The microwave beeped. Jesse explained as he placed the bowl in front of her that it wasn’t really the cave that was cursed; it was something in the cave.
“And it kills Dittleys,” Blue said, “and does terrible things to my friend.”
“YOUR DEAD FRIEND,” Jesse noted, sitting down opposite her at the tiny drop-leaf table. The mirror lay between them, facedown.
“That’s not his fault. Why didn’t you say you could see him?”
“I DIDN’T SAY I COULD SEE YOU, EITHER.”
“But I’m not dead,” Blue pointed out.
“BUT YOU ARE PRETTY SHORT.”
She let it pass. She ate a SpaghettiO. It wasn’t great, but it was polite to eat it. “What’s in the cave that makes it cursed?”
“SLEEPERS,” he replied.
This was relevant to Blue’s interests.
“THERE ARE THINGS SLEEPING UNDER THESE MOUNTAINS. SOME OF THEM YOU WANT TO STAY SLEEPING.”
“Do I?”
He nodded.
“Why would I want such a thing?”
He ate his SpaghettiOs.
“Don’t tell me I’ll understand when I’m older. I’m old already.”
“DIDN’T YOU SEE YOUR FRIEND?”
She had. She had indeed.
With a sigh, he fetched a big book of photographs — the Dittley family album. It was the kind of experience Blue always suspected would be charming and intriguing, an insightful and secret peek into another family’s past.
It was not that. It was very boring. But in between the stories of birthdays that went as you’d imagine and fishing trips that happened as fishing trips do, another story appeared: a family living at the mouth of a cave where something slept so restlessly that it peered out through mirrors and through eyes and fuzzed through speakers and sometimes made children tear wallpaper off the walls or wives rip out handfuls of their own hair. This restless sleeper got louder and louder through a generation until finally, a Dittley went into the cave and gave himself to the dark. Later, the rest of the family took out his bones and enjoyed another few decades of peace and quiet.
And then there were some more photos about the Dittleys building a car port.
“And you’re supposed to be next?” Blue asked. “Who will take over after you?”
“MY SON, I RECKON.”
Blue didn’t mention there was no evidence of anyone else in the house, but he must’ve picked up on it, because he added, “WIFE AND THE KIDS LEFT FIVE YEARS AGO, BUT THEY’LL BE BACK AFTER THE CURSE IS FED.”
She was so startled by all of this that she ate all of the SpaghettiOs without thinking too hard about it. “I’ve never met someone else with a curse.”
“WHAT’S YOURS?”
“If I kiss my true love, he’ll die.”
Jesse nodded as if to say yep, that’s a good one.
“Okay, but why don’t you just go? Sell this house and someone else can deal with the wallpaper and stuff?”
He shrugged — it was a mighty shrug. “THIS IS HOME.”
“Right, but home could be on the other side of Henrietta,” Blue persisted. “You could always just drive by this place and say whoo hello house with bleeding walls see ya later! Problem solved.”
He took her bowl and dumped it in the sink. He didn’t seem offended, but he also clearly didn’t agree with her, so he wasn’t going to comment on it any further.
“Also, when w —” Blue began, only to be interrupted by a furious pounding. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere. Curse? Noah? She pointed at the mirror in a questioning way.
Jesse shook his head and said, “FRONT DOOR.”
He wiped his hands on a dish towel that looked like it needed to be wiped on something else, before heading to the front door. Blue heard it open, and then a murmur of voices that rose and fell.
Two people appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, with Jesse behind them. Bizarrely, it was Gansey and Calla. It was strange to imagine the two of them traveling anywhere together, and even stranger to wrap her mind around the two of them standing here in the Dittley kitchen. They were very focused on Blue.
Jesse gestured to her in a demonstrative fashion. “SEE?”
Bursting over the threshold, Calla threw out her hand to Blue, palm up. She was spitting acid. “The car keys. Right now. You are not driving that car again until you are eighty and graying. Right now. Hand them over.”
Blue stared. “What? What?”
“You think you can just go and not call?”
“You told me no one else needed the car today!”
“And so you thought this meant you didn’t have to call?”
Blue was about to retort about how she was a responsible human being and they didn’t have any reason to be concerned for her whereabouts, but then she saw Gansey’s expression just behind Calla. His fingers lightly touched his temple and his cheekbone, and his eyes looked off at nothing. Blue wouldn’t have been able to interpret it a few months ago, but now she knew him well enough to realize that this meant relief: the unwinding of an anxious spring. He looked genuinely ill. She had worried both of them, badly.
“— half a dozen people looking everywhere for you and had begun to assume you were just dead in a ditch somewhere,” Calla was saying.
“Wait, what? You were looking for me?”
“It’s ten P.M.! You left six hours ago, and it wasn’t as if you were going to work, was it? We had no idea! I was this close to calling the police again.”
She let the again hang meaningfully. Blue didn’t look at Gansey or Jesse.
“I’m going to call Ronan,” Gansey said quietly, “and tell him he can go back to Monmouth.”
Ronan had been looking for her, too? It would have been heartwarming, if she’d been in any danger whatsoever.
“I —” Blue realized before she finished the sentence that there was no argument: They were right, and she was wrong. Lamely, she ended, “I didn’t think anyone would notice.”
“Car,” Calla said, “keys.”
Blue meekly handed them over.
“Also, I never want to ride in that boy’s horrible car ever again,” Calla said. “You can ride back with him because I’m too angry to look at your face. I will say things I will regret.” She started to storm back out, and then she stopped by Jesse, her nose curled. Their arms had touched; clearly she had just gotten some psychometric impression.
She said, “Oh, it was you.”