“Yes,” he said.
“I just – I feel like there has to be something we can all do, like in the cave of bones,” she said. “It was wrong in the tomb because there was no life there to start with. Or something. There was no energy. But if we had more of the pieces right?”
Gansey said, “I don’t understand the magic well enough.”
Ronan said, “Parrish does.”
“No,” Adam protested. “I don’t think I do.”
“Better than any of the rest of us,” Ronan said. “Give us an idea.”
Adam shrugged. His hands were gripped together so tightly that his knuckles were white. “Maybe,” he started, then stopped. “Maybe you could die and then come back. If we used Cabeswater to kill you in some way that didn’t damage your body, then it would provoke the time-holding like 6:21. A minute playing out over and over again, so you wouldn’t have time to get, I don’t know, too far away from your body. Too dead. And then …” Gansey could hear that Adam was making this up as he went along, spinning a plausible fairy tale for Ronan. “It would have to take place in Cabeswater. I could scry into the dreamspace while Blue amplified it, and during one of the time spasms we could tell your soul to return to your body before you were ever really dead. So you’d fulfil the requirements of the sacrifice to die. Nothing says you have to stay dead.”
There was a long pause.
“Yes,” Gansey said. Factual. “That feels right. Is that kingly enough for you, Ronan? Not martyrdom, Henry?”
They didn’t look thrilled, but they looked willing, which was all that mattered. They only had to want to believe it, not really believe it.
“Let’s go to Cabeswater,” Gansey said.
They had only just started back towards the cars when Adam attacked Ronan.
It took Ronan too long to realize that Adam was killing him.
Adam’s hands were around Ronan’s neck, thumbs pressed knuckle white into his arteries, his eyes rolled back up in his head. Ronan’s vision produced flashes of light; his body had only been without air for a minute and it already missed it. He could feel his pulse in his eyeballs.
“Adam? ” demanded Blue.
Part of Ronan still thought there was a mistake.
Ronan’s breath hitched as the two of them stumbled back through the pine trees around the picnic area. The others were circling them, but Ronan couldn’t focus on what they were doing.
“Fight back,” Adam growled at Ronan, thin, desperate, an animal dragged by the neck. At the same time that his voice protested, though, his body jammed Ronan’s back against a trunk of a pine tree. “Hit me. Knock me down!”
The demon. The demon had taken his hands.
Every beat of Ronan’s heart was an articulated part in a collapsing train. He grabbed Adam’s wrists. They felt frail, snappable, cold. The choice was death or hurting Adam, which wasn’t much of a choice at all.
Adam suddenly lost his grip, stumbling to his knees before clambering quickly back up. Henry leapt back as Adam snatched for his face in a way that was terrifying in its wrongness. No human would fight in such a way, but the thing that had his hands and his eyes was not human.
“Stop me!” Adam begged.
Gansey grabbed for Adam’s fingers, but Adam pulled them free easily. Instead, he snarled fingers into Ronan’s ear, ripping at it, and his other hand hooked into Ronan’s jaw, tearing the other way. His eyes stared hard to his left, waiting for intruders to stop him.
“Stop me —”
Pain was a torn piece of paper. Ronan thought about how much it hurt, and then he allowed himself one deeper measure of pain, and he ripped himself free of Adam’s grip. In that moment of opportunity, Blue darted forward and got a handful of Adam’s hair. Instantly Adam whirled on her, and with razor-fast precision, he tore her stitches open.
Blue exhaled in shock as the blood began to drip blackly over her eyelid again. Gansey dragged her back before Adam could scratch again.
“Just hit me,” Adam said miserably. “Don’t let me do this.”
It seemed it should have been simple: There were four of them, one of Adam. But none of them wanted to hurt Adam Parrish, no matter how violent he had become. And the demon operating Adam’s limbs had a superpower: It did not care about the limitations of the human they belonged to. It did not care about pain. It did not care about longevity. So Adam’s knuckles careened past Ronan and smashed into the trunk of a pine tree without the slightest hesitation, even as Adam gasped. Everyone’s breath puffed white all around them, looking like dust clouds.
“It’s going to break his fucking hands,” Ronan said.
Blue snatched one of Adam’s wrists. There was a terrible pop as Adam swung around in the opposite direction and snatched her switchblade out of the loose pocket of her sweater. The blade snicked out.
He had their full attention.
His rolling eyes, controlled by the demon, focused on Ronan.
But Adam – the real Adam – was also paying attention. He heaved his body away from the group, crashing himself against the picnic bench, then crashing again, trying to jar the arm that held the knife. As he successfully pinned it under his own weight, though, his other hand clawed up. Quick as a cat, it scratch-scratch-scratched at his own face. Blood beaded instantly. It was digging harder. Punishing.
“No,” Gansey said. He could not bear it. He ran at Adam. As he slid to him, snatching that angry hand, Henry skidded right on his heels. So when Adam lifted the switchblade over Gansey, Henry was there to catch Adam’s wrist in his hands, pressing his entire weight against the strength of Adam’s right arm. Adam’s eyes darted furiously, weighing his next move. The demon’s next move.