The Dream Thieves

“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,” he said. “Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.” He flailed an arm toward the stars.

Jane, how do you feel about doing something slightly illegal and definitely distasteful?” Gansey asked.

A weapon didn’t come to an agreement with the hand that held it.

If he had no one to wrap their arms around him when he was sad, could he be forgiven for letting his anger lead him?

A handsome devil with one eye the color of a promise and the other the color of a secret.

the dark bags beneath Adam’s eyes.

She led them upstairs to Maura’s bedroom. Pushing open the door, she let them take in the sight.

A candle was melted on the carpet. Beside it, in a square of strong daylight, a scrying bowl was knocked askew.

“Who did this? Where is Mom?” Blue demanded.

Calla wordlessly handed her a note. They all read it over Blue’s shoulder.

In a hasty, water-stained scrawl, it said, Glendower is underground. So am I.

Ronan’s second secret was Adam Parrish. Adam was different since making the bargain with Cabeswater. Stronger, stranger, farther away. It was hard not to stare at the odd and elegant lines of his face.

He stood to one side while the Lynch brothers revived their mother, and then he told them all, “I have something to show you.”

As dawn began to pink the bark of the trees, they followed him deeper into Cabeswater.

“The pool is gone,” he said. “Where the fish changed color for Gansey. But now —”

Next to the dreaming tree, the pool had been replaced by a slanted and sheered rock surface. It was striated and cleaved with deep scratches, and the deepest of them cut all the way through the rock and into the ground. Cool blackness beckoned.

“A cave?” asked Gansey. “How deep does it go?”

Adam said, “I haven’t gone in. I don’t think it’s safe.”

“What’s the next step, then?” Gansey asked warily. It was hard to tell if he was wary of Adam or wary of the cavern.

Adam said, “Make it safer.”

He glanced at Ronan, eyebrows furrowed, as if sensing Ronan’s eyes on him.

Ronan looked away.

The third secret was the cavern itself. When they finally returned to 300 Fox Way, the sun was well up. To Ronan’s shock, a white Mitsubishi sat on the curb. For a moment, he thought — but then he saw the Gray Man waiting on the front step with Calla. His presence here instead of hundreds of miles away was not probable, but it was not impossible.

She hugged him and said, “Flowers and ravens,” because she wanted him to know she remembered.

Then she hugged Matthew and said, “My love,” because he was her favorite.

She said nothing at all to Declan, because he wasn’t there.