When he turned back around, she was motionless, watching him. When she blinked, two tears appeared like magic on her cheeks. The fast tears. The ones that were in your eyes and down your chin before you realized you were crying. Adam knew about those.
“Is that the truth?” he asked. He asked it so quietly that the words came out gravelly, like a violin played too softly.
Two more tears had queued up, but when she blinked, they remained in her eyes. Shining little lakes.
Not you.
Not him with his shabby anger, his long silences, his brokenness.
Not you.
Look at you, Adam, Gansey’s voice said. Just look.
Not you.
“Prove it,” he whispered.
“What?”
Louder: “Prove it.”
She started shaking her head.
“If it’s not me, it’s not going to do anything, is it?”
She shook her head harder. “No, Adam.”
Louder. “If it’s not gonna be me, Blue, it doesn’t matter, does it? That’s what you said. It’s never gonna be me.”
Miserably, she said, “I don’t want to hurt you, Adam.”
“Either it’s the truth or it’s not.”
Blue put a hand on his chest and pressed. “I don’t want to kiss you. It’s not going to be you and me.”
Not you.
Since the last time his father had hit him, Adam’s left ear had been dead and unresponsive. No hissing, no static. Just the absence of sensation.
That was how his entire body felt now.
“Okay,” he said, voice colorless.
Blue wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Okay.”
Feeling was coming back, but it was unfocused and dull. Shimmering and fuzzy. It wasn’t going to be him and her. It wasn’t going to be him and Gansey. There was no more not here, not now. It was here. It was now. It was just going to be him and Cabeswater.
I am unknowable.
He was going down the stairs, though he didn’t remember leaving Blue’s room. Had he said anything? He was just going. He didn’t know where. Voices and images flickered around him, pressing crookedly.
One voice cut through the dissonance. It was the quietest in the house.
“Adam,” Persephone said, catching his sleeve as he opened the front door, “it’s time for us to talk.”
Persephone gave him pie. It was pecan and she had made it and his taking it wasn’t presented as an option.
Maura frowned at him. “Are you sure this is the right way, P? I guess you know best …”
“Sometimes,” Persephone admitted. “Come on, Adam. We’re going to the reading room. Blue can come in with you. But it will be very personal.”
He hadn’t realized Blue was there. He kept his head down. There was a scuff on his hand from his walk down the interstate, and he worried silently at the skin at the edges.
Blue said, “What’s happening?”
Persephone flapped a hand as if it was too difficult for her to explain.
Maura said, “She’s balancing his insides with his outsides. Making peace with Cabeswater, yes?”
Persephone nodded. “Close enough.”
Blue said, “I’ll come with, if you want me to.”
All faces swung toward him.
If he went in by himself, it was nothing but this: Adam Parrish.
In a way, it had always been that. Sometimes the scenery changed. Sometimes the weather was better.
But in the end, all he had was this: Adam Parrish.
He made it easier to accept by telling himself again: It’s just the reading room.
He knew it was not the truth. But it was shaped like the truth.
“I’d like to do it by myself,” he said in a low voice. He didn’t look at her.
Persephone stood up. “Bring your pie.”
Adam brought his pie.
The reading room was darker than the rest of the house, lit only by blocky candles congregated in the center of the reading table. Adam set the plate on the table.
Persephone closed the doors behind her. “Take a bite of pie.”
Adam took a bite of pie.
The world focused, just a little bit.
With the doors shut, the room smelled like roses after dark and a match just blown out. And with the lights off, it was strangely difficult to tell how large the room was. Even though Adam knew full well the tiny dimensions of the room, it felt massive now, like an underground cavern. The walls seemed distant and uneven, the space swallowing the sounds of their breathing and the movement of the cards.
Adam thought: I could stop now.
But it was only the reading room. This was only a room that should have been a dining room. Nothing was going to change in here.
Adam knew that none of these things was true, but it was easier to pretend that they were.
Persephone selected a frame from the wall. Adam just had time to see that it was a photograph of a standing stone in a ragged field, and then she set it glass-up on the table in front of him. In the dark and candlelight, the image disappeared. All that was visible was the reflection off the glass; it was suddenly a rectangle pool or mirror. The candlelight twirled and spun in the glass, not quite like the candlelight in reality. His stomach surged.
“You must feel it,” Persephone said, on the other side of the table. She did not sit. “How out of balance you are.”
It was too obvious to agree to. He pointed to the glass with its faulty reflections. “What is that for?”
“Scrying,” she replied. “It’s a way of looking other places. Places that are too far away to see, or places that only sort of exist, or places that don’t want to be seen.”