Adam had said, “We have to earn Cabeswater’s trust before we go into the cave.”
Blue didn’t understand what it meant for Adam to be so connected to the forest, to have promised to be its hands and eyes. She suspected that sometimes, Adam didn’t, either. But under his advice, the group had returned again and again to the forest, walking between the trees, exploring carefully, taking nothing. Walking around the cave that might hold both Glendower — and Maura.
Mom.
The note she’d left more than a month before had not indicated when she intended to return. It hadn’t indicated whether or not she intended to return at all. So it was impossible to tell if she was still gone because she was in trouble or because she didn’t want to come home. Did other people’s mothers vanish into holes in the ground during their midlife crises?
“I don’t dream,” Noah Czerny said. He was dead, so he probably didn’t sleep, either. “So I think it must be real.”
Real, but theirs, just theirs.
For a few more minutes, or hours, or days — what was time, here? — they lazed.
A little away from the group, Ronan’s younger brother, Matthew, nattered away to their mother, Aurora, happy for this visit. The two of them were golden-haired and angelic, both of them looking like inventions of this place. Blue longed to hate Aurora because of her origin — literally dreamt up by her husband — and because she had the attention span and intellectual prowess of a puppy. But the truth was that she was endlessly kind and upbeat, as compulsively lovable as her youngest son.
She wouldn’t abandon her daughter right before senior year.
The most infuriating part about Maura’s disappearance was that Blue didn’t know if she was supposed to be consumed by worry or anger. She vacillated wildly between the two, occasionally burning herself out and feeling nothing at all.
How could she do this to me now?
Blue lay her cheek against a boulder covered with warm moss, trying to keep her thoughts even and pleasant. The same ability that amplified clairvoyance also heightened Cabeswater’s strange magic, and she didn’t want to cause another earthquake or start a stampede.
Instead, she began a conversation with the trees.
She thought about birds singing — thought or wished or longed or dreamt. It was a thought turned on its side, a door left cracked in her mind. She was getting better at telling when she was doing it right.
A strange bird trilled high and off-key above her.
She thought-wished-longed-dreamt of leaves rustling.
Overhead, the trees shushed their leaves, forming vague, whispered words. Avide audimus.
She thought of a spring flower. A lily, blue, like her name.
A blue petal fell aimlessly into her hair. Another dropped onto the back of her hand, slipping down her wrist like a kiss.
Gansey’s eyes opened as petals landed lightly on his cheeks. As his lips parted, ever-wondering, a petal landed directly on his mouth. Adam craned his head back to watch the floral, fragrant rain drift down around them, slow-motion butterflies of blue.
Blue’s heart exploded with furious joy.
It’s real, it’s real, it’s real —
Ronan looked at Blue, eyes narrowed. She didn’t look away.
This was a game she sometimes played with Ronan Lynch: Who would look away first?
It was always a draw.
He had changed over the summer, and now Blue felt less unequal in the group. Not because she knew Ronan any better — but because she felt as if maybe Gansey and Adam now knew him less. He challenged them all to learn him again.
Gansey pushed himself up onto his elbows; petals tumbled from him as if he had been awoken from a long sleep. “Okay. I think it’s time. Lynch?”
Rising, Ronan went to stand starkly beside his mother and brother; Matthew, who had been waving his arms like a performing bear, stilled. Aurora petted Ronan’s hand, which Ronan permitted.
“Up,” he said to Matthew. “Time to go.”
Aurora smiled gently at her sons. She would stay here, in Cabeswater, doing whatever dreams did when no one was there to see them. It was unsurprising to Blue that she would fall into an instant sleep if she left the forest; it was impossible to imagine Aurora existing in the real world. More impossible still to imagine growing up with a mother like her.
My mother wouldn’t just leave forever. Right?
Ronan put his hands on either side of Matthew’s head, crushing the blond curls down, locking his brother’s gaze on his.
“Go wait in the car,” he said. “If we aren’t back by nine, call Blue’s house.”
Matthew’s expression was pleasant and unafraid. His eyes were the same color blue as Ronan’s but infinitely more innocent. “How will I know the number?”
Ronan continued to clasp his brother’s head. “Matthew. Focus. We talked about this. I want you to think. You tell me: How will you know the number?”
His younger brother laughed a little and patted his pocket. “Oh, right. It’s programmed in your phone. I remember now.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Noah offered at once.
“Chicken,” said Ronan ungratefully.
“Lynch,” said Gansey. “That’s a good idea, Noah, if you’re feeling up for it.”
Noah, as a ghost, required outside energy to stay visible. Both Blue and the ley line were powerful spiritual batteries; waiting in the car parked nearby should have been more than enough. But sometimes it wasn’t the energy that failed Noah — it was his courage.
“He’ll be a champ,” Blue said, punching Noah’s arm lightly.
“I’ll be a champ,” repeated Noah.
The forest waited, listening, rustling. The edge of the sky was grayer than the blue directly overhead, like Cabeswater’s attention was so tightly focused on them that the real world was now able to intrude.
At the cave mouth, Gansey said, “De fumo in flammam.”
“From the smoke into the fire,” Adam translated for Blue.
The cave. The cave.
Everything in Cabeswater was magical, but the cave was unusual because it hadn’t existed when they had first discovered the forest. Or maybe it had existed, but in a different place.
Gansey said, “Equipment check.”
Blue dumped out the contents of her ragged backpack. A helmet (bicycle, used), knee pads (roller skating, used), and flashlight (miniature, used) rolled out, along with a pink switchblade. As she began to apply all of these things to her body, Gansey emptied his messenger bag beside her. His contained a helmet (caving, used), knee pads (caving, used), and a flashlight (Maglite, used), along with several lengths of new rope, a harness, and a selection of bolt anchors and metal carabiners.
Both Blue and Adam stared at the used equipment. It seemed impossible that Richard Campbell Gansey III would have thought to buy anything less than brand-new.
Unaware of their attention, Gansey effortlessly tied a carabiner to a rope by way of an accomplished knot.
Blue got it a moment before Adam did. The equipment was used because Gansey had used it.
It was hard to remember, sometimes, that he’d lived a life before they’d met him.
Gansey began to unwind a longer safety cable. “What we talked about. We’re tied together, three tugs if you are alarmed in the slightest. Time check?”
Adam checked his battered watch. “My watch isn’t working.”
Ronan checked his expensive black one and shook his head.
Although this was not unexpected, Blue was still disconcerted, a kite cut free.
Gansey frowned as if he shared her thoughts. “Nor is my phone. Okay, Ronan.”
As Ronan shouted some Latin into the air, Adam whispered the translation to Blue: “Is it safe for us to go in?”
And is my mother still in there?
The reply came in the form of hissing leaves and guttural scraping, wilder than the voices Blue had heard earlier. “Greywaren semper est incorruptus.”
?
??Always safe,” Gansey translated quickly, eager to prove that he wasn’t entirely useless when it came to Latin. “The Greywaren is always safe.”
The Greywaren was Ronan. Whatever they were to this forest, Ronan was more to it.
Adam mused, “Incorruptus. I never thought anyone would use that word to describe Lynch.”
Ronan looked as pleased as a pit viper ever could.
What do you want from us? Blue wondered as they stepped inside. How do you see us? Just four teens sneaking into an ancient forest.
An oddly quiet earth-room lay just inside the cave entrance. The walls were dust and rock, roots and chalk, everything the color of Adam’s hair and skin. Blue touched a reluctantly curled fern, the last foliage before the sunlight faded. Adam turned his head, listening, but there was only the muffled, ordinary sound of their footsteps.
Gansey turned on his headlamp. It barely penetrated the darkness of the narrowing tunnel.
One of the boys was shivering a little. Blue didn’t know if it was Adam or Ronan, but she felt the cable trembling at her belt.
“I wish we’d brought Noah after all,” Gansey said abruptly. “In we go. Ronan, don’t forget to set the directional markers as we go. We’re counting on you. Don’t just stare at me. Nod like you understand. Good. You know what? Give them to Jane.”
“What?” Ronan sounded betrayed.
Blue accepted the markers — round, plastic disks with arrows drawn on them. She hadn’t realized how nervous she was until she had them in her hands; it felt good to have something concrete to do.
“I want you to whistle or hum or sing, Ronan, and keep track of time,” Gansey said.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Ronan replied. “Me.”
Gansey peered down the tunnel. “I know you know a lot of songs all the way through, and can do them the same speed and length every time. Because you had to memorize all of those tunes for the Irish music competitions.”
Blue and Adam exchanged a delighted look. The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig.
“Piss up a rope,” Ronan said.
Gansey, unoffended, waited.
Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, “Squash one, squash two, s—”
“Not that one,” both Adam and Gansey said.
“I’m not listening to that for three hours,” Adam said.
Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel.
And they went in deeper.
Deeper.
The sun vanished. Roots gave way to stalactites. The air smelled damp and familiar. The walls shimmered like something living. From time to time, Blue and the others had to shuffle through pools and streams — the narrow, uneven path had been carved by water, and the water was still doing that work.
Every ten times around Ronan’s reel, Blue deposited a marker. As the stack in her hand diminished, she wondered how far they would go, how they would know if they were even getting close. It seemed difficult to believe that a king might be hidden away down here. Harder still to imagine that her mother might be. This was not a place to inhabit.
She calmed her thoughts. No earthquakes. No stampedes.
She tried not to long or hope or think of or call for Maura. The last thing she wanted was for Cabeswater to produce a copy of her mother for her. She only wanted the real thing. The truth.
It became steeper. The blackness itself was fatiguing; Blue longed for the light, for space, for the sky. She felt buried alive.
Adam slipped and caught himself, hand outstretched.
“Hey!” Blue ordered. “Don’t touch the walls.”
Ronan broke off whistling to ask, “Cave germs?”
“It’s bad for stalactite growth.”
“Oh, honestly —”
“Ronan!” ordered Gansey from the front of the line, not turning, his canary sweater rendered light gray by the headlamps. “Get back to work.”
Ronan had only just begun to whistle once more when Gansey disappeared.
“What?” said Adam.
Then he was snatched from his feet. He slammed the ground and skidded away on his side, fingers trailing.
Blue didn’t have time to realize what this meant when she felt Ronan grab her from behind. Then the rope at her waist snagged tight, threatening to pull her off her feet as well. But he was well planted. His fingers were rooted into her arms so tightly they hurt.
Adam was still on the ground, but he’d stopped sliding.
“Gansey?” he called, the word doleful in the vast space beyond. “Are you okay down there?”
Because Gansey had not just vanished — he’d fallen into a hole.
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.”