The Raven Boys

There was nothing left but to say it.

"Adam’s gone to wake the ley line."

Chapter 43

Just a mile away at 300 Fox Way, Blue looked up as a tap came on her cracked bedroom door.

"Are you sleeping?" Maura asked.

"Yes," Blue replied.

Maura let herself in. "Your light was on," she observed, and with a sigh, she sat on the end of Blue’s bed, looking as soft as a poem in the dim light. For several long minutes, she didn’t say anything at all, merely picked through Blue’s reading selections piled on the card table shoved against the end of the mattress. There was nothing unfamiliar about this quiet between them; for as long as Blue could remember, her mother had come into her room in the evening and together they’d read books on separate ends of the bed. Her old twin mattress had seemed roomier when Blue was small, but now that Blue was human-sized, it was impossible to sit without knees touching or elbows rubbing.

After a few moments of fretting through Blue’s books, Maura rested her hands in her lap and looked around at Blue’s tiny room. It was lit to a dim green by the lamp on the nightstand. On the wall opposite the bed, Blue had pasted canvas trees decorated with collaged and found-paper leaves, and she’d glued dried flowers over the entirety of her closet door. Most of them still looked pretty good, but some of them were a little long in the tooth. Her ceiling fan was hung with colored feathers and lace. Blue had lived here the entire sixteen years of her life, and it looked like it.

"I think I’d better say sorry," Maura said finally.

Blue, who had been reading and re-reading an American Lit assignment without much success, laid her book down. "For what?"

"For not being straightforward, I guess. Do you know, it’s really hard to be a parent. I blame it on Santa Claus. You spend so long making sure your kid doesn’t know he’s fake that you can’t tell when you’re supposed to stop."

"Mom, I found you and Calla wrapping my presents when I was, like, six."

"It was a metaphor, Blue."

Blue tapped her literature book. "A metaphor’s supposed to clarify by providing an example. That didn’t clarify."

"Do you know what I mean or not?"

"What you mean is that you’re sorry you didn’t tell me about Butternut."

Maura glowered at the door as if Calla stood behind it. "I wish you wouldn’t call him that."

"If you’d been the one to tell me about him, then I wouldn’t be using what Calla told me."

"Fair enough."

"So what was his name?"

Her mother lay back on the bed. She was crossways on it, so she had to draw her knees up to brace her feet on the edge of the mattress, and Blue had to withdraw her own legs to keep them from being crushed.

"Artemus."

"No wonder you preferred Butternut," Blue said. But before her mother had time to say anything, she said, "Wait — isn’t Artemus a Roman name? Latin?"

"Yeah. And I don’t think it’s a bad name. I didn’t raise you to be judgmental."

"Sure you did," Blue said. She was wondering if it was a coincidence that there was so much Latin in her life at the moment. Gansey was beginning to rub off on her, because coincidences no longer seemed so coincidental.

"Probably," Maura agreed after a moment. "So, look. This is what I know. I think your father has something to do with Cabeswater or the ley line. Way back before you were born, Calla and Persephone and I were messing around with things we probably shouldn’t have been messing around with —"

"Drugs?"

"Rituals. Are you messing around with drugs?"

"No. But maybe rituals."

"Drugs might be better."

"I’m not interested in them. Their effects are proven — where’s the fun in that? Tell me more."

Maura tapped a rhythm on her stomach as she stared up. Blue had copied a poem onto the ceiling just above her, and it was possible she was trying to read it. "Well, he appeared after this ritual. I think he was trapped in Cabeswater, and we released him."

"You didn’t ask?"

"We didn’t … have that sort of relationship."

"I don’t want to know what sort it was, actually, if it didn’t involve talking."

"We did talk. He was a really decent person," Maura said. "He was very kind. People bothered him. He thought we should be more concerned with the world around us and how our actions would affect things years down the road. I liked that part of him. It wasn’t preachy, just who he was."

"Why are you telling me this?" Blue asked, because she was a little distressed to see the unsteady press of Maura’s lips against each other.

"You said you wanted to know about him. I was telling you about him, because you’re a lot like him. He would’ve liked to see your room with all the shit you’ve put on the walls."

"Gee, thanks," Blue said. "So why did he leave?"

Right after she asked the question, she realized it may have been too blunt.

"He didn’t leave," Maura said. "He disappeared. Right when you were born."

"That’s called leaving."

"I don’t think he did it on purpose. Well, I did, at first. But now I’ve been thinking about it and learning more about Henrietta and I think … you’re a very strange child. I’ve never met anybody who makes psychics hear things better. I’m not exactly sure we didn’t accidentally do another ritual when you were born. I mean, a ritual where you being born was the final bit. It might have gotten him stuck back in there."

Blue said, "You think this is my fault!"

"Don’t be ridiculous," Maura said, sitting up. Her hair was all frazzled from lying on it. "You were only a baby — how could anything be your fault? I just thought maybe that was what happened. That was why I called Neeve about looking for him. I wanted you to understand why I called her."

"Do you even really know her?"

Maura shook her head. "Pft. We didn’t grow up together, but we’ve gotten together a few times over the years, just a day or two here or there. We’ve never been friends, much less real sisters. But her reputation … I never thought it would get weird like it has."

Footsteps moved softly in the hallway, and then Persephone stood in the doorway. Maura sighed and looked down at her lap, as if she’d been expecting this.