"What did you find? Did you find Glendower?"
Gansey flinched, and the flinch surprised him. Somehow he’d convinced himself this was about something else, something more logical, and the sound of Glendower’s name shocked him.
"No," Gansey replied. "We found a carving in the ground."
Whelk held his hand out for the journal. Gansey swallowed.
He asked, "Whelk — sir — are you sure this is the only way?"
There was a soft, unmistakable click. It was a sound that had been made recognizable by hours of action-adventure movies and video games. Though Gansey had never heard it in person before, he knew exactly what sound a pistol made when the safety was taken off.
Whelk placed the barrel of the gun on Gansey’s forehead.
"No," Whelk said. "This is the other way."
Gansey had that same, detached feeling that he’d had in Monmouth Manufacturing, looking at the wasp. At once he saw the reality: a gun pressed against the skin above his eyebrows, so cold as to feel sharp — and also the possibility: Whelk’s finger pulling back, a bullet burrowing into his skull, death instead of finding a way to get back to Henrietta.
The journal weighted his hands. He didn’t need it. He knew everything in it.
But it was him. He was giving everything that he’d worked for away.
I will get a new one.
"If you’d just asked," Gansey said, "I would’ve told you everything in there. I would’ve been happy to. It wasn’t a secret."
The handgun trembled against Gansey’s forehead. Whelk said, "I can’t believe that you’re saying anything when I have a gun to your head. I can’t believe you would bother to say that."
"That’s how," replied Gansey, "you know it’s the truth." He let Whelk take the journal from him.
"You disgust me," Whelk said, holding the book to his chest. "You think you’re invincible. Guess what. So did I."
When he said that, Gansey knew Whelk was going to kill him. That there was no way that someone could have that much hatred and bitterness in his voice while holding a gun and not pull the trigger.
Whelk’s face tensed.
For a moment, there was no time: just the space between when one breath escaped and another rushed in.
Seven months before, Ronan had taught Gansey how to throw a hook.
Hit with your body, not just your fist.
Look where you’re punching.
Elbow at ninety degrees.
Don’t think about how much it will hurt.
Gansey. I told you: Don’t think about how much it will hurt.
He swung.
Gansey forgot nearly everything Ronan had told him, but he remembered to look, and it was only that, and luck, that knocked the gun into the gravel by the road.
Whelk bellowed a wordless shout.
They both dove for the gun. Gansey, stumbling onto one knee, kicked blindly in the direction of it. He heard his foot connect with something. Whelk’s arm first, then something more solid. The gun skittered in the direction of the car’s rear wheels, and Gansey scrabbled around the far side of the Camaro. The light from Whelk’s headlights didn’t reach to this side. His only thought was to find cover, to be still in the darkness.
There was silence on the other side of the car. Struggling to keep his gasping breaths in check, Gansey laid his cheek against the warm metal of the Pig. His thumb throbbed where he’d hit the gun.
Don’t breathe.
By the road, Whelk swore again and again and again. The gravel crunched as he crouched by the car. He couldn’t find the gun. He swore again.
In the far-off distance, an engine hummed. Another car, possibly, coming this way. A rescuer or, at least, a witness.
For a moment, Whelk was completely silent, and then, abruptly, he broke into a run, his footsteps softening as he made it back to his own car.
Ducking his head, Gansey peered under the body of the Pig, which was ticking as it cooled down. He saw the slender silhouette of the gun between the rear tires, illuminated from behind by Whelk’s headlights.
He wasn’t sure if Whelk was retreating or going for a flashlight. Gansey backed farther into the darkness. Then he waited there, his heart crashing in his ears, grass scraping at his cheek.
Whelk’s car charged onto the highway, roaring toward Henrietta.
The other car passed by right after. Oblivious.
Gansey lay in the grass of the ditch for a long time, listening to the humming of insects in the trees around him and the breathing sounds the Pig made as the engine settled. His thumb was really starting to hurt where he’d hit the gun. Really, he’d gotten off light. But still. It hurt.
And his journal. He felt raw: the chronicle of his fiercest desires stripped from him by force.
After Whelk’s car failed to return, Gansey climbed to his feet and went around to the other side of the Camaro. He got down onto his knees and crawled as far under the car as he could manage, hooking the edge of the gun with his good thumb. Gingerly, he put the safety back on. He could hear Blue’s voice when they found Noah’s body: fingerprints!
Gansey, moving as in a dream, opened the car door and dropped the gun on the passenger seat. It felt like another night, another car, another person had left his parents’ house.
He closed his eyes and turned the key.
The Pig coughed and coughed, but then the engine caught.
He opened his eyes. Nothing about the night looked the same as before.
He turned on his headlights, and then drove back onto the road. Pressing the gas pedal, he tested the engine. It held, no stutters.
Slamming down the accelerator, he raced toward Henrietta. Whelk had killed Noah, and he knew his cover was blown. Wherever he was heading next, he had nothing left to lose.
Chapter 34
Blue had never been a big fan of the attic, even before Neeve moved in. Numerous slanting roof lines provided dozens of opportunities to hit your head on a sloping ceiling. Unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with prickly plywood were unfriendly to bare feet. Summer turned the attic into an inferno. Moreover, there generally was nothing up there but dust and wasps. Maura was a die-hard not-collector and so anything unused was forced upon neighbors or Goodwill. There was really no reason to visit the attic.
Until now.
As it grew late, Blue had left Ronan, Adam, and Noah behind to discuss if it was possible to implicate their Latin teacher in Noah’s death, if the police had not already established a link. Adam had called only five minutes after she’d gotten home to tell her that Noah had vanished the instant she’d left.