Because Gansey had not just vanished — he’d fallen into a hole.
Thank goodness we were tied together, Blue thought.
Ronan’s arms were still locked around her; she felt them quivering. She didn’t know if it was from muscle strain or worry. He had not even hesitated before grabbing her.
I can’t let myself forget that.
“Gansey?” Adam repeated, and there was just an edge of something terrible behind it. He had spackled confidence too heavily over his anxiety for it to be invisible.
Three tugs. Blue felt them shiver through Adam to her.
Adam laid his face down on the mud in visible relief.
“What’s going on?” Ronan asked. “Where is he?”
“He must be hanging,” Adam replied, uncertainty letting his Henrietta accent snatch the last g from hanging. “The rope’s cutting me in half it’s pulling so hard. I can’t get closer to help. It’s slimy — his weight would just pull me in.”
Freeing herself from Ronan’s arms, Blue took an experimental step closer to where Gansey had disappeared. The rope between her and Adam slackened, but he slid no closer to the hole. Slowly, she said, “I think you can be a counterweight if you don’t move, Adam. Ronan, stay up here — if anything happens and I start slipping, can you anchor yourself?”
Ronan’s headlamp pointed at a muddy column. He nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to go over and take a look.”
She crept slowly past Adam. His fingers were hooked uselessly into the sloppy ground by his cheek.
She nearly fell into the hole.
No wonder Gansey hadn’t seen it. There was a rock ledge and then, just — nothing. She swept her headlamp back and forth and saw only inky black. The chasm was too wide to see the other side. Too deep to see the bottom.
The safety rope was visible, though, dark with mud, leading into the pit. Blue shone her flashlight into the black.
“Gansey?”
“I’m here.” Gansey’s voice was closer than she expected. Quieter than she expected, too. “I just — I believe I’m having a panic attack.”
“You’re having a panic attack? New rule: Everyone should give four tugs before suddenly disappearing. Have you broken anything?”
A long pause. “No.”
Something about the tone of the single syllable conveyed, all at once, that he had not been kidding about his fear.
Blue wasn’t sure that reassurance was her strong point, especially when she was the one who wanted it, but she tried. “It’ll be okay. We’re anchored up here. All you need to do is climb out. You’re not going to fall.”
“It’s not that.” His voice was a sliver. “There is something on my skin and it is reminding me of …”
He trailed off.
“Water,” Blue suggested. “Or mud. It’s everywhere. Say something again so I can point the flashlight at you.”
There was nothing but the sound of his breathing, jagged and afraid. She swept the flashlight beam again.
“Or mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are everywhere,” she said, voice bright.
No reply.
“There are over two dozen species of cave beetle,” she added. “I read that before we came today.”
Gansey whispered, “Hornets.”
Her heart contracted.
In the wash of adrenaline, she talked herself down: Yes, hornets could kill Gansey with just a sting, but no, there were not hornets in this cave. And today was not the day that Gansey was going to die, because she had seen his spirit on the day he died, and that spirit had been wearing an Aglionby sweater spattered with rain. Not a pair of khakis and a cheery yellow V-neck.
Her flashlight beam finally found him. He hung limply in his harness, head tilted down, hands over his ears. Her flashlight beam traced his heaving shoulders. They were spattered with mud and grime, but there were no insects on them.
She could breathe again.
“Look at me,” she ordered. “There are no hornets.”
“I know,” he muttered. “That’s why I said I think I’m having a panic attack. I know there are no hornets.”
What he wasn’t saying, but what they both knew, was that Cabeswater was a careful listener.
Which meant he needed to stop thinking about hornets.
“Well, you’re making me angry,” Blue said. “Adam is lying on his face in the mud for you. Ronan’s going home.”
Gansey laughed tonelessly. “Keep talking, Jane.”
“I don’t want to. I want you to just grab that rope and pull yourself up here like I know you’re perfectly capable of. What good does me talking do?”
He looked up at her then, his face streaked and unrecognizable. “It’s just that there’s something rustling down below me, and your voice drowns it out.”
A nasty shiver went down Blue’s spine.
Cabeswater was such a good listener.
“Ronan,” she called quietly over her shoulder. “New plan: Adam and I are going to pull Gansey out very quickly.”
“What! That is a fucking terrible idea,” Ronan said. “Why is that the plan?”
Blue didn’t want to shout it out loud.
Adam had been listening, though, and he said, quietly and clearly, “Est aliquid in foramen. I don’t know. Apis? Apibus? Forsitan.”
Latin hid nothing from Cabeswater; they only meant to spare Gansey.
“No,” Ronan said. “No, there is not. That is not what is down there.”
Gansey closed his eyes.
I saw him, Blue thought. I saw his spirit when he died, and this was not what he was wearing. This is not how it happens. It’s not now, it’s later, it’s later —
Ronan kept going, his voice louder. “No. Do you hear me, Cabeswater? You promised to keep me safe. Who are we to you? Nothing? If you let him die, that is not keeping me safe. Do you understand? If they die, I die, too.”
Now Blue could hear the humming sound from the pit, too.
Adam spoke up, voice half-muffled from the mud. “I made a deal with you, Cabeswater. I’m your hands and your eyes. What do you think I’ll see if he dies?”
The rustling grew. It sounded numerous.
It is not hornets, Blue thought, wished, longed, dreamt. Who are we to you, Cabeswater? Who am I to you?
Out loud, she said, “We’ve been making the ley line stronger. We have been making you stronger. And we’ll keep helping you, but you’ve got to help us —”
Blackness ate her flashlight beam, rising from the depths. The sound exploded. It was humming; it was wings. They filled the pit, hiding Gansey from view.
“Gansey!” Blue shouted, or maybe it was Adam, or maybe it was Ronan.
Then something flapped against her face, and another something. A body careened off the wall. Off the ceiling. The beams of their headlamps were cut into a thousand flickering pieces.
The sound of their wings. The sound.
Not hornets.
Bats?
No.
Ravens.
This was not where ravens lived, and this was not how ravens behaved. But they burst and burst from the pit below Gansey. It seemed as if the flock would never end. Blue had the disorienting sensation that it had always been this way, ravens coursing all around them, feathers brushing her cheeks, claws scraping over her helmet. Then, suddenly, the ravens began to shout, back and forth, back and forth. It grew more and more sing-song, and then it resolved into words.