The Raven Boys

"So they can get their things in order and do everything they want to do before they die." Her mother turned then, fixing Blue with a very knowing gaze. She looked as impressive as someone could look when standing barefoot in jeans, holding a mug of tea reeking of rotting soil.

"I’m not going to stop you from trying to warn him, Blue. But you need to know he’s not going to believe you, even if you find him, and it’s probably not going to save him, even if he knows. You might keep him from doing something stupid. Or you might just ruin the last few months of his life."

"You’re a Pollyanna," Blue snapped. But she knew Maura was right — at least about the first part. Most everyone who met her thought her mother did parlor tricks for a living. What did Blue think she would do — track down an Aglionby student, tap on the window of his Land Rover or Lexus, and warn him to have his brakes checked and life-insurance policy updated?

"I probably can’t stop you from meeting him anyway," Maura said. "I mean, if Neeve is right about why you saw him. You’re fated to meet him."

"Fate," Blue replied, glowering at her mother, "is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast."

"Everyone else," said Maura, "had breakfast a very long time ago."

The stairs creaked as Neeve returned. "Wrong number," she said in her affectless way. "Do you get many?"

"We’re one number off from a gentlemen escort company," Maura replied.

"Ah," Neeve said. "That explains it. Blue," she added, as she settled back down at the table again, "if you’d like, I can try to see what killed him."

This got both Maura’s and Blue’s attention in a hurry.

"Yes," Blue said.

Maura started to reply, then merely pressed her lips back together.

Neeve asked, "Do we have any grape juice?"

Puzzled, Blue went to the fridge and held up a jug questioningly. "Cran-grape?"

"That will work fine."

Maura, her face still complicated, reached into the cupboard and drew out a dark blue salad bowl. She set it in front of Neeve, not gently.

"I won’t be responsible for anything that you see," Maura said.

Blue asked, "What? What is that supposed to mean?"

Neither of them answered.

With a soft smile on her soft face, Neeve poured the juice into the bowl until it reached the edge. Maura turned off the light switch. The outside suddenly seemed vivid in comparison to the dim kitchen. The April-bright trees pressed against the windows of the breakfast area, green leaf upon green leaf upon glass, and Blue was suddenly very aware of being surrounded by trees, of having a sense of being in the middle of a still wood.

"If you are going to watch, please be quiet," Neeve remarked, looking at no one in particular. Blue jerked out a chair and sat. Maura leaned on the counter and crossed her arms. It was rare to see Maura upset but not doing something about it.

Neeve asked, "What was his name again?"

"He only said Gansey." She felt self-conscious saying his name. Somehow the idea that she would have a hand in his life or his death made his nominal existence in this kitchen her responsibility.

"That’s enough."

Neeve leaned over the bowl, her lips moving, her dark reflection moving slowly in the bowl. Blue kept thinking of what her mother had said:

I won’t be responsible for anything that you see.

It made this thing they did seem bigger than it usually felt. Further away from a trick of nature and closer to a religion.

Finally, Neeve murmured. Though Blue couldn’t hear any particular meaning in the wordless sound, Maura looked abruptly triumphant.

"Well," Neeve said. "This is a thing."

She said it like, "This is a thing," and Blue already knew how that turned out.

"What did you see?" Blue asked. "How did he die?"

Neeve didn’t take her eyes off Maura. She was asking a question, somehow, at the same time that she answered. "I saw him. And then he disappeared. Into absolutely nothing."

Maura flipped her hands. Blue knew the gesture well. Her mother had used it to end many an argument after she’d delivered a winning line. Only this time the winning line had been delivered by a bowl of cran-grape juice, and Blue had no idea what it meant.

Neeve said, "One moment he was there, and the next, he didn’t exist."

"It happens," Maura said. "Here in Henrietta. There is some place — or places — that I can’t see. Other times, I see" — and here she didn’t look at Blue in such a way that Blue noticed that her mother was trying hard not to look at her — "things I wouldn’t expect."

Now Blue was recalling the countless times her mother had insisted that they stay in Henrietta, even as it became more expensive to live here, even when opportunities to go to other towns opened up. Blue had once intercepted a set of e-mails on her mother’s computer; one of Maura’s male clients had ardently begged Maura to bring Blue "and whatever else you cannot live without" to his row house in Baltimore. In the reply, Maura had sternly informed him that this was not a possibility, for many reasons, chief of which that she would not leave Henrietta and least of which that she didn’t know if he was an ax murderer. He had e-mailed back only a sad-face smiley. Blue always wondered what became of him.

"I would like to know what you saw," Blue said. "What is ‘nothing’?"

Neeve said, "I was following the boy we saw last night to his death. I felt it was close, chronologically, but then he disappeared into someplace I couldn’t see. I don’t know how to explain it. I thought it was me."

"It’s not," Maura said. When she saw that Blue was still curious, she explained, "It’s like when there’s no picture on the television but you can tell it’s still on. That’s what it looks like. I’ve never seen someone go into it before, though."

"Well, he went into it." Neeve pushed the bowl away from her. "You said that’s not all. What else will that show me?"

Maura said, "Channels that don’t show up on basic cable."

Neeve tapped her beautiful fingers on the table, just once, and then she said, "You didn’t tell me about this before."

"It didn’t seem relevant," Maura replied.

"A place where young men can disappear seems quite relevant. Your daughter’s skill also seems quite relevant." Neeve leveled her eternal gaze on Maura, who pushed off the counter and turned away.