Adam was quiet as he weighed the options. His face was strange and delicate in the sharp light of Gansey’s head beam. Swiftly, and without explanation, he reached out to touch the cavern wall. Although he was not a dream thing, he was now one of Cabeswater’s things, and it was hard not to see it in the way his fingers spidered across the wall and in the blackness of his eyes as they gazed at nothing.
Blue said, “Is he also …”
Possessed.
None of them wanted to say it.
Ronan lifted a finger to his lips.
Adam seemed to listen to the walls — who is this person, is he still your friend, what did he give to Cabeswater, what does he become, why does terror grow so much better away from the sun — and then he said, cautiously, “I vote we go on. I think the frightening is a side effect, not the intention. I think Chainsaw is meant to lure us in.”
So they went on.
Down, and down, a more crooked path than the cavern in Cabeswater. That passage had clearly been worn by water, while this one seemed unnatural, clawed out instead of formed. Ahead of them, Chainsaw cawed. It was a strange, daytime sound to hear from the blackness ahead.
“Chainsaw?” Ronan called, voice rough.
“Kerah!” came the reply, from not too far away. This was the bird’s special name for Ronan.
“Thank goodness,” Blue said.
Gansey, at the head, spotted her first, clinging to a ledge in the rock wall, scrabbling with one foot and flapping a little to keep her position. She didn’t flee as he approached, and when he held out his arm to her, she flew to him, landing heavily. She seemed no worse the wear for her possession. He half-turned. “Here’s your bird, Lynch.”
Ronan’s voice was odd. “And there’s your tomb, Gansey.”
He was looking past Gansey.
Gansey turned. They stood at a stone door. It could have been a door to many things, but it was not. It was a carved tomb door — a stone armored knight with hands crossed over his breast. His head rested on two ravens, his feet, on fleurs-de-lis. He held a shield. Glendower’s shield, with three ravens.
But this was wrong.
It was not wrong because this was not how Gansey would have expected Glendower’s tomb to look. It was wrong because it was not supposed to happen this way, on this day, when his eyes hurt from sleeplessness and it drizzled outside and it was a cave they had only found a few days before.
It was supposed to be a clue, and then another clue, and then another clue.
It was not supposed to be thirty minutes of walking and a tomb door, just like that.
But it was.
“It can’t be,” Adam said, finally, from the back.
“Do we just — push it open?” Blue asked. She, too, sounded uncertain. This was not how it worked. It was the looking, not the finding.
“I feel peculiar about this,” Gansey said finally. “It feels wrong for there to be no … ceremony.”
Be excited.
He turned back to the tomb door as the others drew close. Withdrawing his phone, he took several photos. Then, after a pause, he typed in some location notes as well.
“God, Gansey,” Ronan said, but it had made Gansey feel a little better about himself.
Carefully, he touched the seam around the effigy of the knight. The rock was cool, solid, real; his fingers came away dusted. This was happening. “I don’t think it’s sealed. I think it’s just wedged in. Leverage, maybe?”
Adam ran a finger along the edge. “Not much. It’s not in very tightly.”
He thought about the fact of the three sleepers, one to be woken, one to stay asleep. Would they know if this was the one to leave undisturbed? Surely — because if it was Maura’s job to not wake this sleeper, there would be signs of her here.
But he didn’t know. There wasn’t a way to know.
Everything about this day was tinged by indecision and uncertainty.
Suddenly, the wall exploded in.
As dust swirled in the air and they fell back, coughing, Blue said, “Ronan Lynch!”
Ronan rebalanced in the midst of the slowly clearing cloud; he had kicked the tomb door in.
“That,” he said thinly, to no one in particular, “was for taking my bird.”
“Ronan, tell me now if I have to leash you, because I will,” Gansey said. Ronan immediately scoffed, but Gansey pointed at him. “I’m serious. This is not yours alone. If this is a tomb, someone has been buried here, and you’re going to give that person respect. Do not. Make me. Ask you. Again. For that matter, if any of us thinks they won’t be able to contain themselves going forward, I suggest we turn around and come back another day or the party in question waits out here.”
Ronan simmered.
“Don’t, Lynch,” Gansey said. “I’ve done this for seven years, and this is the first time I’ll have to leave a place looking worse because I’ve been there. Don’t make me wish I’d come without you.”
This, finally, made it through the steel to Ronan’s heart. His head ducked.
In they went.
It was like they had walked back into the past.
The entire room was carved and painted. The colors were unfaded by the sun: royal blue; berry purple; ruddy, bloody red. The carvings were sectioned into windows or arcades, bounded by lilies and ravens, columns and pillars. Saints looked down, watchful and regal. Martyrs were speared and shot, burned and impassioned. Carved hounds chased hares chased hounds again. On the wall hung a pair of gauntlets, a helmet, a breastplate.
It was too much.
“Jesus,” breathed Gansey. He stretched his fingers to touch the breastplate and then found he couldn’t. He drew his hand back.
He was not ready for it to be over.
He was ready for it to be over.
In the middle of the tomb was a stone coffin, waist-high, the sides heavily carved. A stone effigy of Glendower lay on top, his helmeted head pillowed on three carved ravens.
Do you remember saving my life?
Blue said, “Look at all the birds.”
She trailed her flashlight over the walls and coffin. Everywhere, the beam found feathers. Wings garnishing the coffin. Beaks plucking fruit. Ravens sparring over shields.
The light landed on Adam’s face. His eyes were narrowed and wary. Beside him, Ronan looked strangely hostile, Chainsaw hunched down on his shoulder. Blue took Gansey’s phone from his pocket and took photos of the walls, the coffin, Gansey.
Gansey’s eyes dragged back to the coffin. Glendower’s coffin.
Is this really happening?
Everything was sideways, mirrored, not exactly as he’d imagined it.
He said, “What are we doing?”
“I think between all of us, we should be able to leverage the lid off,” Adam replied.
But that wasn’t what Gansey meant. He meant: What are we doing? We, of all people?
With a little, unfunny laugh, Blue said, “My hands are clammy.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder. Gansey counted down, a breathless three-two-one, and then they strained. Unsuccessfully. It was like they were trying to shift the cavern itself.
“It’s not even wiggling,” Gansey said.
“Let’s try the other side.”
As they moved to the other side and lifted, fingers barely finding purchase, lid unmoving, Gansey could not help but think of the old fairy tales. He imagined this wasn’t an ordinary weight holding the lid down; rather, it was unworthiness. They had not proven themselves in some way, and so Glendower was barred from them still.
He was relieved, somehow. That, at least, felt right.
“They didn’t have heavy lifting equipment,” Ronan said.
“But they could’ve had ropes and pulleys,” Blue noted. “Or more people. Move over, I can’t get my other hand on it.”
“I’m not sure it’ll make a difference,” Gansey said, but they all pushed closer together. Her body was crushed against his. Ronan was crushed against Adam on the other side
of him.
There was silence except for their breathing.
Blue said, “Three, two —” and they lifted as one.
The lid came off, suddenly weightless in comparison. It shifted and slid rapidly away.
“Grab it!” Blue gasped. Then, as Gansey started forward, “No, wait, don’t!”
There was a sick, wrenching sound as the lid scraped diagonally off the opposite side of the coffin and careened to the floor. It came to rest with a smaller but more destructive sound, like a fist hitting bone.
“It’s cracked,” Adam said.
They drew closer. A coarse cloth hid the interior of the coffin from view.
This is not right.
Suddenly, Gansey felt deadly calm. This moment was so opposite to how his vision had portrayed it that his anxiety vanished. In its wake was nothing at all. He whisked the cloth free.
None of them moved.
At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at. The shape of it was alien; he couldn’t put it together.
“He’s facedown?” Blue suggested, but hesitantly.
Because of course that was what it was, now that she’d said it. A figure in a dark surcoat, purple or red, shoulder blades jutted toward them. A mass of dark hair, more than Gansey had expected, darker than he would’ve expected. His hands were bound behind his back.
Bound?
Bound.
Something uneasy spasmed inside Gansey.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Adam flicked the flashlight over the length of the coffin. Glendower’s surcoat was hitched, exposing pale legs. Bound at the knee. Facedown, hands tied, knees tied. This was how they buried witches. Suicides. Criminals. Prisoners. Gansey’s hand hovered, pulled away. It wasn’t that his courage had left him; his certainty had.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Adam swept the flashlight again.
Blue said, “Ah …” and then changed her mind.
The hair moved.
“Jesus shit Mary fuck,” said Ronan.
“Rats?” Adam suggested, a suggestion so hideous that both Gansey and Blue recoiled. Then the hair moved again, and a terrible sound issued from inside the coffin. A scream?
A laugh.
The shoulders jerked, shifting the body in the coffin so that the head could turn to see them. As Gansey caught a glimpse of the face, his heart sped and then stopped. He was relieved and horrified.
It wasn’t Glendower.
He said, “It’s a woman.”
The woman didn’t wait for them to free her.
She wriggled and shimmied as they leapt back, and then she crashed down onto the floor, her hands and legs still bound. She landed right by Ronan’s feet and snapped at his toes with a wild laugh.
He and Chainsaw both flapped back.
Blue exchanged a hectic look with Adam.
And now the woman was singing:
“Queens and kings
Kings and queens
Blue lily, lily blue
Crowns and birds
Swords and things
Blue lily, lily blue”
She broke off with a hysterical laugh that perfectly matched the one that had come out of Chainsaw earlier. Rolling onto her back so that she was looking straight up at Ronan’s disgusted features, she cooed, “Cut me free, raven prince.”
“God,” he said, “what are you?”
She laughed again. “Oh! My rescuer came riding on a milk-white steed and he said fair lady I can bring you what you need —”
Ronan wore an expression nearly identical to the one he’d worn when they picked up Malory. “She’s crazy.”
Gansey said, very calmly, “Don’t touch her.” Before, when they’d thought it was Glendower, he’d seemed badly shaken, but now he had more than recovered. Blue’s heart was still charging from when the coffin lid had fallen and when the woman had slithered out. It wasn’t that she wanted Gansey to be the boss of her, but she was relieved that he was going to at least be the boss of this moment, while she convinced her pulse to slow.
He made his way around the coffin to where the woman lay.
Now that she was faceup, Blue could see that she was young, in her twenties, perhaps. Her hair was enormous, raven black and wild, and her skin was as pale as the dead. Her surcoat was possibly the most incredible thing about her, because it was real. It did not look like a medieval costume. It looked like a real piece of clothing, because it was a real piece of clothing.
Gansey leaned over her and asked, in his polite, powerful way, “Who are you?”
“One wasn’t enough!” she shrieked. “They sent another! How many young men are in my chamber? Please tell me it’s three, the number of the divine. Are you going to untie me? It’s very rude to keep a woman bound for any more than two or three or seven generations.”
Gansey’s voice was even calmer, or perhaps it was unchanged, and only seemed calmer in comparison to her rising cadence. “Was it you who possessed my friend’s raven?”
She smiled at him and sang, “All maidens young and fair, listen to your fathers —”
“That’s what I thought,” Gansey said, and straightened. He glanced to the others. “I don’t think it’s a wise idea to untie her.”
“Ah! Are you afraid?” she jeered. “Did you hear that I’m a witch? I have three breasts! I have a tail, and horns! I am a giant down below. Oh, I’d be afraid of me, too, young knight. I could get you pregnant! Run! Run!”
“Let’s leave her,” Ronan said.
Gansey replied, “If we abandoned people in caves because they were crazy, you’d still be back in Cabeswater. Give me your knife.”
Ronan said, “I lost it.”
“How did you — never mind.”
“I have one,” Blue said, feeling smug and useful. She produced her pink switchblade as the woman’s gray eyes rolled up to look at her. Blue was rather afraid the woman would sing at her, but she just smiled, wide and knowing.
“I thought these were illegal?” Gansey asked, kneeling beside the woman. He seemed so unperturbed now, as if he were calmly dealing with a wild animal. He sliced the straps around the woman’s knees, but left her hands bound.
“They are,” Blue answered Gansey, but she didn’t look away from the woman’s eyes. The woman was still smiling, smiling, as if she were waiting for Blue to break and look away. But Blue had good practice with this, thanks to Ronan. So she just kept frowning back. She wanted to ask the woman how she spoke English, and who she was, and was she okay after being in a box for quite a while, but the woman didn’t really seem like a question-answering sort.
“I’m going to help you up,” Gansey told the woman, “but if you bite me, I’m putting you back in that coffin. Do you understand?”
“Oh, you little rooster,” said the woman. “You remind me of my father. Which is too bad.”
Ronan was still staring at the woman, aghast, so Blue hurried forward to help Gansey. The woman was both warmer and realer than Blue had imagined. She was very tall; probably she’d eaten her greens. As Blue lifted her by an elbow, her enormously vertical nest of black hair tickled Blue’s face, smelling of dirt and metal. She sang a little song about gifts and kings and internal organs.
“Okay, Gansey,” Adam said warily, “what’s your plan now?”
“We take her out, obviously,” Gansey said. He turned to the woman. “Unless you’d prefer to stay.”
She rolled her head back so that her hair crushed down flat upon his shoulder and her face was inches from his. “Does the sun still exist?” the woman asked.
Gansey used her hair to remove her head from his shoulder. “As of a few hours ago.”
“Then take me! Take me!”
Adam was just shaking his head.
“I cannot wait,” Ronan said, “to hear you explain this to Malory.”
The clouds had disappeared when they emerged, replaced by a sky so bright and blue and wind-seared that they all had to duck their heads agai
nst the grit hurled through the air. The wind was so ferocious that it snapped Blue’s bangs painfully against her cheeks. A flock of crows or ravens flew high overhead, tossed and catapulted. Ronan held Chainsaw to his chest as if she were still a young raven, protecting her from the wind.
As they walked back toward the Dittley house, leaning into the gusts, rain spattered intermittently out of the cloudless sky. Adam reached to wipe it from his cheek, and Blue said, “Adam, your face —”
Adam pulled his finger away; the tip was red. Blue held out her hand to catch another stray drop. Red.
“Blood,” Ronan said, sounding factual rather than concerned.
Blue shuddered. “Whose?”
Gansey studied a red spatter on the shoulder of his jacket, lips parted in astonishment.
“Gansey,” Adam called, pointing. “Look.”
They stopped in the middle of the beaten-down grass to gaze into the bright day sky. On the horizon, something glinted furiously, like the sun off a faraway plane. Blue shielded her eyes and saw that the object had a fiery tail. She couldn’t quite imagine what it would be, so visible in this bright daytime.
“A plane crash?” she asked.
“A comet,” Ronan said with certainty.
“A comet?” echoed Adam.
Blue was more afraid now than when they’d been in possible danger in the cave. What were they doing?
“It starts!” the woman shouted. “It starts again! Round and round and round!”
She twirled in the field, her hands still bound behind her back. In the sunlight, the woman’s regal beauty was more apparent. She had a rather large nose that was lovely in shape, sloping cheeks and forehead, dark quizzical eyebrows, and of course that impossibly tall hair snarling out above her already tall body. Her purple-red robe was like a smear of paint in the field.
Gansey watched the heavenly body burn a slow trail across the blue. He said, “Signs and portents. A comet was seen in 1402, when Glendower was beginning to rise.”
“Ha!” shouted the woman. “Rise, rise, rise! Plenty of blood to be had then, too, plenty of blood to be had by all!”
This last bit had fallen into song once more.
Adam grabbed the woman’s shoulder, stopping her from spinning. She rolled her body away from his hand like a drunk dancer and then fixed him with a wild-eyed gaze.