The Raven Boys

Calla interrupted. "A secret killed your father and you know what it was."

The room went deadly silent. Both Persephone and Maura were staring at Calla. Gansey and Adam were staring at Ronan. Blue was staring at Calla’s hand.

Maura often called on Calla to do joint tarot readings, and Persephone sometimes called on her to interpret her dreams, but very rarely did anyone ask Calla to use one of her strangest gifts: psychometry. Calla had an uncanny ability to hold an object and sense its origin, feel its owner’s thoughts, and see places the thing had been.

Now, Calla pulled her hand away; she’d reached to touch Ronan’s tattoo right where it met his collar. His face was turned just slightly, looking to where her fingers had been.

There might have only been Ronan and Calla in the room. He was a head taller than her already, but he looked young beside her, like a lanky wildcat not yet up to weight. She was a lioness.

She hissed, "What are you?"

Ronan’s smile chilled Blue. There was something empty in it.

"Ronan?" Gansey asked, concern in his voice.

"I’m waiting in the car." Without further comment, Ronan left, slamming the door hard enough that the dishes in the kitchen rattled.

Gansey turned an accusatory gaze on Calla. "His father’s dead."

"I know," Calla said. Her eyes were slits.

Gansey’s voice was cordial enough to pass straight through polite and on to rude. "I don’t know how you found out, but that’s a pretty lousy thing to throw at a kid."

"At a snake, you mean," Calla snarled back. "And what is it you came for, if you didn’t believe we could do what we’re charging you for? He asked for a specific. I gave him a specific. I’m sorry it wasn’t puppies."

"Calla," Maura said, at the same time that Adam said, "Gansey."

Adam murmured something directly into Gansey’s ear and then leaned back. A bone moved at Gansey’s jawline. Blue saw him shift back into President Cell Phone; she hadn’t been aware, before, that he’d been anything else. Now she wished she’d been paying better attention, so she could’ve seen what was different about him.

Gansey said, "I’m sorry. Ronan is blunt, and he wasn’t comfortable coming here in the first place. I wasn’t trying to insinuate that you were less than genuine. Can we continue?"

He sounded so old, Blue thought. So formal in comparison to the other boys he’d brought. There was something intensely discomfiting about him, akin to how she felt compelled to impress Ronan. Something about Gansey made her feel so strongly other that it was as if she had to guard her emotions against him. She could not like him, or whatever it was about these boys that drowned out her mother’s psychic abilities and filled the room to overflowing would overwhelm her.

"You’re fine," Maura said, though she looked at glowering Calla when she said it.

As Blue moved to where Gansey sat, she caught a glimpse of his car at the curb: a flash of impossible orange, the sort of orange Orla would definitely paint her nails. It was not exactly what she’d have expected an Aglionby boy to drive — they liked new, shiny things, and this was an old, shiny thing — but it was clearly a raven boy’s car nonetheless. And just then, Blue had a falling sensation, like things were happening too fast for her to properly absorb them. There was something odd and complicated about all of these boys, Blue thought — odd and complicated in the way that the journal was odd and complicated. Their lives were somehow a web, and she had somehow managed to do something to get herself stuck in the very edge of it. Whether that something had been done in the past or was going to be done in the future seemed irrelevant. In this room with Maura and Calla and Persephone, time felt circular.

She stopped in front of Gansey. This close, she again caught the scent of mint, and that made Blue’s heart trip unsteadily.

Gansey looked down at the fanned deck of cards in her hands. When she saw him like that, she saw the bend of his shoulders and the back of his head, and she piercingly remembered his spirit, the boy she’d been afraid she’d fall in love with. That shade hadn’t worn any of the effortless, breezy confidence of this raven boy in front of her.

What happens to you, Gansey? she wondered. When do you become that person?

Gansey looked up at her, and there was a crease between his eyebrows. "I don’t know how to choose. Could you pick a card for me? Will that work?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Blue saw Adam shifting in his chair, frowning.

Persephone answered from behind Blue. "If you want it to."

"It’s about intention," Maura added.

"I want you to," he said. "Please."

Blue fanned the cards across the table; they slithered loosely over the finish. She let her fingers float above them. Once, Maura had told her that the correct cards sometimes felt warm or tingly when her fingers were near them. For Blue, of course, each card felt identical. One, however, had slid farther than the others, and that was the one she chose.

As she flipped it over, she let out a little helpless laugh.

The page of cups looked back at Blue with her own face. It felt like someone was laughing at her, but she had no one to blame for the selection of the card but herself.

When Maura saw it, her voice went still and remote. "Not that one. Make him choose another."

"Maura," said Persephone mildly, but Maura just waved her hand, dismissing her.

"Another one," she insisted.

"What’s wrong with that one?" Gansey asked.

"It has Blue’s energy on it," Maura said. "It wasn’t meant to be yours. You’ll have to pick it yourself."

Persephone moved her mouth back and forth, but she didn’t say anything. Blue replaced the card and shuffled the deck with less drama than before.

When she offered the cards to him, Gansey turned his face away like he was pulling a raffle winner. His fingers grazed the edges of the cards, contemplative. He selected one, then flipped it over to show the room.

It was the page of cups.

He looked at the face on the card, and then at Blue’s face, and Blue knew that he’d seen the similarity.

Maura leaned forward and snatched the card from his fingers. "Pick another one."

"Now why?" Gansey said. "What’s wrong with that card? What does it mean?"

"Nothing’s wrong with it," Maura replied. "It’s just not yours."

Now, for the first time, Blue saw an edge of true aggravation to Gansey’s expression, and it made her like him a little better. So there was something below the raven boy exterior, maybe. Flippantly, Gansey snagged another card, clearly finished with this exercise. With flourish, he turned the card over and slapped it on the table.

Blue swallowed.

Maura said, "That’s your card."

On the card on the table was a black knight astride a white horse. The knight’s helmet was lifted so that it was obvious that his face was a bare skull dominated by eyeless sockets. The sun set beyond him, and below his horse’s hooves lay a corpse.

Outside the windows behind them, a breeze hissed audibly through the trees.

"Death." Gansey read the bottom of the card. He didn’t sound surprised or alarmed. He just read the word like he would read eggs or Cincinnati.

"Great job, Maura," Calla said. Her arms were crossed firmly over her chest. "You going to interpret that for the kid?"

"Possibly we should just give him a refund," Persephone suggested, although Gansey had not paid yet.

"I thought that psychics didn’t predict death," Adam said quietly. "I read that the Death card was only symbolic."

Maura and Calla and Persephone all made vague noises. Blue, utterly aware of the truth of Gansey’s fate, felt ill. Aglionby boy or not, he was only her age, and he obviously had friends who cared for him and a life that involved a very orange car, and it was hideous to know he’d be dead in less than twelve months.

"Actually," Gansey said, "I don’t care about that."

Every pair of eyes in the room was on him as he stood the card on its end to study it.

"I mean, the cards are very interesting," he said. He said the cards are very interesting like someone would say this is very interesting to a very strange sort of cake that they didn’t quite want to finish. "And I don’t want to discount what you do. But I didn’t really come here to have my future told to me. I’m quite okay with finding that out for myself."

He cast a quick glance at Calla at this, obviously realizing that he was walking a fine line between "polite" and "Ronan."

"Really, I came because I was hoping to ask you a question about energy," Gansey continued. "I know you deal with energy work, and I’ve been trying to find a ley line I think is near Henrietta. Do you know anything about that?"

The journal!

"Ley line?" Maura repeated. "Maybe. I don’t know if I know it by that name. What is it?"

Blue was a little stunned. She’d always thought her mother was the most truthful person around.

"They’re straight energy lines that crisscross the globe," Gansey explained. "They’re supposed to connect major spiritual places. Adam thought you might know about them because you deal with energy."

It was obvious that he meant the corpse road, but Maura didn’t offer any information. She just pressed her lips together and looked at Persephone and Calla. "Does that ring a bell to you two?"

Persephone pointed a finger straight in the air and then said, "I forgot about my pie crust."

She withdrew from the room. Calla said, "I’d have to think about it. I’m not good with specifics."

There was a faint, amused smile on Gansey’s face that meant he knew they were lying. It was a strangely wise expression; once again Blue got the sense that he seemed older than the boys he’d brought with him.

"I’ll look into it," Maura said. "If you leave your number, I can give you a call if I find out anything about it."

Gansey replied, coolly polite, "Oh, that’s quite all right. How much for the reading?"

Standing, Maura said, "Oh, just twenty."

Blue thought this was criminal. Gansey clearly had spent more than twenty dollars on the laces for his Top-Siders.

He frowned at Maura over the top of his open wallet. There were a lot of bills in it. They could’ve been ones, but Blue doubted it. She could also see his driver’s license through a clear window; not closely enough to make out the details, but close enough to see that the name printed on it looked a lot longer than just Gansey. "Twenty?"

"Each," Blue added.

Calla coughed into her first.

Gansey’s face cleared and he handed Maura sixty dollars. Quite obviously this was more what he’d been expecting to pay, and now the world was right again.

It was Adam, though, who Blue noticed then. He was looking at her, sharp-eyed, and she felt transparent and guilty. Not only about overcharging, but about Maura’s lie. Blue had seen Gansey’s spirit walk the corpse road and she had known his name before he walked in this door. Like her mother, she’d said nothing. So she was complicit.