outside Nino’s, when Adam had warned him that he thought someone else was looking for the ley line. Then he realized that Blue and Noah were no longer in sight. "Where’s Blue and Noah?"

At her name, Blue reappeared, stepping over a log and back into the clearing. She said, "Noah’s throwing up."

"Why is he doing that?" Gansey asked. "Is he sick?"

"I’ll ask him," she replied. "As soon as he’s finished puking."

Gansey winced.

"I think you’ll find that Gansey prefers the word vomiting. Or evacuating," Ronan said brightly.

"I think retching is the most specific word, in this case," Blue corrected pointedly.

"Retching!" said Ronan without concern; this, finally, was something he knew something about. "Where is he? Noah!" He pushed away from the Mustang and started back the way that Blue had come.

Blue noticed the dowsing rod in Gansey’s hands. "Was that in the car? A dowsing rod!"

He shouldn’t have been surprised she knew what it was; even if she wasn’t psychic, her mother was, and this was technically a tool of the trade. "The trunk."

"But that means that someone else was looking for the ley line!"

On the other side of the Mustang, Adam drew his fingers through the pollen on the side of the car. He looked disquieted. "And they decided it was more important than their car."

Gansey glanced up at the trees around them, then back at the expensive car. In the distance, he heard the low voices of Ronan and Noah. "I think we’d better go. I think we need more information."

Chapter 27

As Blue got ready to go out the following Sunday morning, she was officially conflicted. Sundays were dog-walking days. Actually, Sundays and Thursdays were dog-walking days, but Blue had begged off the previous two weeks to spend time with the boys, so it felt like it had been a long time since she’d seen her dogs-by-proxy. The problem was that she was running distinctly low on money, and moreover, guilt at disobeying Maura was finally beginning to weigh on her. It had gotten so that she couldn’t look her mother in the eye over dinner, but it was impossible, now, to imagine giving up the boys. She had to find a way to reconcile the two.

But first, she had to walk the dogs.

On the way out to Willow Ridge, the phone in the kitchen rang and Blue, a glass of cloudy apple juice in one hand and the laces of a high-top sneaker in the other, grabbed it.

"Hello?"

"I’d like to speak to Blue, please, if she’s in."

It was Gansey’s unmistakable, polite voice, the one he used to turn straw into gold. Clearly, he had known what he risked calling here, and clearly, he had been prepared to speak to someone other than Blue about it. Despite her growing suspicion that her secrecy couldn’t last, she wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that he could’ve blown her cover.

"Blue is getting ready to go walk other people’s dogs," she said, setting down the juice and tugging on the sneaker, phone shoved between her ear and shoulder. "And it’s a good thing you got her and not someone else."

"I was prepared for that eventuality," Gansey said. It was strange to hear him over the phone; his voice didn’t quite sound like his face looked. "Still, I’m glad I caught you. How are you doing? Well, I trust?"

He doesn’t mean to be condescending, Blue told herself. She told herself several times. "You trust right."

"Brilliant. Look. Adam’s working today and Ronan’s at church with his brothers, but I’d like to go out and just … look around." He added, quickly, "Not to the woods. I was thinking maybe to that church on your map. Do you want to …"

He faltered. Gansey was faltering? It took Blue a moment of his silence to realize that he was asking if she wanted to go with him. It took her another moment to realize that she’d never been anywhere with him without the other boys.

"I have to walk dogs."

"Oh," Gansey replied, sounding deflated. "Well, okay."

"But it’ll only take an hour."

"Oh," he repeated, about fourteen shades brighter. "Shall I pick you up, then?"

Blue glanced furtively over her shoulder toward the living room. "Oh no — I’ll, uh, meet you in the parking lot."

"Brilliant," he said again. "Top shelf. I think this’ll be interesting. See you in an hour."

Top shelf? Gansey without Adam — Blue wasn’t certain how this would work. Despite Adam’s tentative interest in her, the boys seemed to act as a unit, a single, multiheaded entity. To see any of them without the presence of the others felt a little … dangerous.

But there wasn’t an option of not going with Gansey. She wanted to explore as much as he did.

No sooner had Blue hung up than she heard her name being called.

"Bloo-OOOO-oooooo, my child, my child, come in here!"

This was Maura’s voice, and the sing-song rhythm to it was highly ironic. With a sinking sensation, Blue followed it into the living room, where she found Maura, Calla, and Persephone drinking what Blue suspected were screwdrivers. When she walked into the room, the women all looked up at her with indolent smiles. A pack of lionesses.

Blue raised her eyebrows at the cocktails. The morning light through the windows turned the drinks a brilliant, translucent yellow. "It’s only ten o’clock."