The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(28)

The hall was close and dark and unmoving under sickly fluorescent light. The shadows were inseparable from the stage curtains. Big swaths of black connected everything.

Turn on the light, Adam thought.

With his free hand, the one not covering his eye, he reached into the bathroom.

He did it fast, fingers pressing through cold, through dark, touching something —

No, it was only a Cabeswater vine, only in his head. He slammed his hand past it and turned on the light.

The bathroom was empty.

Of course it was empty. Of course it was empty. Of course it was empty.

Two old stalls made of green-painted plywood, nowhere near up to proper accessibility codes, nowhere near up to proper hygiene codes. A urinal. A sink with a yellow ring round the drain. A mirror.

Adam stepped in front of the glass, his hand over his eye, looking at his gaunt face. His nearly colourless eyebrow was pinched with worry. Lowering his hand, he looked again at himself. He saw no pinkness around his left eye. It didn’t seem to be watering. It was —

He squinted. Was he slightly walleyed? That was what it was called when your eyes didn’t point in the same direction, right?

He blinked.

No, it was fine. It was just a trick of this chilly green light. He leaned in closer to see if there was any redness in the corner.

It was walleyed.

Adam blinked, and it was not. He blinked, and it was. It was like one of those bad dreams that was not a nightmare, not really, that was just about trying to put on a pair of socks and finding they suddenly wouldn’t fit on your foot.

As he watched, his left eye slowly sank down to look at the floor, unhitched from the gaze of his right eye.

His vision blurred and then focused again as his right eye took dominance. Adam’s breath was uneven. He’d already lost hearing in one ear. He couldn’t lose sight in one eye, too. Was it from his father? Was this a delayed effect of hitting his head?

The eye rocked slowly, like a marble sliding in a jar of water. He could feel the horror of it in his stomach.

In the mirror, he thought the shadow of one of the stalls changed.

He turned to look: nothing. Nothing.

Cabeswater, are you with me?

He turned back to the mirror. Now his left eye was travelling slowly around, wandering back and forth, up and down.

Adam’s chest hitched.

The eye looked at him.

Adam scrambled back from the mirror, hand smacked over his eye. His shoulder blade crashed into the opposite wall, and he stood there, gasping for air, scared, scared, scared, because what kind of help did he need, and who could he ask?

The shadow above the stall was changing. It was turning from a square into a triangle because – oh God – one of the stall doors was opening.

The long hallway back to the outside felt like a horror gallery gauntlet. Black spilled out of the stall door.

Adam said, “Cabeswater, I need you.”

The darkness spread across the floor.

All Adam could think was that he couldn’t let it touch him. The thought of it on his skin was worse than the image of his useless eye. “Cabeswater. Keep me safe. Cabeswater! ”

There was a sound like a shot – Adam shied away – as the mirror split. A sun from somewhere else burned on the other side of it. Leaves were pressed up against the glass as if it were a window. The forest whispered and hissed in Adam’s deaf ear, urging him to help it find a channel.

Gratitude burned through him, as hard to bear as the fear. If something happened to him now, at least he wouldn’t be alone.

Water, Cabeswater urged. Waterwaterwater.

Scrambling to the sink, Adam twisted on the tap. Water rushed out, scented with rain and rocks. He reached through the flow to smash down the plug. The inky black bled towards him, inches from his shoes.

Don’t let it touch you—

He clambered on to the edge of the sink as the darkness reached the bottom of the wall. It would climb, Adam knew. But then, finally, the water filled the plugged basin and flowed over the edge on to the floor. It washed over the blackness, soundless, colourless, sliding towards the drain. It left behind only pale, ordinary concrete.

Even after the blackness was gone, Adam let the sink pour on to the floor for another full minute, soaking his shoes. Then he slipped off the edge of the sink. He scooped the water up in his palms and splashed the earthy-scented water over his face, over his left eye. Again and again, again and again, again and again, until his eye no longer felt tired. Until he could no longer feel it at all. It was just his eye again, when he peered into the mirror. Just his face. There was no sign of the other sun or a lazy iris. Drops of Cabeswater’s rivers clung damply in Adam’s eyelashes. Cabeswater muttered and moaned, vines curling through Adam, dappled light flashing behind his eyes, stones pressing up beneath the palms of his hands.

Cabeswater had taken so long to come to his aid. Only a few weeks before, a heap of roofing tiles had fallen on top of him, and Cabeswater had swept instantaneously to save him. If that had happened today, he would have been dead.

The forest whispered at him in its language that was equal parts pictures and words, and it made him understand why it had been so slow to come to him.

Something had been attacking them both.





As Maura had already pointed out, being suspended was not a vacation, so Blue had her after-school shift at Nino’s as usual. Although the sun outside was overpowering, the restaurant was strangely dim inside, a trick of the thunderheads darkening the western sky. The shadows beneath the metal-legged tables were gray and diffuse; it was hard to tell if it was dark enough to turn on the lights that hung over each table or not. The decision could wait; there was no one in the restaurant.