Blue Lily, Lily Blue (3 page)
Read Blue Lily, Lily Blue Online
Authors: Maggie Stiefvater
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Legends; Myths; Fables, #Other, #Love & Romance, #Fantasy & Magic
Thank goodness we were tied together
, Blue thought.
Ronan’s arms were still locked around her; she felt them quivering. She didn’t know if it was from muscle strain or worry. He had not even hesitated before grabbing her.
I can’t let myself forget that.
“Gansey?” Adam repeated, and there was just an edge of something terrible behind it. He had spackled confidence too heavily over his anxiety for it to be invisible.
Three tugs. Blue felt them shiver through Adam to her.
Adam laid his face down on the mud in visible relief.
“What’s going on?” Ronan asked. “Where is he?”
“He must be hanging,” Adam replied, uncertainty letting his Henrietta accent snatch the last
g
from
hanging
. “The rope’s cutting me in half it’s pulling so hard. I can’t get closer to help. It’s slimy — his weight would just pull me in.”
Freeing herself from Ronan’s arms, Blue took an experimental step closer to where Gansey had disappeared. The rope between her and Adam slackened, but he slid no closer to the hole. Slowly, she said, “I think you can be a counterweight if you don’t move, Adam. Ronan, stay up here — if anything happens and I start slipping, can you anchor yourself?”
Ronan’s headlamp pointed at a muddy column. He nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to go over and take a look.”
She crept slowly past Adam. His fingers were hooked uselessly into the sloppy ground by his cheek.
She nearly fell into the hole.
No wonder Gansey hadn’t seen it. There was a rock ledge and then, just— nothing. She swept her headlamp back and forth and saw only inky black. The chasm was too wide to see the other side. Too deep to see the bottom.
The safety rope was visible, though, dark with mud, leading into the pit. Blue shone her flashlight into the black.
“Gansey?”
“I’m here.” Gansey’s voice was closer than she expected. Quieter than she expected, too. “I just — I believe I’m having a panic attack.”
“
You’re
having a panic attack? New rule: Everyone should give four tugs before suddenly disappearing. Have you broken anything?”
A long pause. “No.”
Something about the tone of the single syllable conveyed, all at once, that he had not been kidding about his fear.
Blue wasn’t sure that reassurance was her strong point, especially when she was the one who wanted it, but she tried. “It’ll be okay. We’re anchored up here. All you need to do is climb out. You’re not going to fall.”
“It’s not that.” His voice was a sliver. “There is something on my skin and it is reminding me of . . .”
He trailed off.
“Water,” Blue suggested. “Or mud. It’s everywhere. Say something again so I can point the flashlight at you.”
There was nothing but the sound of his breathing, jagged and afraid. She swept the flashlight beam again.
“Or mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are everywhere,” she said, voice bright.
No reply.
“There are over two dozen species of cave beetle,” she added. “I read that before we came today.”
Gansey whispered, “Hornets.”
Her heart contracted.
In the wash of adrenaline, she talked herself down: Yes, hornets could kill Gansey with just a sting, but no, there were not hornets in this cave. And today was not the day that Gansey was going to die, because she had
seen
his spirit on the day he died, and that spirit had been wearing an Aglionby sweater spattered with rain. Not a pair of khakis and a cheery yellow V-neck.
Her flashlight beam finally found him. He hung limply in his harness, head tilted down, hands over his ears. Her flashlight beam traced his heaving shoulders. They were spattered with mud and grime, but there were no insects on them.
She could breathe again.
“Look at me,” she ordered. “There are no hornets.”
“I know,” he muttered. “That’s why I said I
think
I’m having a panic attack. I
know
there are no hornets.”
What he wasn’t saying, but what they both knew, was that Cabeswater was a careful listener.
Which meant he needed to stop thinking about hornets.
“Well, you’re making me angry,” Blue said. “Adam is lying on his face in the mud for you. Ronan’s going home.”
Gansey laughed tonelessly. “Keep talking, Jane.”
“I don’t
want
to. I want you to just grab that rope and pull yourself up here like I know you’re perfectly capable of. What good does me
talking
do?”
He looked up at her then, his face streaked and unrecognizable. “It’s just that there’s something rustling down below me, and your voice drowns it out.”
A nasty shiver went down Blue’s spine.
Cabeswater was such a good listener.
“Ronan,” she called quietly over her shoulder. “New plan: Adam and I are going to pull Gansey out very quickly.”
“What! That is a fucking terrible idea,” Ronan said. “Why is that the plan?”
Blue didn’t want to shout it out loud.
Adam had been listening, though, and he said, quietly and clearly, “
Est aliquid in foramen.
I don’t know.
Apis? Apibus? Forsitan.
”
Latin hid nothing from Cabeswater; they only meant to spare Gansey.
“No,” Ronan said. “No, there is not. That is not what is down there.”
Gansey closed his eyes.
I saw him
, Blue thought.
I saw his spirit when he died, and this was not what he was wearing. This is not how it happens. It’s not now, it’s later, it’s later —
Ronan kept going, his voice louder. “No. Do you hear me, Cabeswater? You promised to keep me safe. Who are we to you? Nothing? If you let him die, that is
not keeping me safe.
Do you understand? If they die, I die, too.”
Now Blue could hear the humming sound from the pit, too.
Adam spoke up, voice half-muffled from the mud. “I made a deal with you, Cabeswater. I’m your hands and your eyes. What do you think I’ll see if he dies?”
The rustling grew. It sounded
numerous
.
It is not hornets
, Blue thought, wished, longed, dreamt.
Who are we to you, Cabeswater? Who am
I
to you?
Out loud, she said, “We’ve been making the ley line stronger. We have been making
you
stronger. And we’ll keep helping you, but you’ve got to help us —”
Blackness ate her flashlight beam, rising from the depths. The sound exploded. It was humming; it was wings. They filled the pit, hiding Gansey from view.
“Gansey!”
Blue shouted, or maybe it was Adam, or maybe it was Ronan.
Then something flapped against her face, and another something. A body careened off the wall. Off the ceiling. The beams of their headlamps were cut into a thousand flickering pieces.
The sound of their wings. The
sound
.
Not hornets.
Bats?
No.
Ravens.
This was not where ravens lived, and this was not how ravens behaved. But they burst and burst from the pit below Gansey. It seemed as if the flock would never end. Blue had the disorienting sensation that it had always been this way, ravens coursing all around them, feathers brushing her cheeks, claws scraping over her helmet. Then, suddenly, the ravens began to shout, back and forth, back and forth. It grew more and more sing-song, and then it resolved into words.
Rex Corvus, parate Regis Corvi.
The Raven King, make way for the Raven King.
Feathers rained down as the birds careened toward the cave mouth. Blue’s heart burst with how
big
it was, this moment, and no other.
Then there was silence, or at least not enough sound to be heard over Blue’s thudding heart. Feathers quivered in the mud beside Adam.
“Hold on,” Gansey said. “I’m coming out.”
A
dam Parrish was lonesome.
There is no good word for the opposite of
lonesome
.
One might be tempted to suggest
togetherness
or
contentment
, but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why
lonesome
cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean
solitude
, nor
alone
, nor
lonely
, although
lonesome
can contain all of those words in itself.
Lonesome
means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some.
Adam was not always alone, but he was always lonesome. Even in a group, he was slowly perfecting the skill of holding himself separate. It was easier than one might expect; the others allowed him to do it. He knew he was different since aligning himself more tightly with the ley line this summer. He was himself, but more powerful. Himself, but less human.
If he were them, he would silently watch him draw away, too. It was better this way. He had not fought with anyone for so long. He had not been angry for weeks.
Now, the day after their excursion into the cave of ravens, Adam drove his small, shitty car away from Henrietta, on his way to do Cabeswater’s work. Through the soles of his shoes, he felt the ley line’s slow pulse. If he didn’t actively focus on it, his heartbeat unconsciously synced up with it. There was something comforting and anxious about the way it twined through him now; he could no longer tell if it was merely a powerful friend or
if the power was now actually
him
.
Adam eyed the gas gauge warily. The car would make it back,
he thought, if he didn’t have to drive too far into the autumnal
mountains. He wasn’t yet sure what he was meant to do for
Cabeswater. Its needs came to him in restless nights and twinging days, slowly becoming visible like something floating to the
surface of a lake. The current feeling, a nagging sense of incompletion, wasn’t really clear yet, but school was about to start, and
he was hoping to get it taken care of before classes began. That
morning, he’d lined his bathroom sink with tinfoil, filled it with
water and scryed for clarification. He’d only managed to glimpse
a vague location.
The rest will come to me when I get closer. Probably.
Instead, though, as he drew nearer, his mind kept drifting
back to Gansey’s voice in the cave the day before. The tremulous
note in it. The fear — a fear so profound that Gansey could not
bring himself to climb out of the pit, though there was nothing
physically preventing him.
He had not known that Richard Gansey III had it in him to
be a coward.
Adam remembered crouching on the kitchen floor of his
parents’ double-wide, telling himself to take Gansey’s oft-repeated
advice to leave.
Just put what you need in the car, Adam.
But he had stayed. Hung in the pit of his father’s anger. A
coward, too.
Adam felt like he needed to reconfigure every conversation
he’d ever had with Gansey in light of this new knowledge. As the entrance for Skyline Drive came in to view, his
thoughts switched abruptly to Cabeswater. Adam had not been
to the park, but he knew from a lifetime in Henrietta that it was
a national park that stretched along the Blue Ridge Mountains,
following the ley line with an almost eerie precision. In front of
him, three lanes fed into three squat brown booths. A short line
of cars waited.
His gaze found the fee board. He hadn’t realized he needed
to pay to enter. Fifteen dollars.
Although he hadn’t been able to pinpoint a precise location
for Cabeswater’s task, he was sure it was on the other side of these
toll booths. There was no other way in.
But he also knew the contents of his pockets, and it was not
fifteen dollars.
I can come back another day.
He was so tired of doing things another day, another way, a
cheaper way, a day when Gansey could tidy the edges. This was
supposed to be something he could do by himself,
his
power as
the magician, tapped into the ley line.
But the ley line couldn’t get him through a toll plaza. If Gansey had been here, he would have breezily tossed
the bills out of the Camaro. He wouldn’t have even thought
about it.
One day
, Adam thought.
One day.
As he sat in line, he plucked his wallet free, and then, when
it failed to produce enough, he began digging for change under
the seats. It was a moment that would have been both easier
and worse if he’d been with Gansey, Ronan, and Blue. Because then IOUs would have had to be created, the
haves
assuring them it wasn’t necessary to be paid back, the
have-nots
insisting that
it was.
But since it was only Adam, lonesome Adam, he just silently
looked at the meager sum he’d managed to scrape together. $12.38.
He would not beg at the booth. He had very little of anything except for some damned dignity, and he couldn’t bring
himself to hand that through the driver’s side window. It would have to be another day.
He didn’t get angry. There was no one to get angry at. He
just allowed himself a brief moment of leaning his temple against
the driver’s side window, and then he pulled out of line and
backed onto the shoulder to turn around.
As he did, his attention was drawn to the vehicles still in line.
Two of the cars were exactly what Adam might imagine: a minivan with a young family in it, a sedan with a laughing college-aged
couple in it. But the third car was not quite right. It was a rental
car — he could see the barcode sticker stuck in the corner of the
windshield. Perhaps that was not strange; a tourist might fly in
and visit the park. But on the dashboard was a device Adam was
very familiar with: an electromagnetic frequency reader. Another
device sat next to it, although he wasn’t sure what that one was.
A geophone, maybe.
The sort of tools Gansey and the others had used for hunting for the ley line. The sort they’d used to find Cabeswater. Then he blinked, and the dashboard of the car was empty.
Had always been empty. It was just a rental car with a bored family in it. A month ago, Adam wouldn’t have understood why he was seeing things that weren’t real. But now he knew Cabeswater better, and he understood that what he had just seen
was
real — just real in a different place, or a different time. Someone else had come to Henrietta looking for the ley line.
M
apey neat downer,” Blue said, “to see how far it goes.” “How far
what
goes?” Gansey demanded. He
replayed her words, but they remained nonsense. “Lynch, turn that
down
.”
It had been several days since their trip into the cave of ravens and now they were on the way to the airport to pick up Dr. Roger Malory, international ley line expert and aged mentor of Gansey’s. Ronan lounged in the passenger seat. Adam keeled against a window in the back, his mouth parted in the unaware sleep of the exhausted. Blue sat behind Gansey, clutching his headrest in an effort to be heard.
“This
car
,” she despaired.
Gansey knew his reliable and enormous Suburban would have been a more logical choice for the trip, but he wanted the old Camaro to be the first thing the professor saw, not the expensive new SUV. The Camaro was shorthand for the person he had become, and he wanted, more than anything, for Malory to feel that person had been worth the trip. The professor did not fly, but he had flown three thousand miles for him. Gansey couldn’t fathom how to repay such a kindness, especially considering the circumstances under which he had left England.
“I said maybe we should just rappel down into that pit you helpfully found.” Blue’s voice warred with the engine and Ronan’s still-abusive electronica. It seemed impossible that Adam could
sleep through it.
“I just don’t —
Ronan.
My ears are bleeding!”
Ronan turned down the music.
Gansey started again. “I just can’t imagine why Glendower’s
men would have gone to the trouble of lowering him into that
hole. I just can’t, Jane.”
Even thinking about the pit made long-ago venom hum and
burn in his throat; effortlessly, he conjured the image of warningstriped insects prowling the thin skin between his fingers. He
had nearly forgotten how horrifying and compelling it was to
relive the moment.
Eyes on the road, Gansey.
“Maybe it’s a recent hole,” she suggested. “The collapsed roof
of a lower cavern.”
“If that’s true, we’d have to get
across
it, not
in
it. Ronan and I
would have to climb the walls like spiders. Unless you and Adam
have rock climbing experience I don’t know about.”
Outside the car, Washington, D.C., slunk closer; the deepblue sky got smaller. The widening interstate grew guardrails,
streetlights, BMWs, airport taxis. In the rearview mirror, Gansey
saw a corner of Blue’s face. Her wide-awake gaze snagged on
something outside, fast, and she craned to look out the window,
like this was another country.
It kind of was. He was, as ever, a reluctantly returning expatriate. He felt a pang, a longing to run, and it surprised him. It
had been a long time.
Blue said, “Ronan could dream a bridge for us.”
Ronan made a noise of glorious disdain.
“Don’t just snort at me! Tell me why not. You’re a magical
creature. Why can’t you do magic?”
With acidic precision, Ronan replied, “For starters, I’d have to
sleep right there by the pit, since I have to be touching something
to pull it out of a dream. And I’d have to know what was on the
other side to even know what kind of bridge to make. And then,
even if I pulled all that off, if I took something that big out of my
dream, it would drain the ley line, possibly making Cabeswater
disappear again, this time with us in it, sending us all to some
never-never land of time-space fuckery that we might never escape
from. I figured after the events of this summer, all this was selfevident, which was why I summed it up before like so —” Ronan repeated the noise of glorious disdain.
“Thanks for the super helpful alternative suggestions, Ronan
Lynch. Your contribution at the end of the world will be tallied
accordingly,” Blue said. She turned her attention back to Gansey,
persisting, “So, then, what? It has to be important, or Cabeswater
wouldn’t have shown it to us.”
That
, Gansey thought,
assumes Cabeswater’s priorities are the same as
ours.
Out loud, he said, “We find another way in. One that brings
us in on the other side of that hole. Since it’s not a normal cave —
it’s all tied in with the ley line — Malory can help us.” He couldn’t believe Malory was really here. He’d spent nearly
a year with the professor, the longest he had stayed anywhere, and
it had started to feel like there would never be a time when he
wasn’t searching. Now he was looking in a narrowing grave, and
somewhere in that vast darkness was Glendower and the end. Gansey felt off-kilter; time played in jittery fast-forward. In the rearview mirror, he caught Blue’s eyes by accident. Strangely enough, he saw his own thoughts reflected in her face: excitement and consternation. Casually, out of view of Ronan, making sure Adam was still sleeping, Gansey dangled his hand between the driver’s seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched
back to Blue.
This was not allowed.
He knew it was not allowed, by rules he himself had set. He
would not permit himself to play favorites between Adam and
Ronan; he and Blue couldn’t play favorites in this way, either. She
would not see the gesture, anyway. She would ignore it if she did.
His heart hummed.
Blue touched his fingertips.
Just this —
He pinched her fingers lightly, just for a moment, and then
he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. His chest
felt warm.
This was not allowed.
Ronan had not seen; Adam was still sleeping. The only casualty was his pulse.
“Your exit, dick!” Ronan snapped. Or
Dick
. It could have
been either, really.
Gansey steered in a hurry. Adam blinked awake. Ronan
swore. Gansey’s heart restarted.
Eyes on the road, Gansey.
At the airport, the professor was not waiting at the outdoor
passenger pick-up area as arranged, nor did he pick up his phone.
They finally found him sitting by the baggage carousel, near a
group of chattering people, a tower of luggage, and an irritablelooking service dog. He looked precisely as Gansey remembered him. There was something of a turtle in his visage, and he had not only one chin, but another waiting in line behind it. His nose and his ears appeared to be fashioned whimsically from rubber. The round bags beneath his eyes perfectly mirrored his round
brow lines. His expression was befuddled.
“Mr. Malory!” Gansey said gladly.
“Oh God,” Ronan said under his breath. “He’s so
old
.” Adam punched Ronan, saving Gansey the trouble. “Gansey,” Malory said, clasping hands with him. “What a
relief.”
“I’m terribly sorry to keep you waiting — I called!” “My blasted phone. The battery on these things is rubbish.
It is like a conspiracy to sell us something. Blood pressure medication, possibly. Are airplanes always like that? So full of
people
?” “I’m afraid so,” Gansey said. Out of the corner of his eye, he
noticed that Adam was regarding Malory in a not entirely
Adam
sort of way, his head cocked, pensive concentration in his eyes.
Disconcerted, Gansey hurried on. “Let me introduce you. These
are my friends: Ronan, Adam Parrish, and Jane.”
Adam’s expression focused. Became Adam-like. He blinked
over to Gansey.
“Blue,” Blue corrected.
“Oh, yes, you are blue,” Malory agreed. “How perceptive you
are. What was the name? Jane? This is the lady I spoke to on the
phone all those months ago, right? How small she is. Are you
done growing?”
“What!”
Blue said.
Gansey felt it was time to remove Malory from the terminal.
“Which of these is your bag?”
“All of them,” Malory said tragically.
Ronan was trying his best to meaningfully catch Gansey’s
eye, but Gansey wouldn’t let him. The teens collected the bags.
The service dog got up.
Blue, friend to all canines, said, “Whoa there, fellow. You
stay here.”
“Oh, no,” Malory protested. “The Dog is mine.” They eyed the Dog. It wore a smart blue vest that advertised
its usefulness without providing further details.
“Okay,” Gansey said.
He avoided another meaningful look from Ronan. On the
curb outside, they all stopped for Malory to remove the Dog’s
vest and then they watched the Dog relieve itself on the sign for
the rental car shuttle.
Ronan asked, “What’s the Dog for?”
Malory’s turtle mouth got very small. “He is a service animal.” “What nature of service does he provide?”
“Excuse
you
,” Malory replied.
Gansey avoided a third meaningful look from both Adam
and Malory.
They reached the car, which had gotten no larger since they
entered the terminal. Gansey disliked confronting the consequences of his folly so directly.
Ladies and gentlemen, my trick for you today will be to take this 1973
Camaro —
Removing the spare tire from the trunk, Gansey abandoned
it beside a streetlight. The price of Malory’s visit.
— and fit five people, a dog, and a hell of a lot of luggage inside.
After performing this magic trick, he sank into the driver’s seat. The Dog was panting anxiously. Gansey knew how it felt.
“May I pet her? Him?” Blue asked.
“Yes,” Malory replied. “But he won’t enjoy it. He’s very highly strung.”
Gansey allowed Blue to exchange a meaningful glance with him in the rearview mirror as they got back onto the interstate.
“The food on the plane was appalling; it is amazing the staff has not perished of bleeding ulcers,” said Malory. He slapped Gansey’s arm so suddenly that both Gansey and the Dog jumped in surprise. “Do you know anything about the drapery that was lost to the English in Mawddwy?”
“Drapery? Oh.
Oh.
It had women with red hands on it? I thought they’d decided it was a flag,” Gansey said.
“Yes, yes, that’s the very one. You
are
good!”
Gansey thought he was no better than one would expect after seven years of fairly single-minded study, but he appreciated the sentiment. He raised his voice so as to include the backseat in the conversation. “It’s actually very interesting. The English pursued some of Glendower’s men, and though they got away, the English got ahold of this ancient drapery. Flag, whatever. The red hands are interesting because red hands are associated with the
Mab Darogan
, a mythic title. It was given to people like King Arthur and Llewellyn the Great and of course Owain Lawgoch —”
“Of course,” echoed Ronan sarcastically. “Of course Owain Lawgoch.”
“Don’t be such a shitbag,” Adam murmured.
“This lane ends,” Blue said.
“So it does,” Gansey said, merging. “Anyway, the
Mab Darogan
was a kind of Welsh ‘Son of Destiny.’”
Malory broke in, “Blame the poets. It’s easier to stir people to rebellion if they think they’re on the side of a demigod or some chosen one. Never trust a poet. They —”
Gansey interrupted, “The flag was destroyed, right? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.”
“It’s quite all right,” Malory said, and sounded as if it was more than all right. This — plucking threads from the tight weave of history— was their common ground. Gansey was relieved to realize their relationship was still intact, just built upon a very different foundation than his relationship with the people currently in the backseat. As a Honda blew past them, its occupants giving Gansey the finger, the professor continued, “It was indeed thought destroyed. Repurposed, really. Skidmore wrote that it was made into nightgowns for Henry IV, though I couldn’t find
his
sources.”
“Nightgowns!” repeated Blue. “Why
nightgowns
?”
Gansey said, “For maximum ignominy.”
“No one knows what
ignominy
means, Gansey,” Adam muttered.
“Disgrace,” supplied Malory. “Destruction of dignity. Much like airplane travel. But the drapery was, in fact, just rediscovered this past week.”
Gansey swerved. “You’re joking!”
“It’s in terrible shape — textiles don’t preserve nicely, as you well know. And it took them forever to suss out what it was. Now, now, get off at this exit, Gansey, so I can show you this. By curious accident, the drapery was found under a barn in Kirtling. Flooding cut a deep path through the topsoil, which revealed the edge of an older foundation. Meters and meters of dirt were dislodged.”
Adam asked, “All that water didn’t destroy the flag?”
The professor swiveled. “Exactly the question! By a trick of physics, the water didn’t fill the foundation but instead managed to cut a separate course slightly uphill! And in answer to your unasked question, yes! The barn was located on a ley line.”
“That was the very question I was about to ask,” Ronan said.
“Ronan,” Blue said, “don’t be such a shitbag.”
Gansey caught a corner of Adam’s laugh in the rearview mirror as he pulled into a parking spot at a bedraggled gas station. Malory had produced an old digital camera from some place on his person and was now clicking back through the photos on it. “They’re now blaming the flooding on a flash thunderstorm or somesuch. But people who were
there
say it was because the walls of the barn were weeping.”
“Weeping!” exclaimed Blue. It was impossible to tell if she was horrified or delighted.
“What do you believe?” Gansey asked.
In response, Malory simply handed him the camera. Gansey looked at the display.
“Oh,” he said.
The photo showed a badly degraded textile painted with three women, each in simple robes from a time well before Glendower. They stood in identical poses, hands lifted on either side of their heads, palms bloody red, heralding the
Mab Darogan
.
They each wore Blue Sargent’s face.
Impossible.
But no. Nothing was impossible these days. He zoomed the photo larger for a better look. Blue’s wide eyes looked back at him. Stylized, yes, but still, the resemblance was uncanny: her dubious eyebrows, her curious mouth. He pressed a knuckle to his lips as hornets hissed in his ears.
He was suddenly overwhelmed, as he had not been in a long time, with the memory of the voice in his head as his life was saved.
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.
He was filled with the need to see Glendower himself, to touch his hand, to kneel before him, to thank him, to be him.
Hands reached from the back; he didn’t know whose they were. He let them take the camera.
Blue murmured something he didn’t catch. Adam whispered, “She looks like you.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
“Fuck me,” Ronan said, voicing all of their thoughts.
“The photo is so close,” Gansey said finally. “The quality is excellent.”
“Well, of course,” Malory answered. “Don’t you understand? That is the barn outside my holiday cottage. I was the one who saw the tears. My team found the drapery.”
Gansey struggled to piece this together. “How did you know to look there?”
“That, Gansey, is the thing. I wasn’t looking for anything. I was on a well-deserved holiday. After the summer I had, battling that wretched Simmons neighbor about his beastly sewage issue, I was in desperate need of some time away. I assure you, my presence in Kirtling was a coincidence.”
“Coincidence,” echoed Adam, dubious.
What was this thing, this huge thing? Gansey was alive with anticipation and fear. The enormity of it felt like the black pit in the cave — he could see neither the bottom nor the other side.
“I must say, Gansey,” Malory said brightly. “I am so excited to meet your ley line.”
