The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(33)

Sometimes Adam wondered what would’ve happened if he hadn’t stopped that day. What would be happening to him right now?

He probably wouldn’t still be at Aglionby. Surely he wouldn’t be in the Camaro headed to a magical forest.

Gansey was giddy now that they’d decided to go back to Cabeswater. He hated nothing more than standing still. He ordered Ronan to put on some terrible music — Ronan was always too happy to oblige in this department — and then he abused the Camaro at every stoplight on the way out of town. “Put your back into it!” Gansey shouted breathlessly. He was talking to himself, of course, or to the gearbox. “Don’t let it smell fear on you!” Blue wailed each time the engine revved up, but not unhappily. Noah played the drums on the back of Ronan’s headrest. Adam, for his part, was not wild, but he did his best not to appear unwild, so as not to ruin it for the others.

They had not been back to Cabeswater since Adam had made his sacrifice.

Ronan rolled down his window, letting in a gust of hot air and the scent of asphalt and mown grass. Gansey followed suit. Already Adam’s lower back was sweaty against the vinyl seat, but his hands felt chilly. Would Cabeswater claim him once he returned to it?

What have I done?

Gansey, dangling his arm outside, patted the side of the car as if it were a horse. “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.”

Adam felt like he was watching it all from outside. He felt like he was about to catch another image, like a flick of the tarot cards he’d looked at earlier. Was that someone standing by the side of the road?

I can’t trust my eyes.

Gansey leaned back, head thrown to the side, drunken and silly with happiness. “I love this car,” he said, loud to be heard over the engine. “I should buy four more of them. I’ll just open the door of one to fall into the other. One can be a living room, one can be my kitchen, I’ll sleep in one …”

“And the fourth? Butler’s pantry?” Blue shouted.

“Don’t be so selfish. Guest room.” The Camaro charged down the gravel road that would take them to the forest, a cloud of dust parachuting behind it. As they climbed, the field stretched out, green and endless. Once they reached the crest, they’d be able to see the tree line where Cabeswater began.

Adam’s stomach squeezed with sudden nerves, as ferocious as that day when he’d first stopped his bike by Gansey’s car. He almost said something. He didn’t know what he would’ve said. Was that another image? A blank screen.

They crested the hill.

The field went on and on. Scrubby grass gave way to a wash where a stream must have been, and then continued on through more acres of grass. Hundreds of acres of field.

There were no trees.

The car fell quiet.

Gansey drove a few feet farther before stepping on the parking brake. Every head in the car was turned toward that endless field and the old stream. It was not that there had been trees and now they were gone. There were no stumps or tire tracks. It was as if there had never been trees.

Gansey held out his hand, and immediately, Ronan opened the glove box and got the journal. Slowly, Gansey paged through to where he had neatly written the coordinates for Cabeswater. Blue’s breath caught audibly.

This was all ridiculous. It was like checking the coordinates for Monmouth Manufacturing. They all knew where it was.

“Jane,” Gansey said, handing his phone back to her, “please check the GPS.”

He read the numbers from the page. Then he read them again.

Blue, thumbing through the map on the phone, read them back from the screen. They were the same. They were the coordinates that had brought them here every other time. The coordinates that had brought their Latin professor and Neeve here.

They hadn’t made a wrong turn. They hadn’t overshot the road or parked in the wrong place. This was where they’d found Cabeswater. This was where it had all begun.

Noah finally said it: “It’s gone.”





And the Camaro broke down.

Its sense of timing was impeccable. In ordinary cir-cumstances, the car would’ve been full of sound: radio blaring, conversation firing. There would have been no audience for the first subtle sounds of fluid filling the Camaro’s lungs. But now, quieted by the impossible, they all heard the engine seize for a moment. Heard the turned-down radio stutter, like it had lost its train of thought. Heard the air-conditioning blower cough politely into its fist.

They had enough time to lift their heads and look at one another.

Then the engine expired.

Suddenly robbed of power steering, Gansey wrestled the coasting car to the shoulder. He hissed between his teeth, the sound identical to the noise of the tires in the grubby gravel.

Then there was absolute silence.

Instantly, the heat began to press in. The engine ticked like the twitch of a dying man’s foot. Adam rested his forehead on his knees and curled his arms behind his head.

All at once, Ronan snarled, “This car. This f*cking car, man. If this was a Plymouth Voyager, it would have been crushed for war crimes a long time ago.”

Adam felt that the Pig’s status perfectly encapsulated how he felt. It was not really dead, just broken. He was held inside the question of what it meant for him if Cabeswater was gone. Why can’t things just be simple?

“Adam?” Gansey asked.