Calla interrupted. "A secret killed your father and you know what it was."
The room went deadly silent. Both Persephone and Maura were staring at Calla. Gansey and Adam were staring at Ronan. Blue was staring at Calla’s hand.
Maura often called on Calla to do joint tarot readings, and Persephone sometimes called on her to interpret her dreams, but very rarely did anyone ask Calla to use one of her strangest gifts: psychometry. Calla had an uncanny ability to hold an object and sense its origin, feel its owner’s thoughts, and see places the thing had been.
Now, Calla pulled her hand away; she’d reached to touch Ronan’s tattoo right where it met his collar. His face was turned just slightly, looking to where her fingers had been.
There might have only been Ronan and Calla in the room. He was a head taller than her already, but he looked young beside her, like a lanky wildcat not yet up to weight. She was a lioness.
She hissed, "What are you?"
Ronan’s smile chilled Blue. There was something empty in it.
"Ronan?" Gansey asked, concern in his voice.
"I’m waiting in the car." Without further comment, Ronan left, slamming the door hard enough that the dishes in the kitchen rattled.
Gansey turned an accusatory gaze on Calla. "His father’s dead."
"I know," Calla said. Her eyes were slits.
Gansey’s voice was cordial enough to pass straight through polite and on to rude. "I don’t know how you found out, but that’s a pretty lousy thing to throw at a kid."
"At a snake, you mean," Calla snarled back. "And what is it you came for, if you didn’t believe we could do what we’re charging you for? He asked for a specific. I gave him a specific. I’m sorry it wasn’t puppies."
"Calla," Maura said, at the same time that Adam said, "Gansey."
Adam murmured something directly into Gansey’s ear and then leaned back. A bone moved at Gansey’s jawline. Blue saw him shift back into President Cell Phone; she hadn’t been aware, before, that he’d been anything else. Now she wished she’d been paying better attention, so she could’ve seen what was different about him.
Gansey said, "I’m sorry. Ronan is blunt, and he wasn’t comfortable coming here in the first place. I wasn’t trying to insinuate that you were less than genuine. Can we continue?"
He sounded so old, Blue thought. So formal in comparison to the other boys he’d brought. There was something intensely discomfiting about him, akin to how she felt compelled to impress Ronan. Something about Gansey made her feel so strongly other that it was as if she had to guard her emotions against him. She could not like him, or whatever it was about these boys that drowned out her mother’s psychic abilities and filled the room to overflowing would overwhelm her.
"You’re fine," Maura said, though she looked at glowering Calla when she said it.
As Blue moved to where Gansey sat, she caught a glimpse of his car at the curb: a flash of impossible orange, the sort of orange Orla would definitely paint her nails. It was not exactly what she’d have expected an Aglionby boy to drive — they liked new, shiny things, and this was an old, shiny thing — but it was clearly a raven boy’s car nonetheless. And just then, Blue had a falling sensation, like things were happening too fast for her to properly absorb them. There was something odd and complicated about all of these boys, Blue thought — odd and complicated in the way that the journal was odd and complicated. Their lives were somehow a web, and she had somehow managed to do something to get herself stuck in the very edge of it. Whether that something had been done in the past or was going to be done in the future seemed irrelevant. In this room with Maura and Calla and Persephone, time felt circular.
She stopped in front of Gansey. This close, she again caught the scent of mint, and that made Blue’s heart trip unsteadily.
Gansey looked down at the fanned deck of cards in her hands. When she saw him like that, she saw the bend of his shoulders and the back of his head, and she piercingly remembered his spirit, the boy she’d been afraid she’d fall in love with. That shade hadn’t worn any of the effortless, breezy confidence of this raven boy in front of her.
What happens to you, Gansey? she wondered. When do you become that person?
Gansey looked up at her, and there was a crease between his eyebrows. "I don’t know how to choose. Could you pick a card for me? Will that work?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Blue saw Adam shifting in his chair, frowning.
Persephone answered from behind Blue. "If you want it to."
"It’s about intention," Maura added.
"I want you to," he said. "Please."
Blue fanned the cards across the table; they slithered loosely over the finish. She let her fingers float above them. Once, Maura had told her that the correct cards sometimes felt warm or tingly when her fingers were near them. For Blue, of course, each card felt identical. One, however, had slid farther than the others, and that was the one she chose.
As she flipped it over, she let out a little helpless laugh.
The page of cups looked back at Blue with her own face. It felt like someone was laughing at her, but she had no one to blame for the selection of the card but herself.
When Maura saw it, her voice went still and remote. "Not that one. Make him choose another."
"Maura," said Persephone mildly, but Maura just waved her hand, dismissing her.
"Another one," she insisted.
"What’s wrong with that one?" Gansey asked.
"It has Blue’s energy on it," Maura said. "It wasn’t meant to be yours. You’ll have to pick it yourself."