The strange, multiheaded buzz spilled from inside the reading room.
There was also a dull scuffling, like someone running a broom over the floorboards.
Gansey’s knuckles brushed tentatively against hers.
Take a step.
She took a step.
Go in.
They went in.
On the floor of the reading room, Noah twisted and twitched, his body impossible. Somewhere, he was dying. Always dying. Even though Blue had seen him reenact his death before, it never got easier to watch. His face turned to the ceiling, his mouth open in mindless pain.
Gansey’s breath hitched audibly.
Above Noah, Calla sat at the large reading table, her eyes focused on nothing at all. Her hands rested on top of scattered tarot cards. A phone sat beside them; she’d been in the middle of a long-distance reading.
The dissonant hum was louder than anything.
It was coming from Calla.
“Are you afraid?” Noah whispered.
Both Gansey and Blue started. They hadn’t realized that Noah had stopped twitching, but he had, and he was lying on his back, knees drawn up, looking at them. There was suddenly something a little taunting about his expression, a little un-Noah-like. His skull’s teeth smiled through his lips.
Blue and Gansey glanced at each other.
The thing that was Noah suddenly gazed up as if it had heard something approaching. He began to hum, too. It was not musical.
Every mobile in Blue’s body burned a warning at her.
Then Noah duplicated and singled.
Blue wasn’t sure how else to put it. There was a Noah, then another right beside him, facing the other way, and then the single Noah again. She could not decide if it was an error in Noah, or an error in how she was seeing Noah.
“We should all be afraid,” Noah said, his voice thin through the buzzing. “When you play with time —”
He was suddenly close to them, eye to eye, standing, or at least just his face was, and in a blink, he was a few feet away again. He’d pulled some of his Noah-ness – his boy-guise – over himself again. He had his hands on his knees like a runner, and every time he panted out, the hum reluctantly escaped him.
Blue’s and Gansey’s breath hung in a cloud before them, shimmering, like they were the dead ones. Noah was pulling energy from them. A lot of energy.
“Blue, go,” Noah said. His voice was strained, but he’d controlled the hideous humming. “Gansey … go. It won’t be me!” He slid to the right and then back again; it was not the way matter was meant to behave. A lopsided smile snuck across his mouth, utterly at odds with his knitted eyebrows, and vanished. There was a challenge in his face, and then there wasn’t.
“We’re not leaving,” Blue said. But she did begin to throw all of her protection up around herself. She could not keep whatever had Noah from drawing on both Gansey and Calla, but she could cut off her own considerable battery.
“Please,” Noah hissed. “Unmaker, unmaker.”
“Noah,” Gansey said, “you’re stronger than this.”
Noah’s face went black. From skull to ink in the opposite of a heartbeat. Only the teeth glowed. He gasped or laughed. “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.”
“Get out of him!” Blue snarled.
Gansey shuddered badly with the cold. “Noah, you can do this.”
Noah lifted his hands in front of him, the palms and fingers facing each other like a clawsome dance. They were Noah’s hands, and then they were scribbly lines.
“Nothing is impossible,” Noah said, his voice flat and deep. The darting sketch lines took the place of his hands again, corrupt and useless. Blue could see inside his chest cavity, and there was nothing there but black. “Nothing is impossible. I’m coming for him. I’m coming for him. I’m coming for him.”
The only thing that kept Blue planted, the only thing that kept her so close to this creature, was the knowledge that she was witnessing a crime. This wasn’t Noah being unintentionally terrifying. This was something in Noah, through Noah, without permission.
The buzzing voice kept going. “I’m coming for him – Blue! – I’m coming for him – Please! Go! – I’m coming for him —”
“I won’t leave you,” Blue said. “I’m not afraid.”
Noah let out a wild laugh, a goblin’s delight. In a high, sideways voice, he thrilled, “You will be!”
And then he threw himself at her.
Blue caught a glimpse of Gansey snatching for him just as Noah’s claws dug into her face.
The reading room went as light as it had been dark. Pain and brilliance, cold and heat —
He was digging out her eye.
She wailed, “Noah!”
Everything was squiggling lines.
She threw her hands to her face, but nothing changed. She felt hooked on to claws, his fingers dug in her flesh. Her left eye saw only white; her right eye saw only black. Her fingers felt slick; her cheek felt hot.
Light was exploding from Noah like a flare off the sun.
Suddenly, hands gripped her shoulders, wrenching her away from him. She was surrounded by warmth and mint. Gansey held her so tightly that she could feel him trembling against her. The hum was everywhere. She could feel it in her burning face as Gansey twisted to put himself between her and the buzzing fury that was Noah.
“Oh, Jesus. Blue, I need your energy,” Gansey told her, right into her ear, and she heard fear laced through his words. “Now.”
Pain exploded with every beat of her heart, but she let him take her slick fingers.
Gansey gripped her hand. She took down all the walls around her energy.