There wasn’t much Gansey didn’t like about flying. He liked airports, with their masses of people all doing things, and he liked planes, with their thick- paned windows and fold-out trays. The way that a jet charged down a runway reminded him of how the Camaro pressed him back in the driver’s seat when he hit the gas. The whine of a helicopter sounded like productivity. He liked the little knobs and toggles and gauges of cockpits, and he liked the technological backwardness of the simple clasp seat belts. Gansey derived a large part of his pleasure from meeting goals, and a large part of that large part was pleased by meeting goals efficiently. There was nothing more efficient than aiming for your destination as the crow flew.
And of course, from one thousand feet, Henrietta took Gansey’s breath away.
Below them, the surface of the world was deeply green, and cutting through the green was a narrow, shining river, a mirror to the sky. He could follow it with his eyes all the way to the mountains.
Now that they were in the air, Gansey was feeling a little anxious. With Blue here, he was beginning to feel as if possibly he’d overdone it with the helicopter. He wondered if it would make Blue feel better or worse to know that it was Helen’s helicopter, that he hadn’t paid anything today for the use of it. Probably worse. Remembering his vow to at least do no harm with his words, he kept his mouth shut.
“There she is,” Helen’s voice reported directly into Gansey’s ears; in the helicopter, they all wore headsets to allow them to converse through the ceaseless noise of the blades and the engine. “Gansey’s girlfriend.”
Ronan’s snort barely made it through his headset, but Gansey had heard it often enough to know it was there.
Blue said, “She must be pretty big to see her from up here.”
“Henrietta,” Helen replied. She peered to the left of the helo as she banked. “They’re getting married. They haven’t set a date yet.”
“If you’re going to embarrass me, I’ll throw you out and fly myself,”
Gansey said from the seat beside her. This was not a true threat. Not only would he not push Helen out at this altitude, he wasn’t legal to fly without her. Also, truth be told, he wasn’t very good at flying a helicopter, despite several lessons. He seemed to lack the important ability to orient himself vertically as well as horizontally, which led to disagreements involving trees.
He comforted himself with the knowledge that, at least, he could parallel park very well.
“Did you get Mom a birthday present?” Helen asked.
“Yes,” Gansey replied. “Myself.”
Helen said, “The gift that keeps on giving.”
He said, “I don’t think that minor children are required to get gifts for their parents. I’m a dependent. That’s the definition of dependent, is it not?”
“You, a dependent!” his sister said, and laughed. Helen had a laugh like a cartoon character: Ha ha ha ha! It was an intimidating laugh that tended to make men suspect that they were possibly the brunt of it. “You haven’t been a dependent since you were four. You went straight from kindergarten to old man with a studio apartment.”
Gansey made a dismissive hand gesture. His sister was known for hyperbole. “What did you get her?”
“It’s a surprise,” Helen replied loftily, tapping some sort of toggle switch with a pink-nailed finger. The pink was the only fanciful thing about her.
Helen was beautiful in the way a supercomputer was beautiful: sleek with elegant but utilitarian styling, full of top-notch technological know-how, far too expensive for most people to possess.
“That means it’s glassware.”
Gansey’s mother collected rare painted plates with the same obsessive fervor that Gansey collected facts about Glendower. He had a hard time seeing the allure of a plate robbed of its original purpose, but his mother’s collection had been featured in magazines and was insured for more than his father, so clearly she was not alone in her passion.
Helen was stony. “I don’t want to hear it. You didn’t get her anything.”
“I didn’t say anything about it!”
“You called it glassware.”
He asked, “What should I have said?”
“They’re not all glass. This one I’ve found her is not glass.”
“Then she won’t like it.”
Helen’s face shifted from stony to very stony. She glowered at her GPS.
Gansey didn’t like to think of how much time she’d invested in her non-glass plate. He didn’t like to see either of the women in his family disappointed; it ruined perfectly good meals.
Helen was still silent, so Gansey began to think about Blue. Something about her was discomfiting him, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Taking a mint leaf from his pocket, Gansey put it into his mouth and watched the familiar Henrietta roads snake below them. From the air, the curves looked less perilous than they felt in the Camaro. What was it about Blue?
Adam was not suspicious of her, and he was suspicious of everyone. But then again, he was clearly infatuated. That, too, was unfamiliar ground for Gansey.
“Adam,” he said. There was no answer, and Gansey looked over his shoulder. Adam’s headphones were looped around his neck, and he was leaned over beside Blue, pointing something out on the ground below. As she’d shifted, Blue’s dress had gotten hitched up and Gansey could see a long, slender triangle of her thigh. Adam’s hand was braced a few inches away on the seat, knuckles pale with his hatred of flying. There was nothing particularly intimate about the way they sat, but something about the scene made Gansey feel strange, like he’d heard an unpleasant statement and later forgotten everything about the words but the way they had made him feel.
“Adam!” Gansey shouted.
His friend’s head jerked up, face startled. He hurried to pull his headset back on. His voice came through the headphones. “Are you done talking about your mom’s plates?”
“Very. Where should we go this time? I was thinking maybe back to the church where I recorded the voice.”
Adam handed Gansey a wrinkled piece of paper.
Gansey flattened the paper and found a crude map. “What’s this?”
“Blue.”
Gansey looked at her intently, trying to decide if she had anything to gain by misdirecting them. She didn’t flinch from his gaze. Turning back around,
he spread the paper flat on the controls in front of him. “Make that happen, Helen.”
Helen banked to follow the new direction. The church Blue directed them toward was probably forty minutes’ drive from Henrietta, but as the bird flew, it was only fifteen. Without a quiet noise from Blue, Gansey would’ve missed it. It was a ruin, hollowed and overgrown. A narrow line of an old, old stone wall was visible around it, as well as an impression on the ground where an additional wall must have originally been. “That’s it?”
“That’s all there is left.”
Something inside Gansey went very still and quiet.
He said, “What did you say?”
“It’s a ruin, but —”
“No,” he said. “Say precisely what you said before. Please.”
Blue cast a glance toward Adam, who shrugged. “I don’t remember what
I said. Was it … That’s all there is?”
That’s all.
Is that all?
That was what had been nagging him all this time. He knew he recognized her voice. He knew that Henrietta accent, he knew that cadence.
It was Blue’s voice on the recorder.
Gansey.
Is that all?
That’s all there is.
“I’m not made out of fuel,” Helen snapped, as if she’d already said it once, and Gansey had missed it. Maybe he had. “Tell me where to go from here.”
What does this mean? Once more, he began to feel the press of responsibility, awe, something bigger than him. At once he was anticipatory and afraid.
“What’s the lay of the line, Blue?” Adam asked.
Blue, who had her thumb and forefinger pressed against the glass as if she was measuring something, answered, “There. Toward the mountains. Fly … Do you see those two oak trees? The church is one point, and another point is right between them. If we make a straight line between those two, that’s the path.”
If it had been Blue he’d been talking to on St. Mark’s Eve, what did that
mean?
“Are you certain?” This was Helen, in her brisk supercomputer voice. “I only have an hour and a half of fuel.”
Blue sounded a little indignant. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure.”
Helen smiled faintly and pushed the helicopter in the direction Blue had
indicated.
“Blue.”
It was Ronan’s voice, for the first time, and everyone, even Helen, twisted their heads toward him. His head was cocked in a way that Gansey recognized as dangerous. Something in his eyes was sharp as he stared at Blue. He asked, “Do you know Gansey?”
Gansey remembered Ronan leaning against the Pig, playing the recording over and over again.
Blue looked defensive under their stares. She said reluctantly, “Only his name.”
With his fingers linked loosely together, elbows on his knees, Ronan leaned forward across Adam to be closer to Blue. He could be unbelievably threatening.
“And how is it,” he asked, “you came to know Gansey’s name?”
To her credit, Blue didn’t back down. Her ears were pink, but she said,
“First of all, get out of my face.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Ronan,” said Gansey.
Ronan sat back.
“I would like to know, though,” Gansey said. His heart felt like it weighed nothing at all.
Looking down, Blue bunched a few of the layers of her improbable dress in her hands. Finally, she said, “I guess that’s fair.” She pointed at Ronan.
She looked angry. “But that is not the way to get me to answer anything.
Next time he gets in my face, I let you find this thing on your own. I’ll — look. I’ll tell you how I knew your name if you explain to me what that shape is that you have in your journal.”
“Tell me why we’re negotiating with terrorists?” Ronan asked.
“Since when am I a terrorist?” demanded Blue. “Seems to me I came bringing something you guys wanted and you’re being dicks.”
“Not all of us,” Adam said.
“I am not being a dick,” Gansey said. He was uncomfortable with the idea that she might not like him. “Now, what is this thing you want to know?”
Blue reached her hand out. “Hold on, I’ll show you what I mean.”
Gansey let her take the journal again. Leafing through the pages, she turned it to him so that she could see the one in question. The page detailed an artifact he’d found in Pennsylvania. He’d also doodled on it in several places.
“I believe that is a man chasing a car,” Gansey said.
“Not that. This.” She pointed to one of the other doodles.
“They’re ley lines.” He stretched out a hand for the journal. For a strange, hyperaware moment, he realized how closely she watched him as he took it.
He didn’t think it missed her notice how his left hand curved familiarly around the leather binding, how the thumb and finger on his right hand knew just how much pressure to apply to coax the pages to spread where he wanted them to. The journal and Gansey were clearly long-acquainted, and he
wanted her to know.
This is me. The real me.
He didn’t want to analyze the source of this impulse too hard. He focused on flipping through the journal instead. It took him no time at all to find the desired page — a map of the United States, marked all over with curving lines.
He traced a finger over one line that stretched through New York City and Washington, D.C. Another intersecting line that stretched from Boston to St. Louis. A third that cut horizontally across the first two, stretching through Virginia and Kentucky and on west. There was, as always, something satisfying about tracing the lines, something that called to mind scavenger hunts and childhood drawings.
“These are the three main lines,” Gansey said. “The ones that seem to
matter.”
“Seem to matter how?”
“How much of this did you read?”
“Um. Some. A lot. Most.”
He continued, “The ones that seem to matter as far as finding Glendower.
That line across Virginia is the one that connects us to the UK. The United Kingdom.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically enough that he caught the gesture without turning his head. “I know what the UK is, thanks. The public school system isn’t that bad.”
He’d managed to offend again, with no effort at all. He concurred, “Surely not. Those other two lines have a lot of reports of unusual sightings on them. Of … paranormal stuff. Poltergeists and Mothmen and black dogs.”
But his hesitation was unnecessary; Blue didn’t scoff.
“My mother drew that shape,” she said. “The ley lines. So did Nee — one of the other women here. They didn’t know what it was, though, only that it would be significant. That’s why I wanted to know.”
“Now you,” Ronan said to Blue.
“I — saw Gansey’s spirit,” she said. “I’ve never seen one before. I don’t see things like that, but this time, I did. I asked you your name, and you told me. ‘Gansey. That’s all there is.’ Honestly, it’s part of the reason why I wanted to come along today.”
This answer satisfied Gansey fairly well — she was, after all, the daughter of a psychic, and it matched the account his recorder gave — though it struck him as a partial answer. Ronan demanded, “Saw him where?”
“While I was sitting outside with one of my half aunts.”
This seemed to satisfy Ronan as well, because he asked, “What’s the
other half of her?”
“God, Ronan,” Adam said. “Enough.”
There was a moment of tense silence, occupied only by the continuous droning whine of the helicopter. They were waiting, Gansey knew, for his verdict. Did he believe her answer, did he think they should follow her directions, did he trust her?
Her voice was on the recorder. He felt like he didn’t have a choice. What he was thinking, but didn’t want to say with Helen listening in, was, You’re right, Ronan, it’s starting, something’s starting. He was also thinking, Tell me what you think of her, Adam. Tell me why you trust her. Don’t make me
decide for once. I don’t know if I’m right. But what he said was, “I’m going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn’t just for Blue, either. All of us.”
Ronan said, “I’m always straight.”
Adam replied, “Oh, man, that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”
Blue said, “Okay.”
Gansey suspected that none of them was being completely honest with their replies, but at least he’d told them what he wanted. Sometimes all he could hope for was getting it on the record.
The headsets fell silent as Adam, Blue, and Gansey all stared intently out the window. Below them was green and more green, everything toy-like and quaint from this height, a play-set of velvet fields and broccoli trees.
“What are we looking for?” Helen asked.
Gansey said, “The usual.”
“What’s ‘the usual’?” Blue asked.
The usual more often than not turned out to be acres of nothing, but Gansey said, “Sometimes, the ley lines are marked in ways that are visible from the air. Like in the UK, some of the lines are marked with horses carved into hillsides.”
He’d been in a small fixed-wing plane with Malory the first time that he’d seen the Uffington Horse, a three-hundred-foot horse scraped into the side of an English chalk hill. Like everything associated with the ley lines, the horse was not quite … ordinary. The horse was stretched and stylized, an elegant, eerie silhouette that was more suggestion of a horse than actual
horse.
“Tell her about Nazca,” murmured Adam.
“Oh, right,” Gansey said. Even though Blue had read much of the journal, there was a lot that wasn’t in it, and unlike Ronan and Adam and Noah, she hadn’t lived this life for the past year. It was suddenly difficult not to be excited by the idea of explaining it all to her. The story always sounded more plausible when he laid all of the facts out at once.
He continued, “In Peru, there are hundreds of lines cut into the ground in the shapes of things like birds and monkeys and men and imaginary creatures. Thousands of years old, but they only make sense from the air.
From an airplane. They’re too big to see from the ground. When you’re standing next to them, they just look like scraped footpaths.”
“You’ve seen them in person,” Blue said.
When Gansey had seen the Nazca Lines for himself, massive and strange and symmetrical, he’d known that he wouldn’t be able to give up until he found Glendower. The scale of the lines was what had struck him first — hundreds upon hundreds of feet of curious drawings in the middle of the desert. He’d been stunned by the precision. The drawings were mathematical in their perfection, faultless in their symmetry. And the last thing to hit him, right in his gut, was the emotional impact, a mysterious, raw ache that wouldn’t go away. Gansey felt like he couldn’t survive not knowing if the lines meant something.
That was the only part of his hunt for Glendower that he could never seem to explain to people.
“Gansey,” Adam said. “What’s that, there?”
The helicopter slowed as all four passengers craned their necks. By now, they were deep into the mountains, and the ground had risen to meet them.
All around them were rippling flanks of mysterious green forests, a rolling dark sea from above. Among the slopes and gullies, however, was a slanting, green-carpeted field marked by a pale fracture of lines.
“Does it make a shape?” he asked. “Helen, stop. Stop!”
“Do you think this is a bicycle?” demanded Helen, but the helicopter’s forward progress stopped.
“Look,” Adam said. “There’s a wing, there. And there, a beak. A bird?”
“No,” Ronan said, voice cold and even. “Not just a bird. It’s a raven.”
Slowly the form became clear to Gansey, emerging from the overgrown grass: a bird, yes, neck twisted backward and wings pressed as if in a book.
Tail feathers splayed and claws simplified.
Ronan was right. Even stylized, the dome of the head, the generous curve of the beak, and the ruffle of feathers on its neck made the bird unmistakably
a raven.
His skin prickled.
“Put the helicopter down,” Gansey said immediately.
Helen replied, “I can’t land on private property.”
He cast an entreating gaze at his sister. He needed to write down the GPS coordinates. He needed to take a photo for his records. He needed to sketch the shape of it in his journal. More than anything, he needed to touch the lines of the bird and make it real in his head. “Helen, two seconds.”
Her return look was knowing; it was the sort of condescending look that might have caused arguments when he was younger and more easily riled. “If the landowner discovers me there and decides to press charges, I could lose my license.”
“Two seconds. You saw. There’s no one around here for miles and miles, no houses.”
Helen’s gaze was very level. “I’m supposed to be at Mom and Dad’s in
two hours.”
“Two seconds.”
Finally, she rolled her eyes and sat back in her seat. Shaking her head, she
turned back toward the controls.
“Thank you, Helen,” Adam said.
“Two seconds,” she repeated grimly. “If you aren’t done by then, I’m taking off without you.”
The helicopter landed fifteen feet away from the strange raven’s heart.
