The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(92)

“Should we split up, or is this a horror movie?”

“Scream if something eats you,” Gansey said, relieved that Henry had offered to split up. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He switched off his torch just as Henry switched his on. Henry looked as if he was about to ask why, and then Gansey would be forced to say Makes my instincts louder, but Henry merely shrugged as they parted ways.

In the silence, Gansey wandered through the dim halls of the Green House, ghosts dogging his heels. Here had been a buffet; here had been a piano; here had been a pack of political interns that had seemed so worldly. He stood in the very centre of what had been the ballroom. A motion light triggered outside as Gansey walked further into the room, startling him. There was a wide fireplace with an ugly, dated hearth and an ominous black mouth. Dead flies littered the windowsills. Gansey felt as if he were the last man left alive.

The room had seemed enormous before. If he squinted his eyes, he could still see the party. It was always happening at some point in time. If this were Cabeswater, perhaps he could replay that party, skipping back in time to watch it again. The thought was at once wistful and unpleasant: He had been younger and easier then, unfettered by anything like responsibility or wisdom. But he had done so much between now and then. The idea of living through it again, learning all the hard lessons again, struggling to once again ensure that he met Ronan and Adam, Noah and Blue – it was exhausting, nerve-racking.

Leaving the ballroom, he trailed through hallways, ducking under arms no longer there, excusing himself as he pressed through conversations long since ended. There was champagne; there was music; there was the pervasive smell of cologne. How are you, Dick? He was fine, excellent, capital, the only possible answers to that question. The sun always shone on him.

He stepped on to a screen porch and looked out at the black November. The ragged grass was gray in the motion light; the naked trees were black; the sky was dully purple from the distant threat of Washington, D.C. Everything was dead.

Did he still know any of the children he’d played with at that party? Hide-and-seek: He’d hidden so well that he’d become dead, and even when he’d been resurrected, he was still obscured from them. He had stumbled on to a different road by accident.

He pushed open the screen door and stepped on to the damp dead grass of the backyard. The party had been here, too, the older children playing a frustrated game of croquet, the wickets hooked on the toes of servers.

The gray motion light Gansey had triggered before shone across the backyard. He crossed the lawn to the edge of the trees. The porch light filtered all the way out here, and penetrated further than he would have expected. It was not as unruly as he remembered it, though he couldn’t decide if it was because he was older and had prowled through more woods now, or if it was merely because it was a leaner season of the year. It did not look like a place one could hide now.

When Gansey had gone to Wales to search for Glendower, he had stood on the edge of many fields like this, places where battles had been fought. He’d tried to imagine what it had been like to be there in that moment, sword in hand, horse beneath him, men sweating and bleeding. What had it been to be Owen Glendower, to know that they fought because you called them to?

While Malory had loitered on the path or hovered by the car, Gansey had strode to the middle of the fields, as far away as he could get from anything modern. He had closed his eyes, tuned out the sound of faraway airplanes, tried to hear the sounds of six hundred years previous. The youngest version of him had borne tiny hope that he might be haunted; that the field might be haunted; that he might open his eyes and see something more than what he had before.

But he had not the slightest psychic inclinations, and the minute that began with Gansey alone in a battlefield ended with Gansey alone in a battlefield.

Now he stood there on the edge of the Virginia forest for perhaps a minute, until the very act of standing felt odd, as if his legs shook, though they didn’t. Then he stepped in.

The bare branches overhead creaked in the breeze, but the leaves beneath his feet were damp and soundless.

Seven years ago he had stepped on the hornets here. Seven years ago he had died. Seven years ago he had been born again.

He had been so afraid.

Why had they brought him back?

Twigs caught the sleeves of his sweater. He was not yet to the place it had happened. He told himself that the nest would no longer be there; the fallen tree he had collapsed beside would have rotted; it was too dark in this ghost light; he wouldn’t recognize it.

He recognized it.

The tree had not rotted. It was unchanged, as sturdy as before, but black with damp and with night.

This was where he had felt the first sting. Gansey stretched out his arm, examining the back of his own hand in shocked wonder. He took another step, faltering. This was where he’d felt them on the back of his neck, crawling along his hairline. He didn’t smack the sensation; it never helped to brush them away. His fingers, though, twitched upward, resisting.

He took another uncertain step. He was a foot away from that old, unchanged black tree. That long-ago Gansey had stumbled to his knees. They had crawled over his face here, over his closed eyelids, along quivering lips.

He had not run. There was no running from them, and in any case, the weapon had done its work already. He remembered thinking that it would only ruin the party by reappearing covered with hornets.

He caught himself on his hands, only for a moment, and then rolled on to his elbow. Poison razed his veins. He was on his side. He was curled. Wet leaves pressed against his cheek as every part of him seemed to suffocate. He was shaking and done and afraid, so afraid.