The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1)

by Maggie Stiefvater

His heart hurt with the wanting of it, the hurt no less painful for being difficult to explain.

Fuel was leeching slowly into Gansey’s expensive chinos, the second pair he’d ruined in a month. It wasn’t that he meant to be careless — as Adam told him again and again, “Things cost money, Gansey” — it was just that he never seemed to realize the consequences of his actions until too late.

Ronan did not smoke. He preferred his habits with hangovers.

Ronan didn’t ask. He just kept looking at Gansey, which was the same thing.

“I was listening to what I’d recorded while I was driving back. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then: my voice. Then the Pig stopped.” “Coincidence?” Ronan asked. “I think not.” It was meant to be sarcastic. Gansey had said I don’t believe in coincidences so often that he no longer needed to.

A museum curator in New Mexico had once told Gansey, Son, you have an uncanny knack for discovering oddities. An astonished Roman historian commented, You look under rocks no one else thinks to pick up, slick. And a very old British professor had said, The world turns out its pockets for you, boy. The key, Gansey found, was that you had to believe that they existed; you had to realize they were part of something bigger. Some secrets only gave themselves up to those who’d proven themselves worthy. The way Gansey saw it was this: If you had a special knack for finding things, it meant you owed the world to look.

Adam never needed an invitation. He and Ronan must’ve fought. Unsurprising. If it had a social security number, Ronan had fought with it.

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