The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(88)

The feathers scattered across the street struck Ronan. Every fine edge of them seemed sharp and real and important against the fuzzed events of the days before. Gansey had gone after Glendower. Gansey had gone without them. Gansey had gone without him.

“I’ll dream something,” he said. No one heard him the first time, so he said it again.

“What?” Blue asked, at the same time that Maura said, “What kind of something?” and Adam said, “But the demon.”

Ronan’s mind was still a fresh horror of seeing his mother’s body. The recent memory effortlessly cross-pollinated with the older one of finding his father’s body, creating a toxic and expanding flower. He did not want to go back into his head right now. But he would. “Something to find Gansey. Like Henry Cheng’s RoboBee. It only has to have one purpose. Something small. I can do it fast.”

“You could be killed fast, you mean,” Adam said.

Ronan did not reply to this. Already he was trying to think of what form he could swiftly invest with such a skill. What could he most reliably create, even with the hurricane of the demon distracting him? What could he be certain the demon wouldn’t corrupt even as he manifested it?

“Cabeswater can’t help you,” Adam pressed. “It can only hinder you. You’d have to try to create something not terrible among all that, which seems impossible to start, and then you’d have to bring back that, and only that, from the dream, which sounds even more impossible.”

Ronan addressed the steering wheel. “I’m aware of how dreaming works, Parrish.”

He did not say I can’t stand the idea of finding Gansey’s body, too. He did not say If I can’t save my old family, I can save my new one. He did not say I will not let the demon have everything.

He did not say that the only true nightmare was not being able to do something and that this, at least, was something.

He just said, “I’m going to try,” and hoped that Adam knew all of the rest already.

Adam did. So did the others.

Maura said, “We’ll do our best to support your energy and hold back some of the worst.”

Adam put the seatback in its fully upright and locked position. He said, “I’ll scry.”

“Blue,” Ronan said, “I think you’d better hold his hand.”





The Camaro broke down.

It was always breaking down and living again, but tonight – tonight, Gansey needed it.

It broke down anyway. He’d only got to the outskirts of town when it coughed, and the lights inside dimmed. Before Gansey even had time to react, the car had died. His power brakes and steering vanished and he had to wrestle it to the shoulder. He tried the key, looked in the mirror, tried to see if the birds were waiting. They were not.

Make way for the Raven King! they shouted, sailing on. Make way!

Damn this car!

Not so long ago, the car had died in just the same way in a pitch-black night, leaving him stranded by the side of the road, nearly getting him killed. Adrenaline hit him in the same way as it had that night, immediate and complete, like time had never progressed.

He pumped the gas, let it sit, pumped the gas, let it sit.

The birds were drawing away. He could not follow.

“Come on,” he pleaded. “Come on.”

The Camaro did not come on. The ravens cried furiously; they did not seem to want to leave him, but also seemed to be pulled by a force beyond them. With a soft swear, he scrambled out of the car and slammed the door. He didn’t know what he would do. He would give chase on foot, until he had lost them. He would —

“Gansey.”

Henry Cheng. He stood before Gansey, his Fisker parked askance in the street behind him, door hanging open. “What’s happening?”

The impossibility of Henry’s presence hit Gansey harder than anything else that night, even though it was actually the least impossible thing. They were not far from Litchfield’s side of town, and Henry had clearly arrived to this place by means automotive rather than magical. But still, the timing was too clearly on Gansey’s side, and Henry, unlike the ravens, could not have appeared just because Gansey bade him to.

“How are you here?” Gansey demanded.

Henry pointed up into the sky. Not at the birds, but at the tiny, winking body of RoboBee. “RoboBee was told to tell me if you needed me. So I say again unto thee: What’s happening?”

The ravens were still crying for Gansey to follow. They were getting even further; soon he wouldn’t be able to see them. His pulse rummaged in his chest. With great effort, he made himself focus on Henry’s question. “The Camaro won’t start. Those birds. They’re taking me to Glendower. I have to go, I have to follow them or they’ll be —”

“Stop. Stop. Get in my car. You know what? You drive. This thing scares the piss out of me.”

Henry tossed him the keys.

He got in.

There was a sick rightness to it, as if somehow, Gansey had always known this was how the chase would go. As they left the Camaro behind, time was slipping and he was inside of it. Above them, the ravens burst and tumbled through the black. They were sometimes stark against buildings, sometimes invisible against trees. They flashed and flickered before the last of the town’s streetlights like fan blades. Gansey and Henry drove through the last vestiges of civilization into the countryside. Henrietta was so large in Gansey’s mind that he was somewhat surprised to see, when he was not paying attention to it, how quickly the lights of the small town vanished in his rearview mirror.