No, it was 8:31. Ronan had read the car clock wrong.
The sky was black, the trees were black, the road was black. He pulled up to the kerb in front of Adam’s. Adam lived in an apartment located above the office of St. Agnes Catholic Church, a fortuitous combination that focused most of the objects of Ronan’s worship into one downtown block. Ronan, who had been neglecting his phone as usual, had missed a call from Adam several hours before. The voicemail had been brief: “If you’re not going to Cheng’s with Gansey tonight, would you come help me with Cabeswater?”
Ronan was not going to Henry Cheng’s under any circumstances. All that smiling and activism gave him a rash.
Ronan was certainly going to Adam’s.
So now he climbed out of the BMW, clucking to Chainsaw so that she’d stop trying to worry a seam free in the passenger seat, and scanned the lot beside the church for the tri-coloured Hondayota. He spotted it, the headlights still on, engine off. Adam was crouched in front of it, staring unflinchingly into the headlights’ brilliance. His fingers were spread on the asphalt and his feet braced like a runner waiting for the starting shot. Three tarot cards splayed before him. He’d taken one of the floor mats out of the car to crouch on to keep from dirtying his uniform trousers. If you combined these two things – the unfathomable and the practical – you were most of the way to understanding Adam Parrish.
“Parrish,” Ronan said. Adam didn’t respond. His pupils were pinhole cameras to another world. “Parrish.”
Just one of Adam’s hands lifted in the direction of Ronan’s leg. His fingers twitched in a way that conveyed don’t bother me with the absolute minimum of motion.
Ronan crossed his arms to wait, just looking. At Adam’s fine cheekbones, his furrowed fair eyebrows, his beautiful hands, everything washed out by the furious light. He had memorized the shape of Adam’s hands in particular: the way his thumb jutted awkwardly, boyishly; the roads of the prominent veins; the large knuckles that punctuated his long fingers. In dreams Ronan put them to his mouth.
His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he’d let them overflow and now there wasn’t a damn place in the ocean that wouldn’t catch fire if he dropped a match.
Chainsaw flapped to where the tarot cards were laid out, beak parted curiously, and when Ronan silently pointed at her, she sulked underneath the car. Ronan turned his head sideways to read the cards. Something with flames, something with a sword. The Devil. One thousand images were triggered by that single word, devil. Red skin, white sunglasses, his brother Matthew’s terrified eyes in the trunk of a car. Dread and shame together, thick enough to vomit up. Ronan was uneasily reminded of his recent nightmares.
Adam’s fingers tensed, and then he sat back. He blinked, and then blinked again, rapidly, touching the corner of his eye with just the tip of his ring finger. This didn’t suffice, so he rubbed his palms over them until they watered. Finally, he tilted his chin up to Ronan.
“Headlights? That’s hardcore, Parrish.” Ronan held out his hand; Adam took it. Ronan hauled him up, his mind all palm against palm, thumb crossed over thumb, fingers pressed into wrist bone – and then Adam was facing him and he released his hand.
The ocean burned.
“What the hell’s wrong with your eyes?” Ronan asked.
Adam’s pupils were still tiny. “Takes me a while to come back.”
“Creepy bastard. What’s with the Devil?”
Adam stared up at the dark stained glass of the church. He was still partway caught in the kingdom of the headlights. “I can’t understand what it’s telling me. It feels like it’s holding me at an arm’s length. I need to find a way to scry deeper, but I can’t without someone to watch me in case I get too far away from myself.”
Someone in this case being Ronan.
“What are you trying to find out?”
Adam described the circumstances surrounding his eye and his hand with the same level tone he would use to answer a question in class. He allowed Ronan to lean in to compare his eyes – close enough that Ronan felt his breath on his cheek – and he allowed Ronan to study the palm of his hand. The latter was not strictly necessary, and they both knew it, but Adam watched Ronan closely as he lightly traced the lines there.
This was like walking the line between dream and sleep. The night-sharp balance of being asleep enough to dream and awake enough to remember what he wanted.
He knew Adam had figured out how he felt. But he didn’t know if he could step off this knife-slender path without destroying what he had.
Adam held Ronan’s gaze as Ronan released his hand. “I’m trying to find the source of what’s attacking Cabeswater. I can only assume it’s the same thing as what was attacking that black tree.”
“It’s in my head, too,” Ronan admitted. His day at the Barns had been marked by dreams that he’d hastily woken himself from.