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Blue asked, "Is it as painful as conversations with Ronan?"
Gansey cast a glance over to Ronan, who was a small, indistinct form by the trees. Adam audibly swallowed a laugh.
"Depends on if Ronan is sober," Gansey answered.
Adam asked, "What is he doing, anyway?"
"Peeing. "
"Trust Lynch to deface a place like this five minutes after getting here. "
"Deface? Marking his territory. "
"He must own more of Virginia than your father, then. "
"I don’t think he’s ever used an indoor toilet, now that I consider it. "
This all seemed very manly and Aglionby to Blue, this calling of one another by last names and bantering about outdoor urinary habits. It also seemed like it could go on for a long time, so she interrupted, changing the subject back to Glendower. "They’d really go to all this trouble to hide his body?"
Gansey said, "Well, Ned Kelly. "
He delivered the nonsensical statement so matter-of-factly that Blue felt abruptly stupid, as if maybe the public school system really was lacking.
Then Adam said, with a glance toward Blue, "Nobody knows who Ned Kelly is, either, Gansey. "
"Really?" Gansey asked, so innocently startled by this that it was clear that Adam had been right before — he hadn’t meant to be condescending. "He was an Australian outlaw. When the British caught him, they did awful things with his body. I think the chief of police used his head as a paperweight for a while. Just think what Glendower’s enemies would do to him! If the Welsh wanted a shot at Glendower being resurrected, they would’ve wanted his body unmolested. "
"Why the mountains, then?" Blue insisted. "Why isn’t he right on the shore?"
This seemed to remind Gansey of something, because instead of replying to her, he turned to Adam. "I called Malory about that ritual, to see if he’d tried it. He said he didn’t think it could be performed just anywhere on the ley line. He guessed it had to be done on the ‘heart’ of it, where the most energy is. I’m thinking that someplace like that is also where they’d want Glendower. "
Adam turned to Blue. "What about your energy?"
The question took her by surprise. "What?"
"You said that you made things louder for other psychics," Adam said. "Is that about energy?"
Blue was absurdly pleased that he remembered, and also absurdly pleased that he’d replied to her instead of Gansey, who was now swatting gnats out of his eyes and waiting for her response.
"Yes," she said. "I guess I make things that need energy stronger. I’m like a walking battery. "
"You’re the table everyone wants at Starbucks," Gansey mused as he began to walk again.
Blue blinked. "What?"
Over his shoulder, Gansey said, "Next to the wall plug. " He pressed the EMF reader into the side of a tree and observed both objects with great interest.
Adam shook his head at Blue. To Gansey, he said, "I’m saying that she could maybe turn a regular part of the ley line into a doable place for the ritual. Wait, are we going in the woods? What about Helen?"
"It hasn’t been two seconds," Gansey said, although it clearly had been. "That’s an interesting idea about the energy. Though — can your battery get drained? By things other than conversations about prostitution?"
She didn’t dignify this comment with an immediate response. Instead, she thought about how her mother had said there was nothing to fear from the dead, and how Neeve had seemed disbelieving. The church watch had obviously taken something from her; maybe there were worse consequences that she had yet to discover.
"Well, this is interesting," Gansey remarked. He straddled a tiny stream at the very edge of the trees. It was really just water that had bubbled up from an underground source, soaking the grass. Gansey’s attention was focused entirely on the EMF reader he held directly above the water. The meter was pegged.
"Helen," Adam said warningly. Ronan had rejoined them, and both boys looked in the direction of the helicopter.
"I said this is interesting," Gansey repeated.
"And I said Helen. "
"Just a couple of yards. "
"She’ll be angry. "
Gansey’s expression was baleful, and Blue could see immediately that Adam wouldn’t hold out against it.
"I did tell you," Adam said.
The stream trickled sluggishly out of the woods from between two diamond-barked dogwoods. With Gansey in the lead, they all followed the water into the trees. Immediately, the temperature dropped several degrees. Blue hadn’t realized how much insect noise there was in the field until it was replaced by occasional birdsong under the trees. This was a beautiful, old wood, all massive oak and ash trees finding footing among great slabs of cracked stone. Ferns sprang from rocks and verdant moss grew up the sides of the tree trunks. The air itself was scented with green and growing and water. The light was golden through the leaves. Everything was alive, alive.
She breathed. "This is lovely. "
It was for Adam, not Gansey, but she saw Gansey glance over his shoulder at her. Beside him, Ronan was curiously muted, something about his posture defensive.
"What are we even looking for?" Adam asked.
Gansey was a bloodhound, the EMF reader leading him along the widening stream. The moving water had become too wide to straddle, and now it ran in a bed of pebbles and sharp fragments of rock and, strangely enough, a few of the oyster shells. "What we’re always looking for. "
Adam warned, "Helen is going to hate you. "
"She’ll text me if she gets too mad," Gansey said. To demonstrate, he slid his phone out of his pocket. "Oh — there’s no signal. "
Given their location in the mountains, the lack of signal was unsurprising, but Gansey stopped short. While the four of them made an uneven circle, he thumbed through the screens on his phone. In his other hand, the EMF reader glowed solid red. His voice sounded a little strange when he asked, "Is anyone else wearing a watch?"
Weekends were not generally days of precise timing for Blue, so she was not, and Ronan had only his few knotted leather strands around his arm. Adam lifted his wrist. He wore a cheap-looking watch with a grubby band.
"I am," he said, adding ruefully, "but it doesn’t seem to be working. "
Without speaking, Gansey turned the face of his phone to them. It was set to the clock function, and it took Blue a moment to realize that none of the hands were moving. For a long moment the four of them just looked at the three still hands on the phone’s clock face. Blue’s heart marked off every second the clock didn’t.
"Is it —" Adam started, and then stopped. He tried again, "Is it because the power is being affected from the energy of the line?"
Ronan’s voice was cutting. "Affecting your watch? Your windup watch?"
"It’s true," Gansey answered. "My phone’s still on. So’s the reader. It’s only that the time has … I wonder if …"
But there were no answers, and they all knew it.
"I want to go on," Gansey said. "Just a little farther. "
He waited to see if they would stop him. No one said anything, but as Gansey set off again, clambering over the top of a slab of stone, Ronan beside him, Adam glanced at Blue. His expression asked, Are you okay?
She was okay, but in the way she’d been okay before the helicopter. It was not that she was scared of flashing lights on the EMF reader or Adam’s watch refusing to work, but she hadn’t gotten out of bed in the morning expecting to encounter a place where possibly time didn’t work.
Blue stretched her hand out.
Adam took it without hesitation, like he’d been waiting for her to offer it. He said in a low voice, just for her, "My heart is beating like crazy right now. "
Strangely enough, it was not his fingers twined in hers that affected Blue the strongest, it was where his warm wrist pressed against hers above their hands.
I need to tell him he can’t kiss me, she th
ought.
But not yet. Right now, she wanted to feel his skin pressed against hers, both of their pulses rapid and uncertain.
Hand in hand, they climbed after Gansey. The trees grew even larger, some of them grown together into trunks like castles, turreted and huge. The canopy soared high overhead, rustling and reverent. Everything was green, green, green. Somewhere ahead, water splashed.
For one brief moment, Blue thought she heard music.
"Noah?"
Gansey’s voice sounded forlorn. He’d stopped by a mighty beech tree and now he searched around himself. Catching up to him, Blue realized he’d stopped by the shore of a mountain pool that fed the stream they’d been following. The pool was only a few inches deep and perfectly clear. The water was so transparent that it begged to be touched.
"I thought I heard —" Gansey broke off. His eyes dropped to where Adam held Blue’s hand. Again, his face was somehow puzzled by the fact of their hand-holding. Adam’s grip tightened, although she didn’t think he meant for it to.
This was a wordless discussion, too, though she didn’t think either of the boys knew what they were trying to say.
Gansey turned to the pool of water. In his hand, the EMF reader had gone dark. Crouching, he hovered his free hand over the water. His fingers were spread wide, millimeters from the surface. Beneath his hand, the water shifted and darkened, and Blue realized that there were a thousand tiny fish just underneath. They flashed silver and then black as they moved, clinging to the faint shadow he cast.
Adam asked, "How are there fish here?"
The stream they’d followed into the woods was far too shallow for fish, and above them, the pool seemed to be fed by rainfall from higher up the mountain. Fish didn’t come from the sky.
Gansey replied, "I don’t know. "
The fish tumbled and coursed over one another, ceaselessly moving, tiny enigmas. Again, Blue thought she heard music, but when she looked at Adam, she thought perhaps it had just been the sound of his breathing.
Gansey looked up to them, and she saw in his face that he loved this place. His bald expression held something new: not the raw delight of finding the ley line or the sly pleasure of teasing Blue. She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars.
Just like that, he was a little bit closer to the Gansey that Blue had seen in the churchyard, and she found she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Instead, she pulled her hand free from Adam to go to the beech tree Gansey stood beside. Carefully, she stepped over the exposed knots of the beech’s roots, and then she laid her palm on its smooth, gray bark. Like the tree behind her house, this beech’s bark was as cold as winter and oddly comforting.
"Adam. " This was Ronan’s voice, and she heard Adam’s footsteps moving cautiously and slowly around the edge of the pool toward it. The sound of snapping branches became softer as he moved farther away.