It hissed, “I said I was sorry.”
She took a deep breath. “I said there was nothing to be sorry for.”
And she meant it.
Blue didn’t care that he – it – Noah – was strange and decaying and frightening. She knew that he – it – Noah – was strange and decayed and frightened, and she knew that she loved him anyway.
She hugged it. Him. Noah. She didn’t care if he wasn’t quite human any more. She would keep calling whatever this was Noah for as long as it wanted to be called Noah. And she was glad that he could read her thoughts in that moment, because she wanted him to know how thoroughly she believed that.
Her body went icily cold as she let Noah draw energy from her, her arms tight around his neck.
“Don’t tell the others,” he said. When she stepped back, he’d pulled his boyish face over his features again.
“Do you need to go?” Blue asked. She meant go for ever, but she couldn’t say it out loud.
He whispered, “Not yet.”
Blue wiped a tear from her face with the heel of her hand, and he wiped a tear from her other cheek with the heel of his. His chin dimpled in that way that comes before tears, but she put her fingers against it and it resolved.
They were wheeling towards the end of something, and they both knew it.
“Good,” said Gwenllian. “I hate liars and cowards.”
Without pause, she began to climb the tree once more. Blue turned back to Noah, but he was gone. Possibly he had gone before Gwenllian had spoken; just as with his arrival, it was hard to tell the exact moment of his leaving. Blue’s brain had already rewritten all of the seconds around his disappearance.
Blue’s school suspension felt like a faded dream. What was real? This was real.
The kitchen window groaned open, and Jimi shouted out, “Blue! Your boys are out front, looking like they’re fixing to bury a body.”
Again? Blue thought.
When Blue climbed into Gansey’s black Suburban, she discovered that Ronan was already installed in the backseat, his head freshly shaven, boots up on the seat, dressed for a brawl. His presence in the backseat instead of in his usual passenger-seat throne suggested that trouble was afoot. Adam – in a white T-shirt and a pair of clean work coveralls rolled down to the waist – had his seat instead. Gansey sat behind the wheel, wearing both his Aglionby uniform and an electric expression that startled Blue. It was wide-awake and glittering, a match struck just behind his eyes. She’d seen this vivid Gansey before, but usually only when they were alone.
“Hello, Jane,” he said, and his voice was as bright and intense as his eyes. It was hard not to be captured by this Gansey; he was both powerful and worrisome in his tension.
Don’t stare – too late. Adam had caught her at it. She averted her eyes and busied herself tugging up her thigh-highs. “Heya.”
Gansey asked, “Do you have time to run an errand with us? Do you have work? Homework?”
“No homework. I got suspended,” Blue replied.
“Get the fuck out,” Ronan said, but with admiration. “Sargent, you asshole.”
Blue reluctantly allowed him to bump fists with her as Gansey eyed her meaningfully in the rearview mirror.
Adam swivelled the other way in his seat – to the right, instead of to the left, so that he was peering around the far side of the headrest. It made him look as if he were hiding, but Blue knew it was just because it turned his hearing ear instead of his deaf ear towards them. “For what?”
“Emptying another student’s backpack over his car. I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“I do,” Ronan said.
“Well, I don’t. I’m not proud of it.”
Ronan patted her leg. “I’ll be proud for you.”
Blue cast a withering look in his direction, but she felt grounded for the first time that day. It was not that the women in 300 Fox Way weren’t her family – they were where her roots were buried, and nothing could diminish that. It was just that there was something newly powerful about this assembled family in this car. They were all growing up and into each other like trees striving together for the sun. “So what’s happening?”
“If you can believe it,” Gansey said, still in his chilly, super-polite tone that meant he was annoyed, “I was originally planning on coming over to talk to Artemus about Glendower. But Ronan has decided to change all that. He has different ideas for our afternoon. More important uses of our time.”
Ronan leaned forward. “Tell me, Dad, are you mad that I fucked up, or are you just mad that I skipped school?”
Gansey said, “I think those both count as fuckups, don’t you?”