There was something living about the night.
Declan and Matthew had gone. Gansey, Blue, Ronan and Adam remained at the Barns, sitting in a circle in the hickory-scented living room. The only lights were the things Ronan had dreamt. They hovered overhead and danced in the fireplace. It felt like magic hung between all of them, even in the places the light didn’t touch. Gansey was aware that they all were happier than they had been in a long time, which seemed strange in light of the frightening events of the night before and the ominous news they had just received from Declan.
“This is a night for truth,” Gansey said, and any other time, they would have laughed at him for it, perhaps. But not tonight. Tonight, they all could tell they were part of a slow, wheeling machine, and the enormity of it staggered them. “Let’s piece this thing together.”
Slowly they described what had happened to them the day before, pausing to allow Gansey to write it in his journal. As he jotted down the facts – the ley line seizing at 6:21, Noah’s attack, the black-oozing tree, Adam’s eye moving of its own accord – he began to feel the shape of the roles they played. He could nearly see the end if he looked hard enough.
They discussed whether they felt they had a responsibility to protect Cabeswater and the ley line – they all did. Whether they thought Artemus knew more than he was saying – they all did. Whether they thought he would ever talk freely about it – they were all unconvinced.
Partway through this, Ronan got up to pace. Adam went to the kitchen and returned with a coffee for himself. Blue made herself a nest of sofa cushions beside Gansey and put her head in his lap.
This was not allowed.
But it was. The truth was sliding into the light.
They also talked about the town. Whether or not it was wiser to hide from or to fight with outsiders coming to Henrietta to dig for supernatural relics. As they threw around ideas for dreamt defences and dangerous allies, weaponized monsters and acid moats, Gansey gently touched the hair above Blue’s ear, careful not to brush the skin near her eyebrow because of her wound, careful not to meet Ronan’s or Adam’s eyes because of self-consciousness.
It was allowed. He was allowed to want this.
They talked about Henry. Gansey was mindful that he was telling Henry’s closely guarded secrets, but he had also decided by the end of the school day that to tell Gansey something was to tell Adam and Ronan and Blue. They were a package deal; Gansey could not be expected to be won without winning them as well. Adam and Ronan made puerile jokes at Henry’s expense (“He’s half Chinese” “Which half?”) and sniggered clannishly; Blue called them on it (“Jealous, much?”); Gansey told them to put aside their preconceptions and think about him.
No one had yet said the word demon.
It hung there, unspoken, defined by the shape of the conversation around it. The thing Adam and Ronan had driven in pursuit of, the thing that had inhabited Noah, the thing that was possibly attacking Cabeswater. It was quite possible that they might have gone the entire evening not addressing it if Maura had not called from 300 Fox Way. Gwenllian had seen something in the attic mirrors, she said. It had taken this long to work out what she had really seen, but it seemed like it had been Neeve with a warning.
Demon.
Unmaker.
Unmaking the forest and everything attached to it.
This revelation made Ronan stop in his pacing and Adam go completely silent. Neither Blue nor Gansey interrupted this curious silence, and then, at the end of it, Adam said, “Ronan, I think you need to tell them, too.”
Ronan’s expression, if anything, was betrayed. This was wearying; Gansey could see precisely the argument that it was heaving towards. Adam would shoot something cool and truthful over the bow, Ronan would fire back a profanity cannon, Adam would drip gasoline in the path of the projectile, and then everything would be on fire for hours.
But Adam merely said, in an earnest tone, “It’s not gonna change anything, Ronan. We’re sitting here with dream lights around us, and I can see a hooved girl you dreamt up eating Styrofoam in the hall. We ride around in a car you pulled out of your dreams. It’s surprising, but it’s not going to change the way they see you.”
And Ronan retorted, “You didn’t handle the revelation well.”
In his hurt tone, Gansey thought that he suddenly understood something about Ronan.
“I had other things going on,” Adam replied. “That made it a little hard to take on.”
Gansey definitely felt like he understood something about Ronan.
Blue and Gansey exchanged looks. Blue had an eyebrow raised into her bangs; her other eye was still squinted shut. It made her appear even more curious than she would have normally looked.
Ronan plucked at his leather wristbands. “Whatever. I dreamt Cabeswater.”