The Raven King
Page 74

“Cabeswater can’t help you,” Adam pressed. “It can only hinder you. You’d have to try to create something not terrible among all that, which seems impossible to start, and then you’d have to bring back that, and only that, from the dream, which sounds even more impossible.”
Ronan addressed the steering wheel. “I’m aware of how dreaming works, Parrish.”
He did not say I can’t stand the idea of finding Gansey’s body, too. He did not say If I can’t save my old family, I can save my new one. He did not say I will not let the demon have everything.
He did not say that the only true nightmare was not being able to do something and that this, at least, was something.
He just said, “I’m going to try,” and hoped that Adam knew all of the rest already.
Adam did. So did the others.
Maura said, “We’ll do our best to support your energy and hold back some of the worst.”
Adam put the seatback in its fully upright and locked position. He said, “I’ll scry.”
“Blue,” Ronan said, “I think you’d better hold his hand.”
 
 
The Camaro broke down.
It was always breaking down and living again, but tonight – tonight, Gansey needed it.
It broke down anyway. He’d only got to the outskirts of town when it coughed, and the lights inside dimmed. Before Gansey even had time to react, the car had died. His power brakes and steering vanished and he had to wrestle it to the shoulder. He tried the key, looked in the mirror, tried to see if the birds were waiting. They were not.
Make way for the Raven King! they shouted, sailing on. Make way!
Damn this car!
Not so long ago, the car had died in just the same way in a pitch-black night, leaving him stranded by the side of the road, nearly getting him killed. Adrenaline hit him in the same way as it had that night, immediate and complete, like time had never progressed.
He pumped the gas, let it sit, pumped the gas, let it sit.
The birds were drawing away. He could not follow.
“Come on,” he pleaded. “Come on.”
The Camaro did not come on. The ravens cried furiously; they did not seem to want to leave him, but also seemed to be pulled by a force beyond them. With a soft swear, he scrambled out of the car and slammed the door. He didn’t know what he would do. He would give chase on foot, until he had lost them. He would —
“Gansey.”
Henry Cheng. He stood before Gansey, his Fisker parked askance in the street behind him, door hanging open. “What’s happening?”
The impossibility of Henry’s presence hit Gansey harder than anything else that night, even though it was actually the least impossible thing. They were not far from Litchfield’s side of town, and Henry had clearly arrived to this place by means automotive rather than magical. But still, the timing was too clearly on Gansey’s side, and Henry, unlike the ravens, could not have appeared just because Gansey bade him to.
“How are you here?” Gansey demanded.
Henry pointed up into the sky. Not at the birds, but at the tiny, winking body of RoboBee. “RoboBee was told to tell me if you needed me. So I say again unto thee: What’s happening?”
The ravens were still crying for Gansey to follow. They were getting even further; soon he wouldn’t be able to see them. His pulse rummaged in his chest. With great effort, he made himself focus on Henry’s question. “The Camaro won’t start. Those birds. They’re taking me to Glendower. I have to go, I have to follow them or they’ll be —”
“Stop. Stop. Get in my car. You know what? You drive. This thing scares the piss out of me.”
Henry tossed him the keys.
He got in.
There was a sick rightness to it, as if somehow, Gansey had always known this was how the chase would go. As they left the Camaro behind, time was slipping and he was inside of it. Above them, the ravens burst and tumbled through the black. They were sometimes stark against buildings, sometimes invisible against trees. They flashed and flickered before the last of the town’s streetlights like fan blades. Gansey and Henry drove through the last vestiges of civilization into the countryside. Henrietta was so large in Gansey’s mind that he was somewhat surprised to see, when he was not paying attention to it, how quickly the lights of the small town vanished in his rearview mirror.
Out of Henrietta, the ravens streamed and bobbed north. They flew faster than Gansey thought birds ought to be able to fly, ducking into trees and valleys. Pursuing them was not a simple matter; the ravens flew dead-on straight, while the Fisker had to stick to roads. His heart screamed at him, Don’t lose them. Don’t lose him. Not now.
He could not shake the idea that this was his only chance.
His head was not thinking. His heart was thinking.
“Go, go, go,” Henry said. “I’ll watch for cops. Go, go, go.”
He typed something into the phone and then ducked his head to look out of the car to watch RoboBee spin away to do his work.
Gansey went went went.
Northeast, through tangled roads Gansey had probably been on before but didn’t remember. Hadn’t he crawled over this entire state? The ravens led them over the mountains on twisting roads that turned to dirt and then back to asphalt. At one point, the Fisker clung to the side of a mountain and looked down a steep drop with nary a guardrail in sight. Then the road turned back to asphalt and trees hid the sky.
The ravens were instantly invisible behind the night-black branches, flying off in some direction without them.
Gansey slammed on the brakes and rolled down the window. Henry, without any questions, did the same. Both boys tilted their heads and listened. Winter trees creaked in the breeze; distant trucks rolled on the highway below; ravens called urgently to one another.
“There,” Henry said immediately. “Right.”
The Fisker charged ahead. They were headed along the ley line, Gansey thought. How far would the ravens fly? Washington, D.C.? Boston? All the way across the Atlantic? He had to believe they wouldn’t go where he could not follow. It ended tonight, because Gansey had said it ended tonight, and he had meant it.
The birds continued on, unerring. An interstate sign loomed in the dark.
“Does that say 66?” Gansey said. “Is that the ramp for 66?”
“I don’t know, man. Numbers confuse me.”