“You know what?” Gansey said, standing. There was something unfamiliar in his tone, a bowstring drawn back. “If you call me that one more time —”
“How’s Blue?” Adam interrupted. He already assumed that she was not dead, or Gansey would not have had the bandwidth to be arguing with Ronan. He assumed, actually, that it had looked worse than it had really been, or Gansey would have led with a status report.
Gansey’s expression was still edged and glistening. “She’ll keep the eye.”
“Keep the eye,” Adam echoed.
“She’s getting stitches now.”
“Stitches,” Ronan echoed.
Gansey said, “Did you think I was just panicking over nothing? I told you: Noah was possessed.”
Possessed, like by a devil. Possessed, like Adam’s hand. In between that simmering black in Cabeswater and this violent result of Noah’s possession, Adam was beginning to get a feel for what his own hand might be capable of if Cabeswater couldn’t protect him. Part of him wanted to tell Gansey about it, but part of him had never forgotten Gansey’s agonized shout when Adam had made the bargain with Cabeswater in the first place. He didn’t really think Gansey would say I told you so, but Adam would know that he would have been within his rights to do so, which was worse. Adam had always been the most negative voice in his own head.
Unbelievably, Ronan and Gansey were still fighting. Adam tuned back in as Ronan said, “Oh come on – there was no way I cared if Henry Cheng asked me to a party.”
“The point was that I asked you,” Gansey said. “Not that Henry asked. He didn’t care; I cared.”
“Aw,” said Ronan, but not in a kind way.
“Ronan,” Adam said.
Gansey flicked at the bloodstain on his slacks. “And instead, you went to Cabeswater. You could have died there, and I wouldn’t have even known where you were because you couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone. Do you remember that tapestry that Malory and I were talking about while he was here? The one with Blue’s face on it? Oh, of course you do, Adam, because you dredged up those nightmare Blues in Cabeswater. When the Noah thing was over, Blue looked just like it.” He lifted his hands, palms out. “Her hands were all red. Her own blood. You were the one who told me, Ronan, that something was starting, all those months ago. Now’s not the time to be going rogue. Someone’s going to get killed. No more playing around. There’s no more time for anything but truth. We’re supposed to be in this together, whatever this is.”
There was no effective protest to be made to any of this; it was all unquestionably true. Adam could have said that he had been to Cabeswater countless times to do the ley line’s work and that he had thought this was just like any other time, but he knew full well that he had realized something was off about the forest and continued anyway.
The Orphan Girl knocked over the coat hanger behind the office door and skittered away from the crash.
“Quit screwing around,” Ronan snapped. Counterintuitively, him losing his temper meant that the argument was over. “Put your hands in your pockets.”
She hissed something back to him in a language that was neither English nor Latin. Here in this mundane office, it was especially clear that she had been assembled according to rules from some other world. That old-fashioned sweater, those enormous black eyes, the slender legs with their hooves hidden in boots. It was impossible to believe that Ronan had pulled her from his dreams, but it had been impossible to believe his other outlandish dream objects, too. It seemed obvious now that they had been walking briskly for quite some time towards a world where a demon was plausible.
They all looked up sharply as the door to the back opened. Blue and Maura stepped into the waiting room as a nurse began to shuffle behind the counter. All attention immediately shifted to Blue.
She had two visible stiches in her right eyebrow, pinning together the cleaned-up edges of a gouge that continued down her cheek. Faint scratches on either side of the deepest wound told the story of fingers clawing into her skin. Her right eye was squinted mostly shut, but at least it was still there. Adam could tell that she was hurting.
He knew he cared about her because his stomach was tingling uncomfortably just looking at her wound, the suggestion of violence scratching through him like fingers on a chalkboard. Noah had done that. Adam curled his own hand into a fist, remembering what it had felt like for it to move on its own accord.
Gansey was right: Any of them could have died tonight. It was time to stop playing around.
For a strange second, none of them spoke.
Finally, Ronan said, “Jesus God, Sargent. Do you have stitches on your face? Bad. Ass. Put it here, you asshole.”
With some relief, Blue lifted her fist and bumped it against his.