"I also want to know where you’ve been going this week," Whelk said.
"Pardon?" Gansey asked politely. He had been rummaging in the backseat for the journal, and the crinkling papers had drowned Whelk’s voice out.
"Don’t push me," Whelk snapped. "The police called the school. I can’t believe it. After seven years. Now there’s going to be a million questions. It’s only going to take them two seconds to answer a lot of those questions with my name. This is all on you. Seven years and I thought I was — I’m screwed. You’ve screwed me."
As Gansey emerged from the Camaro, his journal in his hands, he realized what Whelk was saying: Noah. This man in front of him had killed Noah.
Gansey was beginning to feel something somewhere in his gut. It still didn’t feel like fear. It was something strung out like a rope bridge, barely supporting weight. It was the suspicion that nothing else in Gansey’s life had ever been real except for this moment.
"Mr. Whelk —"
"Tell me where you’ve you been."
"Up the mountains near Nethers," Gansey said, his voice remote. It was the truth, and in any case, it didn’t matter if he lied or not; he’d entered the GPS coordinates into the journal he was about to hand over.
"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.
So it was true. She really was the table at Starbucks everyone wanted.
"I think we have an hour," Calla said as Blue opened the attic door. "They should be back around eleven. Let me go first. In case …"
Blue raised an eyebrow. "What is it you’re thinking she has up here?"
"I don’t know."
"Ferrets?"
"Don’t be ridiculous."
"Wizards?"
Calla eased by Blue and began to climb the stairs. The single lightbulb that illuminated the attic didn’t reach far down the stairs. "That’s more likely. Oh, it smells."
"That’s the ferrets."
From her vantage point farther up the stairs, Calla shot Blue a look that Blue suspected was more dangerous than anything they’d find in the attic. Calla was right, however. The air that moved slowly around them was rather malodorous; Blue couldn’t place the scent, though it hinted at familiar things, like rotting onions and feet.
"Smells like sulfur," Blue said. "Or a dead body."
Thinking of the horrid voice coming from Neeve’s mouth before, she wouldn’t be surprised by either.
"Smells like asafetida," Calla corrected grimly.
"What’s that?"
"Either something that is delicious in curry, or something that is very useful in witchcraft."
Blue tried to breathe through her mouth. It was hard to imagine something that smelled so convincingly of a dead person’s feet being delicious in anything. "Which do you think it is?"
Calla had reached the top of the stairs.
"Not curry," she said.
Now that Blue stood at the top of the stairs, she could see that Neeve had transformed the attic into something quite different from what she remembered. A mattress covered with throw rugs lay directly on the floor. Around the room, unlit candles of different heights, dark bowls, and glasses of water were gathered in groups. Bright painters’ tape made patterns on the floor between some of the objects. Beside Blue’s feet, a half-burned plant stalk rested on a plate dusted with ashes. In one of the narrow dormers, two full-length, footed mirrors faced each other, reflecting mirrored images back and forth at each other in perpetuum.
Also, it was cold. The attic should not have been cold after the day’s heat.
"Don’t touch anything," Calla told Blue. Which Blue found ironic, considering why they’d come.
Blue didn’t touch anything, but she did walk farther into the room, peering at a small statue of a woman with eyes in her belly. The entire room was giving her a crawling feeling. "She must be making a lot of curry."
Behind them, the stairs creaked, and both Calla and Blue leapt.
"May I come up?" Persephone asked. It was an irrelevant question, as she was already "up." Wearing a lace frock Blue had made her, she stood at the top of the stairs. Her hair was tied up tightly, which signaled that she was not afraid to get her hands dirty.
"Persephone," Calla thundered. She’d gotten over her shock and was now merely angry at being shocked. "You should make some noise when you enter rooms."
"I did let the stair squeak," Persephone pointed out. "Maura said she’ll be back at midnight, so be done by then."
"She knows?" This was both Blue and Calla in unison.
