He tilted his head down to observe her without malice. She stomped around the corner without further niceties or explanation.
“Er,” said Blue, pushing to her feet. “Sorry about this.”
“DON’T MENTION IT.”
“Thanks for the SpaghettiOs. So, about the cave?”
“YOU STILL WANT TO GO IN IT AFTER THAT?”
“Like you said, it only kills Dittleys.”
“THE CURSE ONLY KILLS DITTLEYS. THE CAVE MIGHT KILL OTHERS.”
“I’m willing to take my chances, if you’re willing to let us.”
Jesse scratched his chest again. “FAIR IS FAIR, I GUESS.”
They shook on it, Blue’s hand minuscule in his.
“YOU DID GOOD WORK, ANT,” he said.
Gansey stepped in then, putting his phone neatly into his pocket, fetching out his keys instead. There was still something stretched thin about his expression. He looked, in fact, like he had in the cave, his face streaked and unfamiliar. It was so strange to see him without his Richard Campbell Gansey III guise on in public that Blue couldn’t stop staring at his face. No — it wasn’t his face. It was the way he stood, his shoulders shrugged, chin ducked, gaze from below uncertain eyebrows.
“SHE WAS ALL RIGHT,” Jesse assured him.
“My head knew that,” Gansey said. “But the rest of me didn’t.”
25
I can’t believe you aren’t dead somewhere,” Ronan told Blue. “You should be dead somewhere.”
It was perhaps a sign of Gansey’s irritation over the situation that he didn’t correct Ronan on this front.
“Thanks for your concern,” she replied.
The kitchen at 300 Fox Way seethed with bodies. Malory, Gansey, Ronan, and Adam were at the kitchen table. Persephone floated near the sink. Calla leaned broodily on the counter. Orla kept appearing in a doorway to steal peeks at Ronan before being shooed away. This claustrophobic, urgent night reminded Adam instead of a night many months before, after Gansey had broken his thumb and nearly gotten shot, after they’d discovered Noah was dead. Things had only just begun to change.
Adam discreetly checked the oven clock. He’d asked to come into the trailer factory two hours late in order to meet with the others tonight, and he wanted to make sure he didn’t go over.
Blue asked, “Professor Malory, would you like some tea?”
Malory looked relieved. “I would love a cup of tea.”
“Do you prefer, er, fruity or footy?” she asked. “If you were to have one or another in tea form?”
He considered. “Footy.”
“Bold choice,” Blue said. “Anyone else?”
Several heads shook. Adam and Gansey had both been victimized by the beverages of 300 Fox Way. The teas here were harvested from the yard or collected from the farmers’ market, chopped and mixed by hand, and then placed in bags labeled with either the predominant ingredient or the intended effect. Some of them were easier to drink recreationally than others.
Calla said, “I went straight to bourbon.”
She and Persephone toasted.
As Blue prepared tea and brought water to the Dog, Gansey said, “All right, here’s the deal. We’ve found another cave, and anecdotally, someone is sleeping in it. It’s time to decide what to do.”
“There’s no decision,” Ronan said. “We go in.”
“You say that because you didn’t see Noah today,” Blue told him as she set a mug down in front of Malory. “That one doesn’t have any hallucinogenic effects, but you might experience some euphoria.”
Gansey said, “Nothing I have ever drank here has ever made me experience anything close to euphoria.”
“You’ve never had that one,” she said. “Anyway, Noah was a pretty scary thing. Jesse, the man who owns the cave, says there’s a curse.” She outlined the curse.
“Why doesn’t he just move?” Adam asked.
“Out of his family home?” Ronan asked, sounding both shitty and earnest.
“Home is putting it strongly,” Gansey said. “I saw this place.”
“You.” Blue pointed at him. “Shut up before you say something offensive. There’s something else you should know. One of the women here foretold Jesse’s death earlier this year. She didn’t know him, but she knew his name.”
Adam’s head jerked up. Not because this was shocking information, but because Blue’s voice had changed just a little bit, and Persephone and Calla were busily knocking back their drinks and not looking at each other all of a sudden. Adam, a secretive animal, was acutely tuned to other people’s secrets. So he wasn’t sure why there would be anything clandestine about the foretold death of a stranger, but he knew that Blue Sargent was telling a partial truth.
“Wait, wait,” Gansey said. “So you’re telling me that not only does this Jesse Dittley believe there’s a curse on this place, but actually, he is right, and he’s going to die.”
“Or he’s going to die because of something we do,” Blue insisted. “That’s why I brought it up. I feel we should make decisions responsibly.”
“You guys have a death list?” Ronan broke in. “That is f**king dark. Am I on it?”
“Some days, I wish,” Blue said.
“Can I see it?” Adam asked.
“What?”
“Can I see the list?”
Blue turned away to make herself a cup of tea. “I don’t have it. Mom took it with her. I just remembered his name. I mean, I thought it was a girl, with an ie at the end, but the Dittley part was memorable.”
Calla raised one sharp eyebrow, but said nothing.
Ah, Adam thought with grim and sudden certainty. Here it is. So one of us is on it.
“Never mind that,” Gansey said. “Time’s wasting and Adam has to go soon. The point is, are we going into this cave tomorrow?”
Which one of us?
Malory perked up. “Now would be a good time to point out that I will not be going into any caverns. I am happy to lend support from a location the sun is able to reach.”
“Of course we’re going in,” Ronan said. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“Risk,” Gansey replied. “I can’t stress how strongly unwilling I am to put anyone in this room in danger.”
“Also, rabbits, remember there’s more than one sleeper,” Calla pointed out. “Three of them. One is for you to wake, and one is for you to not wake.”