The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1)

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1) Page 37

Ronan took in Gansey’s state and raised an eyebrow. "He’s out."

"No," Gansey said, emphatic, "he is not. Noah!"

He backed into the center of the room, turning to look at the corners, the rafters, searching places no one would ever find a roommate. Adam hesitated by the door. He couldn’t figure out how this could be over Noah: Noah, who could go unnoticed for hours, whose room was pristine, whose voice was never raised.

Gansey stopped searching and turned to Adam.

"Adam," he demanded, "what is Noah’s last name?"

Before Gansey had asked, Adam felt as if he must have known. But now the answer slid away from his mouth and then from his thoughts entirely, leaving his lips parted. It was like losing his way to class, losing his way home, forgetting the phone number for Monmouth Manufacturing.

"I don’t know," Adam admitted.

Gansey pointed at Adam’s chest like he was shooting a gun or making a point. "It’s Czerny, by the way. Zerny. Chair-knee. However it’s pronounced. Noah Czerny." Throwing his head back, he shouted to the air, "I know you’re here, Noah."

"Dude," Ronan remarked. "You’re flipped."

"Open his door," Gansey ordered. "Tell me what’s in there."

With a graceful shrug, Ronan slid out of his doorway and turned the knob on Noah’s door. It fell open, revealing the corner of an always-made bed.

"It looks like a nunnery as usual," Ronan said. "All the personality of a mental facility. What am I looking for? Drugs? Girls? Guns?"

"Tell me," Gansey said, "which classes you share with Noah."

Ronan snorted. "None."

"Me neither," Gansey replied. He looked at Adam, who shook his head slightly. "Nor Adam. How is that possible?" He didn’t wait for an answer, though. "When does he eat? Have you ever seen him eat?"

"I don’t really care," Ronan said. He stroked Chainsaw’s head with a single finger and she tilted her beak up in response. It was a strange moment in a strange evening, and if it had happened the day before, it would’ve struck Adam that he rarely saw such thoughtless kindness from Ronan.

Gansey shot questions at both of them. "Does he pay rent? When did he move in? Have you ever questioned it?"

Ronan shook his head. "Dude, you have really left the reservation. What is your problem?"

"I spent the afternoon with the police," Gansey said. "I went out with Blue to the church —"

Now jealousy stabbed Adam, deep and unexpected, a wound that kept stinging, no less painful for him not being certain what, precisely, had inflicted it.

Gansey continued, "Don’t look at me like that, both of you. The point is this. We found a body. Rotted to bones. Do you know whose it was?"

Ronan’s gaze held Gansey’s, solid.

Adam felt like he had dreamt the answer to this question.

Behind them, the door to the apartment suddenly slammed shut. They whirled to face it, but there was no one there, only the fluttering of map corners on the wall to show that it had moved.

The boys stared at the subtle movement of the paper, listened to the echo of the slam.

There was no breeze. Adam’s skin crawled.

"Mine," Noah said.

As one, they spun back around.

Noah stood in the doorway to his room.

His skin was pale as parchment and his eyes were shadowed and unspecific, as they always were after dark. There was the ubiquitous smudge on his face, only now, it looked like dirt, or blood, or possibly like a hollow, his bones crushed beneath his skin.

Ronan’s posture was wound tight. "Your room was empty. I just looked in it."

"I told you," Noah said. "I told everyone."

Adam had to close his eyes for a long moment.

Gansey, if anything, looked finally back under control. What Gansey needed out of life was facts, things he could write in his journal, things he could state twice and underline, no matter how improbable those facts were. Adam realized that all along Gansey had not really known what he was going to find when he’d brought Adam back here. How could he have? How could anyone truly believe —

"He’s dead," Gansey said. His arms were tight over his chest. "You’re really dead, aren’t you?"

Noah’s voice was plaintive. "I told you."

They stared at him, just feet away from Ronan. Really, he was so much less real than Ronan, Adam thought — it should have been obvious. It was ludicrous that they hadn’t noticed. Ridiculous that they had not thought about his last name, about where he came from, about the classes he did or did not go to. His clammy hands, his pristine room, his unchanging smudgy face. He had been dead as long as they’d known him.

Reality was a bridge breaking beneath Adam.

"Shit, man," Ronan said, finally. A little desperate. "All those nights you gave me grief about keeping you awake, and you don’t even need to sleep."

Adam asked, barely audible, "How did you die?"

Noah turned his face away.

"No," Gansey said, purpose crystallized in the word. "That’s not the question, is it? The question is: Who killed you?"

Now Noah wore the retreating expression that came when something made him uncomfortable. His chin turned, his eyes hooded and alien. Adam was suddenly profoundly aware that Noah was a dead thing and he was not.

"If you can tell me," Gansey said, "I can find a way to put the police on the trail."

Noah’s chin ducked farther, his expression somehow black, his eye sockets hollowed and skull-like. Were they looking at a boy? Or something that looked like a boy?

Adam wanted to say, Don’t push him, Gansey.

In Ronan’s hands, Chainsaw began to scream. Bright, frantic caws that split the air. It was as if there was nothing in the world but the sound of her frenzied cries. It seemed impossible that such a small body could make such a huge sound.

Noah lifted his head, his eyes wide open and ordinary. He looked frightened.

Ronan folded a hand over Chainsaw’s head until she quieted.

Noah said, "I don’t want to talk about it."

His shoulders were drawn up around his ears, and he looked, now, like the Noah that they had always known. The Noah they had never questioned as being one of them.

One of the living.

"Okay," said Gansey. Then, again: "Okay. What would you like to do?"

"I’d like …" Noah began, trailing off as he always did, shrinking back into his room. Was this what Noah did when he was alive, Adam wondered, or was this a function of being dead, of trying to hold an ordinary conversation?

Ronan and Adam both glanced to Gansey at once. It seemed like there was nothing to be done or said. Even Ronan seemed subdued, his normal barbs hidden. Until they were sure what the new rules were, he, too, seemed reluctant to find out how otherworldly Noah could be when provoked.

Looking away from the others, Gansey asked, "Noah?"

The space in Noah’s doorway was empty.

At the threshold of Noah’s room, Ronan pushed the door all the way open. The room inside was stark and untouched, the bed so clearly unslept in.

The world hummed around Adam, suddenly charged with possibilities, not all of them pleasant. He felt like he was sleepwalking. Nothing was the truth until he could put his hands on it.

Ronan began to swear, long and filthy and continuous, without stopping for breath.

Gansey’s thumb worried over his bottom lip. He asked Adam, "What’s going on?"

Adam replied, "We’re being haunted."

Chapter 30

Blue was more distressed than she thought she would’ve been by the fact that Noah was dead. From talking to the police, it was clear that he’d never been alive, at least not since she’d met him, but still, she felt a curious grief over it. For starters, Noah’s presence in Monmouth changed distinctly after they discovered his body. They never seemed to get the entire Noah anymore: Gansey would hear Noah’s voice in the parking lot, or Blue would see his shadow fall across the sidewalk as she headed over to Monmouth, or Ronan would find scratches on his skin.

He had always been a ghost, but now he was acting it.

"Maybe," Adam had suggested, "it’s because his body’s been removed from the ley line."

Blue just kept thinking of the skull with its face smashed in, of Noah retching at the sight of the Mustang. Not throwing up. Just going through the actions of it, because he was dead.

She wanted to find whoever did it and she wanted him to fester in a cell for the rest of his life.

Blue was so engrossed in Noah’s plight that she nearly forgot that she and Calla were supposed to search Neeve’s room on Friday. Calla must have recognized that she was distracted, because she’d left a cheekily obvious note on the fridge for Blue to find before school: BLUE — DON’T FORGET MOVIE NIGHT TONIGHT. Swiping the sticky note from the door, Blue stuffed it into her backpack.

"Blue," Neeve said.

Blue jumped as far into the air as a human being could manage, spinning at the same time. Neeve sat at the kitchen table, a mug of tea in front of her, a book in her hand. She wore a cream shirt the precise color of the curtains behind her.

"I didn’t see you there!" Blue gasped. The sticky note in her backpack felt like a burning confession.

Neeve smiled mildly and placed her book facedown. "I haven’t seen much of you this week."

"I’ve … been … out … with … friends." Between each word, Blue told herself to stop sounding suspicious.

"I’ve heard about Gansey," Neeve said. "I advised Maura that it wasn’t wise to try to keep you apart. You’re clearly meant to cross paths."

"Oh. Uh. Thanks for that."

"You seem distressed," Neeve said. With one of her lovely hands, she patted the seat of the chair beside her. "Would you like me to look at anything for you? Do a reading?"

"Oh, thanks for that, but I can’t — I have to make it to school," Blue said quickly. Part of her wondered if Neeve asked these things out of kindness, or if she asked them out of reverse psychology, because she knew what Calla and Blue were planning. Either way, Blue didn’t want any part of the scrying Neeve did. Bundling her things toward the doorway, she did a kind of casual half wave over her shoulder.

She had made it only a few steps when Neeve said to her back, "You’re looking for a god. Didn’t you suspect that there was also a devil?"

Blue froze in the doorway. She turned her head, but didn’t quite face Neeve.

"Oh, I haven’t been poking around," Neeve said. "What you’re doing is big enough for me to see while I’m looking at other things."

Now Blue faced her. Neeve’s mild expression hadn’t changed; her hands were cupped around the mug.

"Numbers are easy for me," Neeve said. "They came first, really. I could always pull them out of thin air. Important dates. Telephone numbers. They’re the easiest. But death’s the next easiest. I can tell when someone’s touched it."