At some point she had released him, and she didn’t want him back. She just wanted to see what happened.
But that was all right, too. It was something. He could do that. In fact, that was probably all he could do.
He knocked on the cabinet beside him, once, thoughtful, and then he took out the BMW keys. “I’ll do that,” he said.
He waited just a moment longer, giving them the opportunity to fill the space, to exceed expectation.
They did not. Adam had set the bar at precisely the height they could jump and no higher.
“I’ll let myself out,” he said.
He did.
On the other side of Henrietta, Gansey and Blue and Henry were just climbing out of the Pig. Henry was last out, as he had been riding in the back, and he squeezed out from behind the passenger seat as if he were being calved. He shut the door and then frowned at it.
“You have to slam it,” Gansey said.
Henry shut it.
“Slam it,” Gansey repeated.
Henry slammed it.
“So violent,” he said.
They were here in this remote location because of Ronan. He had given them vague instructions that afternoon – apparently, they were on a scavenger hunt for Blue’s graduation gift. She’d been out of school for weeks, and Ronan had implied that a gift was waiting, but he’d refused to relinquish directions to it until Gansey and Henry had also graduated. You’re meant to use it together, he had said, ominously. They’d asked him to come – both to graduation, and on this scavenger hunt – but he replied merely that both locations were full of bad memories for him, and he’d see them on the other side.
So now they walked down a dirt drive towards a dense tree line that hid everything beyond it from their view. It was pleasantly warm. Insects made themselves cosy in the teens’ shirts and around their ankles. Gansey had the sense of doing this before, but he couldn’t tell if he had or not. He knew now that the feeling of time-slipping that he’d lived with for so long was not a product of his first death, but rather his second. A by-product of the bits and bobs Cabeswater had assembled to give him life again. Humans were not meant to experience all times at once, but Gansey had to do it anyway.
Blue reached over to take his hand as they walked, and they swung this knot of their fingers between them merrily. They were free, free, free. School was over and summer stretched before them. Gansey had bid for a gap year and won; Henry had already planned on one. It was all convenient, as Blue had spent months planning how to cheaply hike across the country post-graduation, destination: life. It was better with company. It was better with three. Three, Persephone had always said, was the strongest number.
Now they broached the tree line and found themselves in a massive overgrown field of the sort that was not uncommon in this part of Virginia. The furry lamb’s ears was getting tall already among the grass; the thistles were still short and sneaky.
“Oh, Ronan,” Gansey said, although Ronan was not there to hear it, because he had just realized where Ronan’s directions had taken them.
The field was filled with cars. They were all mostly identical. They were all mostly a little strange in one way or another. They were all mostly white Mitsubishis. The grass growing up around them and the pollen clouding their windshields made the scene rather apocalyptic.
“I don’t want any of these for our great American road trip,” Henry said with distaste. “I don’t care if it’s free and I don’t care if it’s magical.”
“Concur,” said Gansey.
Blue, however, seemed unconcerned. “He said there was one here that we’d know was for us.”
“You knew it was a car?” Gansey demanded. He’d been unable to get the smallest of hints from Ronan.
“I wasn’t going to follow his directions without any information at all,” Blue retorted.
They waded through the grass, locusts whirring up before them. Blue and Henry were intently searching, comparing the vehicles. Gansey was dawdling, feeling the summer evening fill his lungs. It was this widening gyre of his path that brought him to the graduation gift. “Guys, I found it.”
It was the obvious outlier: a furiously orange old Camaro parked in the midst of all the new Mitsubishis. It was so obviously identical to the Pig that Ronan must have dreamt it.
“Ronan thinks he’s so funny,” Gansey said as Blue and Henry made their way to him.
Henry picked a tick off his arm and threw it into the field to suck on someone else. “He wants you guys to drive matching cars? That seems sentimental for a man without a soul.”
“He told me that it had something I’m gonna love under the hood,” Blue said. She prowled round to the front and fumbled for the hood release. Hefting it open, she began to laugh.
They all peered inside, and Gansey laughed too. Because inside the engine bay of this Camaro was nothing. There was no engine. No inner workings. Just empty space clear down to the grass growing by the tyres.
“The ultimate green car,” Gansey said, at the same time that Henry said, “Do you think it really runs?”
Blue clapped her hands and jumped up and down; Henry snapped a picture of her doing it, but she was too cheerful to make a face at him. Skipping around to the driver’s side, she got in. She was barely visible over the dash. Her smile was still enormous. Ronan was going to be sorry he’d missed it, but Gansey understood his reasons.
A second later, the engine roared to life. Or rather, the car roared to life. Who knew what was even making the sound. Blue made a ridiculous whooping sound of glee.