The Raven Boys

"Son?" An officer knelt beside him. He smelled like juniper. Adam thought he might choke on it. "Are you okay?"

With the officer’s hand helping him, Adam stumbled to his feet. Across the dirt, another officer dragged Ronan off Robert Parrish.

"I’m okay," Adam said.

The cop released his arm and then, as quickly, caught it again. "Boy, you’re not okay. Have you been drinking?"

Ronan must have caught this question because, from across the lot, he shouted an answer. It involved a lot of profanity and the phrase beats the shit.

Adam’s vision shifted and cleared, shifted and cleared. He could make out Ronan, dimly. Appalled, he asked, "Is he being cuffed?"

This can’t happen. He can’t go to jail because of me.

"Have you been drinking?" the cop repeated.

"No," Adam replied. He was still not steady on his feet; the ground slanted and pitched with every move of his head. He knew he looked drunk. He needed to get himself together. Only this afternoon he’d touched Blue’s face. It had felt like anything was possible, like the world soared out in front of him. He tried to channel that sensation, but it felt apocryphal. "I can’t —"

"Can’t what?"

Can’t hear out of my left ear, Adam thought.

His mother stood on the porch, watching him and the cop, her eyes narrowed. Adam knew what she was thinking, because they’d had the conversation so many times before: Don’t say anything, Adam. Tell him you fell down. It really was a little your fault, wasn’t it? We’ll deal with it as a family.

If Adam turned his father in, everything crashed down around him. If Adam turned him in, his mother would never forgive him. If Adam turned him in, he could never come home again.

Across the lot, one of the officers put his hand on the back of Ronan’s head, guiding him down into the police car.

Even without the hearing in his left ear, Adam heard Ronan’s voice clearly. "I said I’ve got it, man. Do you think I’ve never been in one of these before?"

Adam couldn’t move in with Gansey. He had done so much to make sure that when he moved out, it would be on his own terms. Not Robert Parrish’s. Not Richard Gansey’s.

On Adam Parrish’s terms, or not at all.

Adam touched his left ear. The skin was hot and painful, and without his hearing to tell him when his finger was close to his ear cavity, his touch felt imaginary. The whine in the ear had subsided and now there was … nothing. There was nothing at all.

Gansey said, You won’t leave because of your pride?

"Ronan was defending me." Adam’s mouth was dry as the dirt around them. The officer’s expression focused on him as he went on. "From my father. All this … is from him. My face and my …"

His mother was staring at him.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her and say it. Even with his eyes closed, he felt like he was falling, like the horizon pitched, like his head tilted. Adam had the sick feeling that his father had managed to knock something crucial askew.

And then he said what he couldn’t say before. He asked, "Can I … can I press charges?"

Chapter 37

Whelk missed the good food that came with being rich.

When he’d been home from Aglionby, neither of his parents had ever cooked, but they’d hired a chef to come in every other evening to make dinner. Carrie, the chef’s name had been, an effusive but intimidating woman who adored chopping things up with knives. God, he missed her guacamole.

Currently, he sat on the curb of a now-closed service station, eating a dry burger he’d bought from a fast-food joint several miles away; the first fast-food burger he’d had in seven years. Uncertain of just how hard the cops might be looking for his car, he’d parked out of the reach of the streetlight and returned to the curb to eat.

As he chewed, a plan was falling into shape, and the plan involved sleeping in the backseat of his vehicle and making another plan in the morning. It was not confidence inspiring, and his spirits were low. He should’ve just abducted Gansey, now that he considered it, but abduction took so much more planning than theft, and he hadn’t left the house prepared to put someone in his trunk. He hadn’t left the house prepared to do anything, actually. He’d merely seized the opportunity when Gansey’s car had broken down. If he’d considered the matter at all, he would’ve abducted Gansey for the ritual later, after he’d gotten to the heart of the ley line.

Except that Gansey would never have been a good target; the manhunt for his killer would be monumental. Really, the Parrish kid would have been a better bet. No one would miss a kid born in a trailer. He always turned his homework in on time, though.

Whelk grimly took another bite of the dusty burger. It did nothing to lift his mood.

Beside him, the pay phone began to ring. Until then, Whelk hadn’t even been aware that the phone was there; he thought cell phones had driven pay phones out of business years before. He eyed the only other car parked in the lot to see if anyone was awaiting a call. The other vehicle was empty, however, and the sagging right tire indicated that it had been parked in the lot for longer than a few minutes.

He waited anxiously as the phone rang twelve times, but no one appeared to answer it. He was relieved when it stopped, but not enough to remain where he was. He wrapped up the other half of his burger and stood up.

The phone began to ring again.

It rang all the while that he walked to the trash can on the other side of the service station’s door (COME IN, WE ARE OPEN! lied the flip-around sign on the door), and it rang all the while he returned to the curb to retrieve one of the fries that he’d missed, and it rang the entire time that he walked back to where he’d parked his car.

Whelk was not prone to philanthropy, but it occurred to him that whoever was on the other side of that pay phone was really trying to get ahold of someone. He returned to the pay phone, which was still ringing — such an old-fashioned ring, really, now that he thought of it, phones just didn’t sound like this anymore — and he removed the phone from its cradle.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Whelk," Neeve said mildly. "I hope you are having a good evening."

Whelk clung to the phone. "How did you know where to contact me?"

"Numbers are a very simple thing for me, Mr. Whelk, and you aren’t difficult to find. Also I have some of your hair." Neeve’s voice was mild and eerie. No live person, Whelk thought, should sound so much like a computerized voicemail menu.