“Thirsty?” asked the clerk as Adam handed over his money.
“The other one was for my friend,” Adam said, although he wasn’t sure anyone was Persephone’s friend.
“Your friend?” asked the clerk.
“Probably.”
He went back outside and found the porch empty. His rocker was still rocking, just a little. The other cherry cola was sitting beside it.
“Persephone?”
With sudden misgiving, he rushed to the rocker she had been sitting in. He put his hand on the seat. Cool. He put his hand on the seat of his. Warm.
He craned his neck, looking to see if she was back inside the car. There was nothing. The parking lot was still; even the bird was gone.
“No,” he said, though there was no one to hear him. His mind — a mind curiously remade by Cabeswater — frantically pulled from everything he knew and felt, everything Persephone had said, every moment since he had arrived. The sun crept behind the trees.
“No,” he said again.
The clerk was at the door, locking it for the night.
“Wait,” Adam said. “Did you see my friend? Or did I come here alone?”
She raised one eyebrow.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know how it sounds. Please. Was it just me?”
The clerk hesitated, waiting for the prank. Then she nodded.
Adam’s heart felt bottomless. “I need to use your phone. Please, ma’am. Just for a second.”
“Why?”
“Something terrible has happened.”
41
“I’m here,” Blue said, whirling in the door of 300 Fox Way. She was sweaty and irritable and nervous, torn between hoping for a false alarm and hoping it was important enough to justify begging off in the middle of her Nino’s shift.
Calla met her in the hall as she dropped her bag by the door. “Come here and help Adam.”
“What’s wrong with Adam!”
“Nothing,” Calla snapped. “Besides the usual. He’s looking for Persephone!”
They reached the reading room door. Inside, Adam sat at the head of the reading room table. He was very still, and his eyes were closed. In front of him was the black scrying bowl from Maura’s room. The only light was from three flickering candles. Blue’s stomach did something unpleasant.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said. “Last time —”
“I know. He told me,” Calla said. “But he’s willing to risk it. And it’ll be better with three of us.”
“Why is he looking for Persephone?”
“He thinks something’s wrong with her.”
“Where is she? Did she tell you where she went?”
Calla gave Blue a withering look. Of course. Persephone never told anyone anything.
“Okay,” Blue said.
Calla closed the reading room doors behind her and pointed for Blue to sit beside Adam.
Adam opened his eyes. She wasn’t sure what to ask him, and he just shook his head a little, like he was angry at himself or Persephone or the world.
Calla sat opposite and took one of Adam’s hands. She ordered Blue, “You take the other. I’ll ground him, and you’ll amplify him.”
Blue and Adam exchanged a look. They had not held hands since their breakup. She slid her hand across the table and he linked his fingers through hers. Gingerly. Not pushing the issue. Blue closed her fingers around his hand.
Adam said, “I’m …”
He stopped. He was looking at the scrying bowl out of the corner of his eye, not dead-on.
“You’re what?” Calla said.
He finished, “I’m trusting you guys.”
Blue held his hand a little tighter. Calla said, “We won’t let you fall.”
The bowl shimmered darkly, and he looked into it.
He looked and looked, the candles flickering, and Blue felt the precise moment his body released his soul, because the candles went strange in the reflections and his fingers went limp in hers.
Blue looked sharply to Calla, but Calla merely remained as she was, his light hand lying in her dark one, her chin tilted up, her eyes cut over to Adam watchfully.
His lips moved, like he was mumbling to himself, but no sound came out.
Blue thought of how she amplified his scrying, forcing him further down into the ether. Adam wandered now, traveling out from his body, unwinding the thread that tied him back to it. Calla hung on to the thread, but Blue pushed on him.
Adam’s eyebrows furrowed. His lips parted. His eyes were utterly black — the black of the mirrored scrying bowl. Every so often, the three twisted flames reflected in the bowl appeared in his irises. Only sometimes there were two in one eye and only one in the other, or three in one, and none in the other, or three in both, and then blackness.
“No,” whispered Adam. His voice sounded unlike his own. Blue was reminded terribly of the night she had stumbled upon Neeve scrying in the roots of the beech tree.
Again Blue looked to Calla.
Again Calla remained still and watchful.
“Maura?” Adam called. “Maura?”
Only it was Persephone’s voice coming out of Adam’s mouth.
I can’t do this, Blue thought suddenly. Her heart couldn’t manage it, being afraid.
Calla’s other hand reached across the table to take Blue’s. They were joined in a circle around the scrying bowl.
Adam’s breathing hitched and slowed.
Not again.
Blue felt Calla’s body shifting as she gripped Adam’s hand tighter.
“No,” he said again, and this was his own voice.
The flames were huge in his eyes.
Then they went back to black.
He didn’t breathe.
The room was silent for one beat. Two beats. Three beats.
The candles went out in the scrying bowl.
“PERSEPHONE!” he shouted.
“Now,” Calla said, releasing Blue’s hand. “Let go of him!”
Blue released his hand, but nothing happened.
“Cut him off,” Calla snarled. “I know you can. I’ll pull him back!”
As Calla used her free hand to press a thumb to the center of Adam’s forehead, Blue frantically imagined what she had done to pull the plug on Noah back in Monmouth. Only it had been one thing to do it while Noah threw things about. It was another thing to do it as she watched Adam’s still chest and his empty eyes. Another thing as his shoulders sagged and his face fell into Calla’s waiting hands just before he slumped into the scrying bowl.
He’s trusting us. He never trusts anyone, and he’s trusting us.