Huddled close, Blue stroked the cow’s nose, leaving dark marks on the wet hair. “Poor thing. What do you think’s wrong with it?”
Ronan wasn’t certain there was anything wrong with it. It didn’t look ill, aside from its lack of movement. It didn’t smell terrible. And Chainsaw didn’t seem abnormally distressed, although she did press her body against the side of Ronan’s head as a warning to not set her down anywhere near it.
“There’s a metaphor for the American public in here,” Gansey murmured darkly, “but it escapes me at the moment.”
Blue said, “Let’s just go on before Gansey has time to say something that makes me hate him.”
They left the cow behind and continued on to the largest of the barns. The big sliding door was worm-eaten and rotted near the bottom, and the metal edging was rusted.
Ronan put his hand on the uneven surface of the door handle. Out of habit, his palm memorized the feel of it. Not the idea of it, but the real sensation of it, the texture and shape and temperature of the metal, everything he’d need to bring it back from a dream.
“Wait,” Adam said, wary. “What’s that smell?”
The air was colored with a warm, claustrophobic odor — not unpleasant, but undeniably agricultural. It was not the smell of a barn that had been used in the past; it was one of a barn currently in use.
Frowning, Ronan slid open the creaking, massive door. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust.
“Oh,” said Gansey.
Here was the rest of the herd. Dozens of cattle were dark silhouettes in the watery light through the door. There was not so much as a twitch over the clatter of the door opening. There was just the sound of several dozen very large animals breathing, and over all of it, the shushing of the light rain on the metal roof.
“Sleep mode,” Gansey said, at the same time that Blue said, “Hypnosis.”
Ronan’s heart beat unevenly. There was a raw potential to the sleeping herd. Like someone with the correct word could rouse a stampede.
“Is this our fault, too?” Blue whispered. “Like the power outages?”
Adam looked away.
“No,” Ronan answered, certain that this sleeping herd wasn’t because of the ley line. “This is something else.”
Gansey said, “Not to sound like Noah, but this is giving me the creeps. Let’s find a shovel and get out of here.”
Feet scuffing through sawdust, they wound their way through the motionless animals to a small equipment room made gray by the rain. Ronan found a spade. Adam picked up a snow shovel. Gansey tested a post-hole digger’s weight as if checking the balance of a sword.
After a moment, Blue said, “Did you really grow up here, Ronan?”
“In this barn?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
He started to answer, but pain welled up, sudden and shocking. The only way he could get the sentiment out was by drowning the words with acid. It came out sounding like he hated the place. Like he couldn’t wait to get away. Mocking and cruel, he said, “Yes. This was my castle.”
“Wow,” she replied, as if he hadn’t been sarcastic. Then she whispered, “Look!”
Ronan followed her gaze. Where the corrugated roof imperfectly met the edge of the finished wall, a dusty brown bird was tucked away in a nest. Its chest looked black, bloody, but a closer look revealed that it was a trick of the dim light. Its chest plumage was a peacock’s metallic emerald. Like the cattle, its eyes were open, its head unmoving. Ronan’s pulse surged again.
On his shoulder, Chainsaw crouched low, pressing against his neck, a reaction to his reaction rather than to the other bird.
“Touch it,” Blue whispered. “See if it’s alive, too.”
“One of you two Poverty Twins should touch it,” Ronan said. “I touched the last one.”
Her eyes blazed. “What did you just call me?”
“You heard me.”
“Gansey,” she said.
He put down his post-hole digger. “You told me you wanted to fight your Ronan battles on your own.”
With a roll of his eyes, Adam dragged over a chair and investigated. “It’s breathing, too. Same as the cows.”
“Now check for eggs,” Ronan said.
“Screw you.”
They were all a little uneasy. It was impossible to tell if this slumber was natural or supernatural, and without that knowledge, it didn’t seem impossible that it might happen to them, too.
Gansey said, “Are we the only things left awake?”
This inspired Ronan. Setting Chainsaw down on a table made of cinder blocks, he opened the old feed bin beside it. Even though it was empty, he suspected it would still be occupied. Sure enough, when he stuck his head inside, he discovered a sharp, living smell beneath the warm odor of grain.
Ronan ordered, “Light.”
Flicking to his phone’s flashlight function, Gansey illuminated the bin’s interior.
“Hurry up,” he said. “This cooks my phone.”
Reaching all the way to the crumpled old feed bag in the bottom, Ronan found the mouse nest. He carefully pulled one of the young mice free. It was downy and weightless, so small that the warmth of its body barely registered. Though the mouse was old enough to be completely mobile, it remained calm in his cupped palm. He ran a finger gently along its spine.
“Why is it so tame?” Blue asked. “Is it sleeping, too?”
He tipped his hand just enough for her to see its alert, trustful eyes, but not enough for Chainsaw to glimpse it — she’d think it was food. He and Matthew used to find the mouse nests in the feed rooms and in the fields near the troughs. They would sit cross-legged for hours in the grass, letting the mice run back and forth across their hands. The young ones were never afraid.
“It’s awake,” he said. Lifting his hand, he pressed the tiny body to his cheek so that he could feel the flutter of its rapid heartbeat against his skin. Blue was staring at him, so he offered it to her. “You can feel its heart that way.”
She looked suspicious. “Are you for real? Are you messing with me?”
“How do you figure?”
“You’re a bastard, and this doesn’t seem like a typical bastard activity.”
He smiled thinly. “Don’t get used to it.”
Grudgingly, she accepted the tiny mouse and held it to her cheek. A surprised smile crept across her mouth. With a tiny, happy sigh, she offered it to Adam. He didn’t seem eager, but at her insistence, he pressed the little body against his cheek. His mouth quirked. After a second, he passed the mouse on to Gansey. Gansey was the only one who smiled at it before he lifted it to his face. And it was his smile that buried Ronan; it reminded him of Matthew’s easy expression when they’d first discovered the mice, back when they’d been the Lynch family.
“Astonishingly charming,” Gansey reported. He tipped it into Ronan’s hands.
Ronan held the mouse over the top of the bin. “Anyone want seconds before I put it back? Because it’ll be dead in a year. Lifespan’s shit for field mice.”
“Nice, Ronan,” said Adam, turning to go.
Blue’s face had gone to lemons. “That didn’t last long.”
Gansey didn’t add anything. His eyes merely lingered on Ronan, mouth rueful; he knew Ronan too well to be offended. Ronan felt he was being analyzed, and maybe he wanted to be. “Let’s go bury this thing,” he said.