Blue Lily, Lily Blue (20 page)

After all of the continuances, after months of waiting, it was the day of the court case.
Adam got up as he would normally for school, but instead of

putting on his uniform, he put on the good suit he’d bought on Gansey’s advice the year before. He had not permitted Gansey to pay for any of it, back then. The tie he tied on now, though — the tie was a Christmas gift from Gansey, permitted because Adam had already had a tie when Gansey bought it, so it couldn’t be charity.

It seemed a like a silly bit of principle now, completely divorced from the point of anything. He wondered if he was going to go through each year of his life thinking about how stupid he’d been the year before.

He thought about waiting until after breakfast to get dressed, to keep from spilling anything on his suit, but that was foolish. He wouldn’t be able to eat anything.

His case was at ten a.m., hours after school began, but Adam had asked permission to take the entire day off. He knew it would be impossible to hide the reason for his absence from Gansey and Ronan if he had to leave mid-morning, and equally difficult to disguise where he’d been if he returned right after court.

Part of him wished that he wasn’t doing this without the others— a shocking wish in light of the fact that only a few weeks before, the very idea that Gansey might even know about the court case had troubled Adam.

But now — no. He still didn’t want them to remember this part of him. He only wanted them to see the new Adam. Persephone had told him that no one had to know his past if he didn’t want them to.

He didn’t want them to.
So he waited, while Gansey and Ronan and Blue went off to school and had ordinary days. He sat on the edge of his mattress and worked on the plan to blackmail Greenmantle as first period happened. He stared at his biology text and thought about a dustless circle around his feet for second period. Then he drove to the courthouse.
Cabeswater beckoned him, but he couldn’t retreat. He had to be here for this.
Every step before the courthouse was an event forgotten as soon as it had happened. There was parking, a metal detector, a clerk, a back staircase instead of the elevator, another clerk, a glimpsed low-ceilinged room with pews like a church on either side of an aisle, a church for the mundane, a service for those who claimed not guilty.
Adam tried to soothe himself by telling himself that people worked here every day, this was nothing extraordinary to them, there was nothing special about this building. But the old, moldand-glue smell of it, the feeling of threadbare carpet beneath his feet, the sickly, uneven light of the fluorescents overhead — all of it felt alien. All of it burdened his senses with how this day was like no other. He was going to be sick. Or faint.
Was his father in the building yet?
It was a closed courtroom for juvenile cases, so the only people in the room so far were the staff: clerks, lawyers, bailiffs.
Adam turned over the possible outcomes in his head. If he lost, he knew academically that the court couldn’t make him return home. He was eighteen and free to go and fail or succeed in life apart from his family. But would this linger on his record then: a boy who had spuriously taken his father to court? How ugly that would look. How base. He imagined Gansey’s father interpreting: familial squabbling of the lower classes. This is how the low stayed low, he would say. Infighting and drinking, daytime TV and Walmart everyday low prices.
He couldn’t quite feel invested in winning, either, because he wasn’t sure what it would look like. It was possible that his father would go back to jail. If he did, could his mother pay the bills?
He shouldn’t care. But he couldn’t make himself stop.
Adam felt as if he were playing pretend in his good suit.
But you are just one of them, white trash in diamonds.
There was his father.
He was in a jacket with some local company’s logo on the back and his company polo shirt. Adam prayed for some sort of clarity, to see his father as everyone else saw him, instead of as
Dad? It’s Adam —
“There’s still time for you to tell the truth,” Robert Parrish said.
Adam’s mother had not come.
Adam’s fingers were numb.
Even if I lose
, he thought weakly,
he can’t have me back, so it won’t matter. It will only be this hour of humiliation and then it will be over.
He wished he had never done this.
“All right, then,” said the judge. His face was a memory that vanished the minute Adam blinked.
Cabeswater stole him away for a blissful second, leaves curled against his throat, and then released him. How desperately Adam wanted to cling to Cabeswater. Strange as it was, it was familiar, and on his side.
He had been wrong to come here alone. Why did he care if Gansey and Ronan saw this? They already knew. They knew everything about him. What a lie
unknowable
was. The only person who didn’t know Adam was himself.
What a proud idiot you have been, Adam Parrish.
“Are there any witnesses for this case?” the judge asked.
There were not.
Adam didn’t look at his father.
“Then I guess we shall begin.”
A hissing sound came from the bailiff beside the judge: a voice through his radio. The bailiff leaned his head to listen, then muttered something back to the speaker. Coming close to the judge, he said, “Your honor, Bailiff Myley says there are some witnesses for the case outside if it’s not too late for them to come in.”
“The door’s already closed, is it not?”
“It is.”
The judge peered at his watch. “They are certainly for the Parrish case?”
“Bailiff Myley seems to think they are.”
The judge smiled with some private humor; this was some long-running joke the others weren’t privy to. “Far be it from me to doubt him. Send them in, and I’ll decide whether to allow them.”
Adam miserably wondered which of the neighbors were coming to his father’s defense.
In an hour, this will be over. You will never have to do it again. All you have to do is survive.
The door cracked open. Adam didn’t want to look, but he did anyway.
In the hall stood Richard Campbell Gansey III in his school uniform and overcoat and scarf and gloves, looking like someone from another world. Behind him was Ronan Lynch, his damn tie knotted right for once and his shirt tucked in.
Humiliation and joy warred furiously inside Adam.
Gansey strode between the pews as Adam’s father stared at him. He went directly to the bench, straight up to the judge. Now that he stood directly beside Adam, not looking at him, Adam could see that he was a little out of breath. Ronan, behind him, was as well. They had run.
For him.
Removing his right glove, Gansey shook hands with the judge.
“Judge Harris,” he said warmly.
“Mr. Gansey,” said Judge Harris. “Have you found that king of yours yet?”
“Not just yet. Have you finished that terrace yet?”
“Not just yet,” Harris replied. “What’s your business with this case?”
“Ronan Lynch here was at the incident,” Gansey said. “I thought his side of the story might be worthy. And I’ve been friends with Adam since day one here in Henrietta, and I’m glad to see this miserable business over. I’d like to be a character witness, if I could.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Harris said.
“I object,” Robert Parrish exclaimed.
Gansey turned to Adam, finally. He was still wearing his glorious kingly face, Richard Campbell Gansey III, white knight, but his eyes were uncertain.
Is this okay?
Was it okay? Adam had turned down so many offers of help from Gansey. Money for school, money for food, money for rent. Pity and charity, Adam had thought. For so long, he’d wanted Gansey to see him as an equal, but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam.
Now he could see that it wasn’t charity Gansey was offering. It was just
truth
.
And something else: friendship of the unshakeable kind. Friendship you could swear on. That could be busted nearly to breaking and come back stronger than before.
Adam held out his right hand, and Gansey clasped it in a handshake, like they were men, because they
were
men.
“All right,” Harris reported. “Let’s get this case underway.”

dam didn’t normally take anyone with him when he did Cabeswater’s work. He trusted his skills on his own. His
emotions
he trusted on his own. He could hurt no

one in an empty room. No one could hurt him.
He was unknowable.
Except that he wasn’t.
So he asked Blue Sargent to come with him when he finally

went to do what Cabeswater had asked him to do weeks before. He didn’t tell her, in case it didn’t work, but he thought that if he brought her with him, Cabeswater might help them find Maura.

Now he waited in the car at a faded gas station outside of Henrietta. He couldn’t tell if the pulse in his palms was his heartbeat or the ley line.

“I know what you mean,” Noah said from the backseat. He was draped over the passenger headrest like a sweater with a body still in it. Adam had nearly forgotten he was there, because he hadn’t been invited. Not because he was unwanted, but because he was dead, and the deceased couldn’t be counted on to show up at specific times.

“Did you just reply to my thoughts?”
“I don’t think so.”
Adam couldn’t remember if he’d spoken out loud. He didn’t

The car rocked as a farm truck trundled by on the highway. Everything about this area was worn. The gas station was a survivor from decades past, with tin signs in the window and chickens for sale behind it. The farm across the road was faded but charming, like a yellowed newspaper.

He turned Greenmantle’s blackmail over in his mind. It had to be bulletproof. He hadn’t told Gansey; he hadn’t told Blue. He’d convinced Ronan of it and brought the Gray Man into it, but in the end, it was all on him if Greenmantle exploded in their faces.

“I think it’s ready,” Noah said.
“Stop that. Stop. It’s creepy.”
He shot a glance to Noah in the rearview mirror and regretted it; the dead boy was more frightening in reflections. Much less living.

From outside the car, Blue’s voice rose. “How would you feel if I reduced
you
to your legs?”
Adam and Noah craned to look out the back window.
Blue’s voice came again. “No. No. How about you see it
my
way? How about you don’t reduce me to a commodity and then, when I ask you not to, tell me it’s a compliment and I should be
glad
for it?”
Noah’s mouth made an
oooo
shape.
“Yeah,” Adam agreed, climbing out.
Blue stood a few feet away. She wore a big boxy T-shirt, teal shorts, combat boots, and socks that came up over her knees. Only four inches of bare skin were visible, but they were a really nice four inches.
An old man wearing a seed cap was saying, “Little lady, one day you’ll remember the days people told you that you had nice legs as a good memory.”
Adam braced for the explosion.
It was nails and dynamite. “Good — memory? Oh, I
wish
I were as ignorant as you! What happiness! There are girls who
kill
themselves over negative body image and
you
—”
“Is there a problem here?” Adam broke in.
The man seemed relieved. People were always pleased to see clean, muted Adam, the deferential Southern voice of reason. “Your girlfriend’s quite a firecracker.”
Adam stared at the man. Blue stared at Adam.
He wanted to tell her it wasn’t worth it — that he’d grown up with this sort of man and knew they were untrainable — but then she’d throw the thermos at Adam’s head and probably slap that guy in the mouth. It was amazing that she and Ronan didn’t get along better, because they were different brands of the same impossible stuff.
“Sir,” Adam started— Blue’s eyebrows spiked — “I think maybe your mama didn’t teach you how to talk to women.”
The old man shook his head at Adam, like in pity.
Adam added, “And she’s not my girlfriend.”
Blue flashed him a brilliant look of approval, and then she got into the car with a dramatic door slam Ronan would have approved of.
“Look, kid,” the old man started.
Adam interrupted, “Your fuel door’s open, by the way.”
He climbed back into his little, shitty car, the one Ronan called the Hondayota. He felt heroic for no good reason. Blue simmered righteously as they pulled out of the station. For a few moments, there was nothing but the labored sound of the little car’s breathing.
Then Noah said, “You do have nice legs, though.”
Blue swung at him. A helpless laugh escaped Adam, and she hit his shoulder, too.
“Did you get the water at least?” he asked.
She sloshed the thermos to demonstrate success. “I also brought some jet. It’s supposed to be good protection while you’re scrying.”
“We’re
scrying
?” Noah sat up straight.
Adam struggled to explain. “Cabeswater speaks one language, and I speak another. I can get the broad idea from reading the cards. But it’s harder to get the specifics of how to fix the alignment. So I’m scrying. I do it all the time. It’s just efficient, Noah.”
“An efficient way to get your naked soul stolen by forces of
raw evil
, maybe,” Noah said.
Blue exchanged a look with Adam. “I don’t believe in raw evil.”
Noah said, “It doesn’t care if you believe in it.”
She turned in her seat to face him. “I don’t normally like to point out when you’re being creepy. But you are.”
The dead boy retreated farther into the backseat; the air warmed marginally as he did. “
He
already called me creepy today.”
“Tell me more about the aligning stuff,” Blue said to Adam. “Tell me
why
it wants you to.”
“I don’t understand how it matters.”
She made a noise of profound exasperation. “Even putting aside every single spiritual consideration, or, or, mythological consideration, or anything that actually means anything, you’re manipulating this massive energy source that seems to communicate directly into your head in a different language, and that, to me, seems like something I would have a lot of questions about if I were you!”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But I do. You’re driving all the way out here, and you don’t even ask why?”
Adam didn’t reply, because his reply wouldn’t have been civil.
His silence, however, seemed to be worse. She snapped, “If you didn’t want to talk, I don’t know why you asked me if I wanted to come!”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“Right, who wants someone who
thinks
along with them!”
He reined himself in, with effort. With only a little barbed wire in his tone, he said, “I just want to get this
done
.”
“Just put me out here. I’ll
walk back
.”
He slammed on the brakes. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Do it, then!” She already had her hand on the door handle.
“Guys,”
Noah wailed.
The best and worst thing about Blue Sargent was that she meant what she said; she really would walk herself back to Henrietta if he stopped now. He grimaced at her. She grimaced back.
Don’t fight with Blue. Don’t fight with Gansey.
With a sigh, he sped up again.
Blue got herself back together and then turned on the radio.
Adam hadn’t even realized the ancient tape deck worked, but after a hissing few seconds, a tape inside jangled a tune. Noah began to sing along at once.
“Squash one, squash two —”
Adam pawed for the radio at the same time as Blue. The tape ejected with enough force that Noah stretched a hand to catch it.
“That
song
. What are you doing with
that
in your player?” demanded Blue. “Do you listen to that recreationally? How did that song escape from the Internet?”
Noah cackled and showed them the cassette. It boasted a handmade label marked with Ronan’s handwriting: parrish’s hondayota alone time. The other side was a shitbox singalong.
“Play it! Play it!” Noah said gaily, waving the tape.
“Noah. Noah! Take that away from him,” Adam said.
Ahead of them, the entrance for Skyline Drive loomed. Adam was ready this time; he opened his wallet as they coasted closer. Inside nestled precisely fifteen dollars.
Blue handed over a five. “My contribution.”
There was a pause.
He took it.
At the window, he exchanged their combined funds for a map, which he gave back to Blue. As he headed into a slanted parking area shortly beyond the entrance, he uncertainly examined his pride for damage and was surprised to find none.
“Is this the right place?” she asked. “Do you need our fifteendollar map?”
Adam said, “I’ll know in a second. We can get out.”
Before them, the ground dropped sharply into a bottomless ravine; behind them, the mountains ascended darkly. The air was clouded with the pleasant and dangerous scent of woodsmoke: Somewhere, one of these autumn mountains was on fire. Adam squinted until he found its source, smoke shrouding a distant peak. From this far away, it seemed more magical than threatening.
Blue and Noah horsed around as Adam retrieved his tarot cards. Squaring his feet so that he could better feel the line’s pulse, he placed a random card on the warm hood. His unfocused eyes skipped over the image — a black-smudged knight on horseback carrying a vine-wrapped staff — and began to remake it into something wordless and dreamy. Sight was replaced with sensation. A vertiginous feeling of travel, climbing, rightness.
He covered the image with his hand until he got his eyes back, and then he put the card away.
“Knight of wands?” Blue asked him.
Already Adam couldn’t remember what the card had
really
been. “Was it?”
“Now who’s creepy?” Noah asked.
Adam shouldered his backpack and headed toward the trailhead. “Come on. It’s this way.”
The rocky, narrow trail was dusted with crumbled leaves. The ground fell away abruptly on one side and rose as precipitously on the other. Adam was hyperaware of the massive boulders that jutted into the trail. Beneath a furring of mintgreen lichen, the stones felt cool and alive, wild conductors of the ley line. He led Noah and Blue upward until they came to a confusion of boulders. Stepping off the trail, Adam climbed alongside them, finding footholds on jutting stones and exposed tree branches. The big, blue stones were tumbled onto one another like a giant’s playset.
Yes, this is it.
He peered into a man-sized crevice.
Blue said, “Snakes? Nests? Bears?”
“Protected national park,” Noah said, darkly funny. And then, with unexpected valiance, “I’ll go in first. They can’t hurt me.”
He looked smudgy and insubstantial as he slid inside. There was silence, silence.
Blue squinted. “Noah?”
From inside the crevice came a great rustling flurry. All at once, a large puff of oak leaves exploded from the opening, startling both Blue and Adam.
Noah reappeared. He plucked four and a half oak leaves out of Blue’s spiky hair and blew some leaf crumbs from the bridge of Adam’s nose. “It’s safe.”
Adam was glad to have them with him.
Inside was dim but not dark; light came from the entrance, and also from below, where the rocks were stacked imperfectly. In the middle of the small space was a large boulder the size of a desk or an altar. The surface was worn and cupped.
He remembered or recognized it from his insight in the garage.
He felt a little shake of nerves, or anticipation. It was strange to do this with an audience. He didn’t quite know what he looked like from the outside.
“Pour the water in there, Blue.”
Blue ran a hand over the stone to clear out debris. “Oh!” Retrieving a black stone from her pocket, she placed it by the indentation. Then she slowly filled it with water.
The shallow pool reflected the dark ceiling.
Noah backed well away from it, making sure he wasn’t reflected. His fear sucked the warmth from the space. Blue stretched a hand to him, but he shook his head.
So she stayed by Adam, shoulder pressed to his, and Adam found he was glad for this, too. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him, and it was strangely grounding. After a second, he realized that part of it was probably the fact of Blue’s ability, too, amplifying whatever part of Cabeswater he was tied to.
They eyed the water. He had done this before, but never like this, surrounded by rock. It felt like there was someone else in the room with them. He didn’t want to admit that he was already intimidated by the dark pool even before anything supernatural had happened. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes.
Finally, Blue whispered, “It’s like, if someone said to you, ‘nice sweater, dude!’ When you were in your Aglionby uniform.”
“What?”
“I wanted you to know why I got so angry at that old guy. I’ve been trying to think of a way to explain it. I know you don’t get it. But that’s why.”
It was true that he hadn’t understood the fuss at the gas station, really, beyond the fact that she was bothered, and he didn’t like for her to be bothered. But she was right about the sweater, too. People assumed things based on the Aglionby sweater or blazer all the time; he’d done it himself. Still did it.
“I get it,” he whispered back. He wasn’t sure why they were whispering, but he did feel better now. More normal. They were in control here. “It’s simplifying.”
“Exactly.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. What now?”
“I’m going to look in and focus,” Adam said. “I might zone out.”
Noah whimpered.
Blue, however, sounded practical. “What do you want us to do if you zone out?”
“I don’t reckon you should do anything. I don’t really know what it will look like from the outside. I guess, use your judgment if something seems wrong.”
Noah hugged his arms around himself.
Leaning over the pool, Adam saw his face. He hadn’t noticed that he didn’t look like everyone else until he got to high school, when everyone else started noticing. He didn’t know if he was good-looking or bad-looking— only that he was differentlooking. It was up to interpretation whether the strangeness of his face was beautiful or ugly.
He waited for his features to disappear, to smudge into a sensation. But all he saw was his Henrietta-dirt face with its pulled-down thin mouth. He wished he wouldn’t grow up to look like his parents’ combined genes.
“I don’t think it’s working,” he said.
But Blue didn’t reply, and after half a heartbeat, Adam realized that his mouth hadn’t moved in the reflection when he spoke. His face just stared back, eyebrows drawn into suspicion and worry.
His thoughts churned up inside him, silt clouding a pool of water. Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.
How arrogant we are
, Adam thought,
to deliver babies who can’t walk or talk or feed themselves. How sure we are that nothing will destroy them before they can take care of themselves.
How fragile they were, how easily abandoned and neglected and beaten and hated. Prey animals were born afraid.
He had not known to be born afraid, but he’d learned.
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
Outside yourself
, Persephone’s voice reminded him.
It was difficult to tear himself away; there was a strange, hideous comfort to wearing the edges off his interior.
With effort, he recalled Cabeswater. He felt along the field of the energy in his mind. Somewhere there would be a fray or dispersion, some ailment he could cure.
There it was. Far down the ley line, the energy was fractured. If he concentrated, he could even see why: A highway had been cut into a mountain, gouging out rock and breaking the natural line of the ley. Now it sputtered unevenly as it leapt across and under the highway. If Adam could realign a few of the charged stones at the top of this mountain, it would cause a chain reaction that would eventually make the line dig underground, beneath the highway, joining the frayed ends again.
He asked, “Why do you want me to do this?
Rogo aliquem aliquid
.”
He didn’t really expect an answer, but he heard a babble of speech, incomprehensible but for one word:
Greywaren.
Ronan, who effortlessly spoke Cabeswater’s language. Not Adam, who struggled.
But not in the Aglionby courtyard. He hadn’t struggled then. There hadn’t
been
a language. Just him and Cabeswater.