For the love of God,” said Whelk when he saw Adam standing beside the bowl he had just kicked. Whelk held a very large and efficient-looking knife.
He was scruffy and unshaven and looked like an Aglionby boy after a bad
weekend. “Why?”
His voice held genuine aggravation.
Adam had not seen his Latin teacher since he’d discovered he’d killed Noah, and he was surprised by the rush of emotion the sight of Whelk caused. Especially when he realized that this was once again a ritual, with yet another sacrifice in the middle of it. In this context, it took him a moment to place Neeve’s face — that night at 300 Fox Way. Neeve gazed at him from the center of the circle made from points on a pentagram. She didn’t look quite as afraid as he thought someone tied in the middle of a diabolic symbol might be expected to look.
Adam had several things he thought about saying, but when he opened his mouth, it was none of those things.
“Why Noah?” he asked. “Why not someone horrible?”
Whelk closed his eyes for a bare second. “I’m not having this conversation. Why are you here?”
It was obvious that he wasn’t sure what to do with the fact of Adam — which was fair, because Adam had no idea what to do with the fact of Whelk.
The only thing he had to do was keep him from waking the ley line.
Everything else (disabling Whelk, saving Neeve, avenging Noah) was negotiable. He remembered, all at once, that he had his father’s gun in his bag. It was possible that he could point that at Whelk and convince him to do something, but what? In the movies, it looked simple: Whoever had the gun won. But in reality, he couldn’t point the gun at Whelk and tie him up at the
same time, even if he had something to tie him with. Whelk could overpower him. Maybe Adam could use Neeve’s binding to … Adam withdrew the gun. It felt heavy and malevolent in his hand. “I’m here to stop this from happening again. Untie her.”
Whelk said again, “For the love of God.”
He took two steps to Neeve and put his knife against the side of her face.
Her mouth tightened, just a very little. He said, “Just put down the gun so that I don’t slice her face off. Actually, throw it over here. And make sure you put the safety on before you throw it or you might end up just shooting her anyway.”
Adam had a sneaking suspicion that, if he’d been Gansey, he would’ve been able to talk his way out of this. He would straighten his shoulders and look impressive and Whelk would’ve done whatever he wanted. But he was not Gansey, so all he could think to say was, “I didn’t come here for anyone to die. I’m going to throw the gun out of my reach, but I’m not going to
throw it into your reach.”
“Then I cut her face off.”
Neeve’s face was quite placid. “You’ll ruin the ritual if you do. Weren’t you listening? I thought you were interested in the process.”
Adam had the curious, discomfiting sensation of seeing something unusual when he looked at her eyes. It was like he saw a brief flash of Maura and Persephone and Calla in them.
Whelk said, “Fine. Throw the gun over there. Don’t come any closer, though.” To Neeve, he said, “What do you mean it won’t work? Are you bluffing?”
“You may throw the gun,” Neeve told Adam. “I won’t mind.”
Adam tossed the gun into the brush. He felt terrible as he did, but he felt better when he wasn’t holding it.
Neeve said, “And, Barrington, the reason why it will not work is because the ritual needs a sacrifice.”
“You were planning on killing me,” Whelk said. “You expect me to believe that it doesn’t work the other way around?”
“Yes,” Neeve replied. She didn’t look away from Adam. Again, he thought he saw a flash of something when he was looking at her face: a black mask, two mirrors, Persephone’s face. “It must be a personal sacrifice.
Killing me wouldn’t accomplish that. I’m nothing to you.”
“But I’m nothing to you,” Whelk said.
“But killing is,” she replied. “I’ve never killed anyone. I give up my innocence if I kill you. That is an incredible sacrifice.”
When Adam spoke, he was surprised by how clearly the contempt came through. “And you’ve already killed someone, so you don’t have that to give up.”
Whelk began to swear, very softly, as if no one else were there. Leaves the color and shape of pennies drifted down around them. Neeve was still staring at Adam. The sensation of seeing someplace else in her eyes was now undeniable. It was a black, mirrored lake, it was a voice deep as the earth, it was two obsidian eyes, it was another world.
“Mr. Whelk!”
Gansey!
Gansey’s voice had come from just behind the hollowed-out vision tree, and then the rest of him followed as he strode into view. Behind him were Ronan and Blue. Adam’s heart was a bird and a stone; his relief was palpable, but so was his shame.
“Mr. Whelk,” Gansey said. Even in his glasses and with his musty bedhead, he was in full Richard Gansey III splendor — shiny and powerful.
He didn’t look at Adam. “The police are on their way. I really recommend you step away from that woman to avoid making this any worse.”
Whelk looked as if he was going to reply, but then he didn’t. Instead, everyone looked at the knife in his hand and the ground just below it.
Neeve was gone.
At once, they all looked around the pentagram, at the hollowed-out tree, at the pool — but it was ridiculous. Neeve could not have slithered away without anyone seeing, not in ten seconds’ time. She had not moved. She had disappeared.
For a moment, nothing happened. Everyone was frozen in a diorama of uncertainty.
Whelk plunged from the pentagram. It took Adam only a bare second to realize that he was lunging in the direction of the gun.
Ronan hurled himself toward Whelk at the same moment that Whelk rose with the gun. Whelk smashed the side of it into Ronan’s jaw. Ronan’s head
snapped back.
Whelk pointed the pistol at Gansey.
Blue shouted, “Stop!”
There was no time.
Adam threw himself into the middle of the pentagram.
Curiously, there was no sound here, not in any reasonable way. The end of Blue’s cry was muffled, as if it had been shoved under water. The air was still around him. It was as if time itself had become a sluggish thing, barely existing. The only true sensation he felt was that of electricity — the barely perceptible tingling of a lightning storm.
Neeve had said that it wasn’t about the killing, that it was about the sacrifice. It was obvious that stymied Whelk completely.
But Adam knew what sacrifice meant, more than he thought Whelk or Neeve had ever had to know. He knew that it wasn’t about killing someone or drawing a shape made of bird bones.
When it came down to it, Adam had been making sacrifices for a very long time, and he knew what the hardest one was.
On his terms, or not at all.
He wasn’t afraid.
Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.
This was the important thing.
It had always been the most important thing.
This was what it was to be Adam.
Kneeling in the middle of the pentagram, digging his fingers into the soft, mossy turf, Adam said, “I sacrifice myself.”
Gansey’s cry was agonized. “Adam, no! No.”
On his terms, or not at all.
I will be your hands, Adam thought. I will be your eyes.
There was a sound like a breaker being thrown. A crackle.
Beneath them, the ground began to roll.
