“Life,” replied Adam drily.
She realized then that she recognized one of the students standing on the pavement. He had an unforgettable tuft of styled black hair and a pair of high-top trainers that could only have looked more expensive if they had been wrapped in dollar bills.
Henry Cheng.
She’d been on a secret date with Gansey the last time she’d seen him. She didn’t remember the fine details, only that his electric super car had broken down by the side of the road, that he’d made a joke that she didn’t find funny, and that he had reminded her of all the ways Gansey was not like her. It had not been a good end to the date.
Henry clearly remembered her, too, because he gave her a wide smile before pointing two fingers at his eyes and then hers.
Her already mixed feelings were joined by yet more mixed feelings.
“What do you call it when you say ‘you’ to mean everyone in general?” Blue asked, leaning forward, eyes still on him.
“Universal you,” Gansey replied. “I think.”
“Yes,” Adam said.
“What a bunch of fancy posers,” Ronan said. It was hard to tell if he meant Gansey and Adam with their grammar prowess or the Aglionby students standing outside with their hand-lettered placards.
“Oh, sure,” Gansey said, still cold and annoyed. “God forbid young men display their principles with futile but public protests when they could be skipping school and judging other students from the backseat of a motor vehicle.”
“Principles? Henry Cheng’s principles are all about getting larger font in the school newsletter,” Ronan said. He did a vaguely offensive version of Henry’s voice: “Serif? Sans serif? More bold, less italics.”
Blue saw Adam both smirk and turn his face away in a hurry so that Gansey wouldn’t see, but it was too late.
“Et tu, Brute?” Gansey asked Adam. “Disappointing.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Adam replied.
The light turned green; the Suburban began to pull away from the protestors.
“Gansey! Gansey! Richard-man!” This was Henry’s voice; even Blue recognized it. There was no vehicle behind them, so Gansey slowed, leaning his head out the window.
“What can I do for you, Mr Cheng?”
“You’ve got … your tailgate is open, I think.” Henry’s airy expression had turned complicated. The cheery smile had not quite slipped, but there was something behind it. Blue once again felt the surge of uncertainty; she knew what Henry was like, but she also didn’t know all of what he was like.
Gansey scanned the dash for notification lights. “It’s not … oh.” His voice had changed to match Henry’s expression. “Ronan.”
“What?” snapped Ronan. His jealousy of Henry was visible from space.
“Our tailgate is open.”
A car honked behind them. Gansey waved at them in his rearview mirror, saluted Henry, and hit the gas. Blue looked over her shoulder in time to see Henry turn back to the other students, his expression once more melting into the uncomplicated wide grin he’d worn before.
Interesting.
Meanwhile, Ronan twisted to look in the rear cargo space behind the backseats. He hissed, “Stay down.”
He was clearly not speaking to Blue. She narrowed her eyes and asked warily, “What exactly is this errand again?”
Gansey was glad to answer. “Lynch, in his infinite wisdom, decided to dream instead of going to school, and he brought back more than he asked for.”
The Henry encounter had left a ding in Ronan’s cheerful aggression, and now he snapped, “You could’ve just told me to handle this myself. My dreaming’s nobody’s business but mine.”
Adam interjected, “Oh, no, Ronan. I don’t take sides – but that’s bullshit.”
“Thank you,” Gansey said.
“Hey, old man —”
“Don’t,” Gansey said. “Jesse Dittley’s dead because of the people interested in your family’s dreaming, so don’t act like others aren’t affected by whether it stays secret or not. It’s yours first, but we’re all in the blast zone.”
This silenced Ronan. He slammed himself back into his seat, looked out the window, and put one of his leather bracelets between his teeth.
Blue had heard enough. She tugged out her seat belt to give herself room to turn around, and then she put her chin on the leather seat to look into the rear cargo area behind her. She did not immediately see anything. Perhaps she did, but didn’t want to acknowledge it, because once her eyes picked out Ronan’s dream, it was impossible to imagine how she hadn’t seen it at once.
Blue had been absolutely dead set against shock.
But she was shocked.
She demanded, “Is that – is that a child?”
There was a creature curled small beside a gym bag and Gansey’s messenger bag. It had enormous eyes nearly eclipsed by a skullcap pulled down low. It wore a tattered and manky over-sized fisherman’s sweater and had either dark gray legs or gray leggings. Those things at the end of the legs were either boots or hooves. Blue’s mind was bending.
Ronan’s voice was flat. “I used to call her Orphan Girl.”
Adam had suggested Cabeswater, so they took her to Cabeswater.
He wasn’t sure, yet, what they would do there; it was just the first thing he’d thought of. Actually, it was the second, but his first thought was so shameful that he’d immediately regretted it.
He’d taken one look at her and thought if she’d been another night horror they could have just killed it or left it somewhere.