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But that wasn’t what happened. What happened was they drove to Harry’s and parked the Camaro next to an Audi and a Lexus and Gansey ordered flavors of gelato until the table wouldn’t hold any more bowls and Ronan convinced the staff to turn the overhead speakers up and Blue laughed for the first time at something Gansey said and they were loud and triumphant and kings of Henrietta, because they’d found the ley line and because it was starting, it was starting.
“Arbores loqui latine,” Ronan replied. “The trees speak Latin.”
Blue tried not to look at Gansey’s boat shoes; she felt better about him as a person if she pretended he wasn’t wearing them.
‘You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.’”
“Where do you live?” Adam’s mouth was very set. “A place made for leaving.”
Ronan’s smile cut his face, but he looked kinder than Blue had ever seen him, like the raven in his hand was his heart, finally laid bare.
“He was upset. He’d lost everything. If he’d been thinking straight, I don’t think he would’ve … he didn’t mean to … we were friends like — are you afraid of Gansey?” The boys didn’t answer; they didn’t have to. Whatever Gansey was to them, it was bulletproof.
My boys! Blue thought, first in a huff, then flattered, then in a huff again.
“What do you want?” “To do this,” Ronan Lynch snarled, smashing his fist into the side of Robert Parrish’s face. Beyond him, the BMW sat, the driver’s side door hanging open, headlights illuminating clouds of dust in the darkness. Ronan, said Adam. Or maybe he only thought it. Without his father holding him up, he staggered.
Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year. They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.
“My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them. Can you believe I’m only alive because Noah died? What a fine sacrifice that was, what a fine contribution to the world I am.”
He was full of so many wants, too many to prioritize, and so they all felt desperate. To not have to work so many hours, to get into a good college, to look right in a tie, to not still be hungry after eating the thin sandwich he’d brought to work, to drive the shiny Audi that Gansey had stopped to look at with him once after school, to go home, to have hit his father himself, to own an apartment with granite countertops and a television bigger than Gansey’s desk, to belong somewhere, to go home, to go home, to go home.
But again, he saw Gansey’s wounded form, and he saw, too, Gansey’s wounded face from earlier today, when they’d fought. There just wasn’t a way that Adam would put Gansey in peril.
MURDERED It began another word. There was not enough space left between the D and the new word, and so the second word partially obliterated the first. MURDERED And again, again, again, across each other: MURDERED MURDERED MURDERED
Stepping forward, leaning over the hood of the car, Ronan pressed his finger to the windshield, and while they watched, he wrote: REMEMBERED
Adam’s heart was a bird and a stone; his relief was palpable, but so was his shame.
Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.
There was a body here, a body, and it used to be alive. They didn’t even have the authority to choose an alcoholic beverage. They couldn’t be deciding who deserved to live or die.
“They said there’ve always been rumors of a king buried somewhere along this spirit road,” Ronan said. His eyes held Gansey’s. “They think he may be yours.”
The ley line was awake and Noah was all but gone. Magic was real, Glendower was real, and something was starting.
“Noah!” Gansey cried gladly. Blue hurled her arms around his neck. He looked alarmed, and then pleased, and then he pet the tufts of her hair.
