Cabeswater heaved around him, shuddering, shrugging, trying to grant his appeal. Now he could see Orphan Girl sinking slowly just below him. She’d covered her eyes; she didn’t know that he’d come after her. Probably didn’t expect any help. Orphan girl, orphan boy.
Ronan struggled towards her – he was an OK swimmer, but not without air, not through acid.
The liquid growled against his skin.
He snatched her oversized sweater, and her eyes opened wide and strange and startled. Her mouth formed Kerah? and then she seized his arm. For a moment they both sank, but she was not stupid, and she began to paddle with her free hand and kick off the stone walls.
It felt like they had sunk miles beneath the surface.
“Cabeswater,” Ronan said, huge bubbles escaping from his mouth. His brain was failing to problem-solve. “Cabeswater, air.”
Cabeswater would keep him safe, ordinarily. Cabeswater knew how fragile his human body was, ordinarily. But it wasn’t listening to him now, or it was, but it couldn’t do anything about it.
The pool boiled around them.
He was going to die, and all he could think was how if he did, Matthew’s life was over, too.
Suddenly, something hit his feet. Pressed against his hands. Crushed his chest. His breath – he only had time to seize the Orphan Girl before everything went black.
And then he burst out of the water, propelled from below. He was vomited up on to the rocky edge of the pool. Orphan Girl rolled from his arms. Both of them coughed up the liquid; it was pinkish from the blisters on his tongue. Leaves were plastered all over Ronan’s arms, all over the Orphan Girl’s arms. So many leaves.
Looking woozily over his shoulder, Ronan found that the entire pool was filled with vines and shrubs. Tendrils still grew slowly out of the pool. The submerged parts of the plants were already being eaten away by the acid.
This was what had saved them from drowning. They had been lifted by the branches.
Adam crouched on the other side of the pool, head dropped low like he was about to sprint or pray, his hands pressed to the rock on either side of him, knuckles white. He had placed a few small stones between his hands in a pattern that must have made sense to him. One of the still growing tendrils had tangled around his ankles and his wrists.
The proper truth struck Ronan: The plants had not saved their lives. Adam Parrish had saved their lives.
“Parrish,” Ronan said.
Adam looked up, eyes blank. He was quivering.
Orphan Girl scrambled around the pool, keeping well back from the edge, to Adam’s side. Hurriedly, she knocked the tiny stones into the pool with her finger and thumb. At once, the vines stopped growing. Adam sat back with a shiver, expression still far away and ill. His right hand twitched in a way that was not quite comfortable to look at. Orphan Girl took his left hand and kissed the palm – he merely closed his eyes – and then she turned her urgent gaze to Ronan.
She said, “Out! We need him out!”
“Out of where?” Ronan asked, picking his way around the pool to them. He looked up at the rock face, at the mountainside around him, trying to plot a path out.
“Cabeswater,” Orphan Girl said. “Something is happening. Ah!”
In between the submerged and damaged leaves in the pool, the liquid was turning black. This was a nightmare.
“Get up, Parrish,” Ronan said, gripping Adam’s arm. “We’re getting out of here.”
Adam opened his eyes; one lid was drooping. He said, “Don’t forget she’s coming with us.”
It was 6:21.
No one had been answering the Fox Way phone for ages. Blue had obediently used Gansey’s phone to call home every forty-five minutes as her mother had asked, but no one picked up. This didn’t strike her as unusual the first time; if the line was tied up with a long-distance psychic consult, outside calls rang through to voicemail. It was unusual when it kept happening, though. Blue tried again in another forty-five minutes, and then another.
“We need to go,” Blue said to Gansey.
He did not question it. Neither, to Henry Cheng’s credit, did he, even though he was quite philanthropically drunk and would’ve rather they stayed. Instead, he seemed to instantly divine that this was private and to be left untouched. He accepted their bedsheets and bid them good night and begged Blue once more to travel to Venezuela with him.
In the car, they realized that Gansey’s watch kept turning 6:21.
Something was wrong.
At 300 Fox Way, she tried the front door. Although it was late – was it late? It was 6:20, now 6:21, always 6:20, then 6:21 – the door wasn’t locked. Beside her? Gansey was both wary and electric.
They closed the front door behind them.
Something was wrong.
In the dark house, Blue could not immediately tell what was amiss, only that she was absolutely certain something was. She was frozen with it, unable to move until she determined what was troubling her. This, she thought, must be what it is like to be psychic.