A branch sagged to the ground beside Piper. Its leaves were black and running with a thick yellow liquid. The air continued to shudder.
“Piper.” Neeve took Piper’s hand in a tender way, looking as serene as someone could when dressed in tattered rags beside a waterfall travelling in reverse. “I know that when you plunged into the sleeper’s tomb, pushing me out of the way, ensuring that you and you alone would have the sleeper’s favour, you were hoping to cut me out of the loop and continue in a future where you and you alone controlled your own choices and enjoyed the demon’s favour, probably leaving me in the cavern to wander at best and die at worst. At the time, I’ll admit I was very upset with you, and the feelings I had then are not feelings that I’m proud of now. I see now that you not only have some trust issues, and you didn’t know me. But if you want …”
Piper missed a large part of this as she noticed Neeve’s shapely fingernails. They were enviably perfect little coins of keratin. Piper’s own nails were ragged from clawing out of the collapsed cavern.
“… there are better ways to accomplish your goals. Really it’s essential that you learn to rely on my considerable experience in magic.”
Piper’s attention focused. “All right. I zoned out there, but what? Skip all the feelings parts.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to pair yourself with a demon. They are inherently subtractive rather than additive. They take more than they give.”
Piper turned to the demon; it was hard to tell how attentive it was. Hornets didn’t have eyelids, so it was possible it was asleep. “How much of this forest will have to die to get my life back?”
Now that I am awake, I will unmake all of it either way. Eventually.
“Well then,” Piper said. She had the sense of relief that came from a bad decision being made for her. “That’s settled. We might as well make hay while the sun shines. Hey – where are you going? Don’t you want to be …” Piper listened, and the demon leaned on her thoughts. “… famous?”
Neeve blinked. “Respected.”
“Same diff,” Piper said. “Well, don’t go just yet. I did sort of shaft you, before, because I was dying and sort of rude. Just a little? But I want to make it right.”
Neeve looked less enthusiastic about this than Piper had hoped, but she at least didn’t try to run away again. This was positive; Piper didn’t really want to be alone with the demon. Not because she was scared, but because she felt more energized with an audience. She’d taken an online quiz that said she was some special sort of extrovert and that she was likely to be this way for the rest of her life.
“This is going be a new start for both of us,” Piper assured Neeve.
The demon tilted its head, its antennae waving again. Hornet eyes were not meant to be so large, Piper thought. They were like big brown-black aviator sunglasses. Possibilities of life and death moved darkly in them.
What now?
Piper said, “Time to call Dad again.”
It was not 6:21.
It was either late at night or early in the morning.
When Adam and Ronan arrived at the Mountain View Urgent Care, they found a small waiting room empty except for Gansey. Music strummed overhead; the fluorescent lights were soulless and innocent. His khakis were bloody, and he sat in a chair with his head in his hands, either sleeping or grieving. A painting of Henrietta hung on the wall opposite him, and water dripped from it, because that was apparently the world they lived in now. Another time, Adam might have tried to understand what such a sign meant; tonight, his mind was already overflowing with data points. His hand had stopped twitching now that Cabeswater had regained some of its strength, but Adam had no illusions that this meant the danger was over.
“Hey, Shitlord,” Ronan said to Gansey. “Are you weeping?” He kicked the side of Gansey’s shoe. “Sphincter. You asleep?”
Gansey removed his face from his hands and looked up at Adam and Ronan. There was a small smear of blood by his jawline. His expression was sharper than Adam had expected, and only grew sharper when he saw Ronan’s filthy clothing. “Where were you?”
“Cabeswater,” Ronan said.
“Cabeswa— What is she doing here?” Gansey had just caught sight of the Orphan Girl as she stumbled through the door behind Adam. She was clumsy in a pair of muck boots that Ronan had pulled from the trunk of the BMW. They were far too big for her legs and of course entirely the wrong shape for her hooves, but that was kind of the desired effect. “What was the point of us using an entire afternoon to take her out there if you were just going to bring her back out again?”
“Whatever, man,” Ronan said, an eyebrow raised at Gansey’s fury. “It was two hours.”
Gansey said, “Maybe two hours doesn’t mean anything to you, but some of us go to school, and two hours is what we had for ourselves.”
“Whatever, Dad.”