The Raven King
Page 85

Laumonier was still not quite recovered. The thing about being in the demon’s presence was that it got worse instead of better. The opposite of getting used to it – that was the sensation. It was a wound that increased from ache to stab. The whispers were hard to bear, because they were not really whispers. They were thoughts, mingling helplessly with one’s own, difficult to prioritize. Seondeok had survived a year of madness, though, and she could bear this. It was not impossible to tell which thoughts were the demon’s: They were the ugliest, the most backwards, the ones that would unmake the thinker.
A few of the folks in the back were leaving, retreating wordlessly towards their cars before things got ugly. Uglier. Ugliest.
“Hey!” Piper said. “Don’t just walk away from me. Demon!”
The wasp twitched its antennae and the people twitched in rhythm. They twirled, eyes wide.
“You see,” Piper said through gritted teeth, “it’s really quite handy.”
“I think,” Laumonier said cautiously, looking at the frozen buyers, and then at the faces of their peers, and then at his daughter, “this might not be the best method of displaying this particular good.”
What he meant was, the demon was creeping everyone out and it was hard to shake the idea that they might all die at any time, which was bad for business both present and future.
“Don’t use that passive-aggressive stuff on me,” Piper said. “I read an article on how you have basically been undercutting my personhood for my entire life and that is totally an example.”
“This is totally an example of you overstepping your knowledge,” Laumonier said. “Your ambition is constantly outstripping your education! You don’t even know how to transfer a demon.”
“I’ll wish it, don’t you get it?” Piper asked. “It has to favour me! It has to do what I say.”
But Seondeok wasn’t sure that was the same thing.
“Do you think?” Laumonier asked. “Do you control it, or does it control you?”
“Oh, please,” Piper said. “Demon, unfreeze those people! Demon, make it sunny! Demon, change my clothing to all white! Demon, do as I say, do as I say!”
The people unfroze; the sky turned white-hot bright for just a second; her clothing bleached; the demon buzzed up into the air. The whispering in Seondeok’s head had become something fierce.
Laumonier shot his daughter.
It made a little oonph sound because of the silencer. Laumonier looked shocked. Both said nothing, just stared at her body, then up at the demon who had whispered it to them.
Now everyone fled. If Laumonier would shoot his daughter, anything could happen.
The demon had landed upon the wound in Piper’s neck, its legs sinking into the blood, its head lowered to the hole.
It was changing. She was changing. Everything was unmaking and violence and perversion.
“Call me,” Seondeok told the Gray Man, “and get out of here.”
Piper’s scream played backwards. Seondeok had not realized she was still alive.
The blood around her neck was black.
Ambition greed hatred violence contempt ambition greed hatred violence contempt
She was dead.
The demon began to rise.
Unmaker, unmaker, I wake, I wake, I wake
 
 
Adam could not decide if this was the worst thing that had happened to him, or if it felt that way because he had been so recently and senselessly happy that the comparison was making it so.
He was in the backseat of the BMW, his hands still bound, his eyes still covered, one ear deaf. He didn’t even feel real. He felt tired but not sleepy, worn by the effort of being unable to participate in his senses. And still the demon occasionally worked against the ribbon – how his skin sang with pain – and rolled his eyes against his will. Blue sat beside him, and the Orphan Girl on the other side of her, by his request. He didn’t know if he could escape from the ribbon, but he knew that the demon would only hurt Blue in an effort to get to Ronan or the Orphan Girl. So at least they would have a warning if it happened again.
God, God. He’d nearly killed Ronan. He would have killed him. He had only just been making out with Ronan, and his hands would have nonetheless murdered him while Adam watched.
How would he go to school? How would he do anything —
His breath betrayed him, because Blue leaned against his shoulder.
“Don’t —” he warned.
She lifted her head, but then he felt her fingers in his hair instead, stroking it gently, and then touching the skin on his cheek where he had gouged himself. She didn’t say anything.
He closed his eyes behind the blindfold, listening to the slow patter of the rain on the windshield, the shoosh of the wipers. He had no idea how close they were to Cabeswater.
Why couldn’t he think of another way around the sacrifice? Gansey was only hurrying to do this because of him, because of how his bargain had turned this into an emergency. In the end, Adam was killing him anyway, just like in his vision. A backwards, sideways version of the blame, but Adam at its helm just the same. But it was undeniable that Adam was the one who’d made it an emergency.
Bad feeling hissed inside Adam, but he couldn’t tell if it was guilt or a warning from Cabeswater.
“What’s that?” Gansey’s voice came from the passenger seat. “On the road?”
Blue drew away from Adam; he heard her pull herself between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. She sounded dubious. “Is it … blood?”
“From what?” Ronan asked.
“Maybe not from anything,” Gansey said. “Is it real?”
Ronan said, “The rain’s hitting it.”
“Should we … should we drive through it?” Gansey asked. “Blue, what’s Henry’s face look like? Can you see it?”
Adam felt Blue’s body brush him as she swivelled to look in the Fisker behind them. His hands strained and twitched, endlessly hungry. The demon felt … close.
Blue said, “Give me your phone. I’m going to call Mom.”
“What’s happening?” Adam asked.
“The road is flooded,” Blue said. “It looks like blood, though. And there’s something floating in it. What is that, Gansey? Is it … petals? Blue petals?”
There was a heavy silence in the car.