The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(97)

One voice cut through the dissonance. It was the quietest in the house.

“Adam,” Persephone said, catching his sleeve as he opened the front door, “it’s time for us to talk.”





Persephone gave him pie. It was pecan and she had made it and his taking it wasn’t presented as an option.

Maura frowned at him. “Are you sure this is the right way, P? I guess you know best …”

“Sometimes,” Persephone admitted. “Come on, Adam. We’re going to the reading room. Blue can come in with you. But it will be very personal.”

He hadn’t realized Blue was there. He kept his head down. There was a scuff on his hand from his walk down the interstate, and he worried silently at the skin at the edges.

Blue said, “What’s happening?”

Persephone flapped a hand as if it was too difficult for her to explain.

Maura said, “She’s balancing his insides with his outsides. Making peace with Cabeswater, yes?”

Persephone nodded. “Close enough.”

Blue said, “I’ll come with, if you want me to.”

All faces swung toward him.

If he went in by himself, it was nothing but this: Adam Parrish.

In a way, it had always been that. Sometimes the scenery changed. Sometimes the weather was better.

But in the end, all he had was this: Adam Parrish.

He made it easier to accept by telling himself again: It’s just the reading room.

He knew it was not the truth. But it was shaped like the truth.

“I’d like to do it by myself,” he said in a low voice. He didn’t look at her.

Persephone stood up. “Bring your pie.”

Adam brought his pie.

The reading room was darker than the rest of the house, lit only by blocky candles congregated in the center of the reading table. Adam set the plate on the table.

Persephone closed the doors behind her. “Take a bite of pie.”

Adam took a bite of pie.

The world focused, just a little bit.

With the doors shut, the room smelled like roses after dark and a match just blown out. And with the lights off, it was strangely difficult to tell how large the room was. Even though Adam knew full well the tiny dimensions of the room, it felt massive now, like an underground cavern. The walls seemed distant and uneven, the space swallowing the sounds of their breathing and the movement of the cards.

Adam thought: I could stop now.

But it was only the reading room. This was only a room that should have been a dining room. Nothing was going to change in here.

Adam knew that none of these things was true, but it was easier to pretend that they were.

Persephone selected a frame from the wall. Adam just had time to see that it was a photograph of a standing stone in a ragged field, and then she set it glass-up on the table in front of him. In the dark and candlelight, the image disappeared. All that was visible was the reflection off the glass; it was suddenly a rectangle pool or mirror. The candlelight twirled and spun in the glass, not quite like the candlelight in reality. His stomach surged.

“You must feel it,” Persephone said, on the other side of the table. She did not sit. “How out of balance you are.”

It was too obvious to agree to. He pointed to the glass with its faulty reflections. “What is that for?”

“Scrying,” she replied. “It’s a way of looking other places. Places that are too far away to see, or places that only sort of exist, or places that don’t want to be seen.”

Adam thought he saw smoke spiral up against the glass. He blinked. Gone. His hand smarted. “Where are we looking?”

“Someplace very far away,” Persephone said. She smiled at him. It was a tiny, secretive thing, like a bird peering from branches. “Inside you.”

“Is it safe?”

“It is the opposite of safe,” Persephone said. “In fact, you’d better have another bite of pie.”

Adam took a bite of pie. “What will happen if I don’t do it?”

“What you’re feeling will only get worse. You can’t really do the edge pieces first on this puzzle.”

“But if I do it,” Adam started — then stopped, because the truth bit and burrowed and fit inside him, “I’ll be changed forever?”

She tilted her head sympathetically. “You’ve already changed yourself. When you made the sacrifice. This is just the end part of that.”

Then there was no point not doing it.

“Tell me how to do it, then.”

Persephone leaned forward, but she still didn’t sit. “You have to stop giving things away. You didn’t sacrifice your mind. Start choosing to keep your thoughts your own. And remember your sacrifice, too. You need to mean it.”

“I did mean it,” Adam said, anger rushing up, sudden and singing and pure. It was an undying enemy.

She just blinked at him with her pure black eyes. His fury shriveled.

“You promised to be Cabeswater’s hands and eyes, but have you been listening to what it’s asked you for?”

“It hasn’t said anything.”

Persephone’s expression was knowing. Of course, it had. All at once, he knew that that was the cause of the apparitions and half-visions. Cabeswater had been trying to get his attention, the only way it could. All of this noise, this sound, this chaos inside him.