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There was never a chance Ronan wasn’t co with

"SOMETHING DISTASTEFUL!" Blue roared back She reappeared at the door, her wardrobe essentially unchanged but for the addition of crochet tights and green rubber boots "What are we doing, by the way?"

Ho home

"Well," Gansey said slowly, as thunder ru to Ronan’s family’s property, which he’s not allowed to do"

Ronan flashed his teeth at her "And the distasteful part is that we’re burying a body"

Ronan had not been to the Barns in over a year, even in his dreams

It was as he remembered it from countless sumled banks like a wall around the property, the oaks huddled close on either side of the pitted gravel driveway The gray sky aboveand ive the entrance to the Barns a sort of privacy A reclusiveness

As they ascended the drive, rain spattered on the BMW’s windshield Thunder ruh the oak trees, around a tight turn, and there -- a great sloping expanse, pure green, sheltered by trees on all sides Once upon a tirazed in these front pastures, cattle of every color That herd, lovely as fairy anier fields He wondered what had happened to the real cattle

In the backseat, Blue and Ada house It was homely, unimpressive, a farmhouse that had been added on to every few decades It was the nah the saturated hills that were memorable, most of the, so and skinny livestock barns, others broad hay barns topped with pointy-hatted cupolas There were ancient stone outbuildings and new, flat-roofed equip kennels They dotted the fields as if they’d grown froer ones standing apart

Over thee and purple with rain Every color was deeper, truer, better This was the reality, and last year had been the dreaht to the sitting room It was always on

Am I really here? Ronan wondered

Surely he would wake up soon and find hi or in the backseat of his car or lying on the floor beside Adaht, the Barns was so green and beautiful that he felt sick

In the rearview limpse of Adaertips pressed to the glass as if she wanted to touch the da area was empty, the home nurse nowhere in evidence Ronan parked beside a plum tree laden with unpicked fruit Once, he’d had a dream that he’d bitten into one of the fruits, and juice and seeds had exploded from inside Another where the fruit bled and creatures came to lap it up before they burrowed under his skin, sweet-scented parasites

When Ronan opened the door, the car was ireen-walled, mold-stone scent of home

"It looks like another country," Blue said

It was another country It was a country for the young, a country where you died before you got old Cli out, their feet sank into the suht in their hair The dropshum

The loveliness of the place couldn’t even be e that this was the place Ronan had found his father’s body, and this was the car Ronan had found hi, the Barns was transforht The body had been found on a cool, dark ray afternoon So the ht, analytical rather than emotional

The only reality was this: He was home

How badly he wanted to stay

A fewat the open trunk, they all realized neither Gansey nor Ronan had considered the plan deeply enough to procure a shovel

"Einstein?" Ronan addressed Ada awake "Tools?" "Oh yeah This way"

Cli over a black four-board fence, they set off across the fields toward one of the ed silence Adam took a few hurried steps to walk beside Blue, but neither spoke On Ronan’s shoulder, Chainsaw flapped to keep her balance She was getting heavy, this dreaainst the rain, his face pensive He’d h times himself, before

How many tio, five years ago

Ronan was filled with a burst of fury at Declan, enforcer of his father’s will He couldn’t have his father back, probably would never have his mother back But if he was allowed to come back here -- it wouldn’t be the sa first She remarked, "Kreck"

Ronan stopped

"What’s that?" he asked A dozen yards away, a sreen It aist-high in size and mountainous in texture

Dubiously, Blue asked, "Is thata cow?"

It was obvious once she had said it It was certainly a cow, lying down as cattle do in the rain And it was certainly one of the cattle that had occupied this pasture before Niall Lynch had died Ronan couldn’t quite work out hoas still here

Adam made a face "Is it dead?"

Ronan pointed to the cow’s slowlyside as he walked around it Now he could see her finely sculpted face and the e black eyes were half-lidded Both he and Chainsaw leaned in, heads identically cocked When Ronan waved a hand in front of the cow’s eyes, she didn’this eyes, "somni fratrem"

Blue whispered, "What?"

Adam translated, "Not death, but his brother, sleep" Gansey, a bit of the gallows in his voice, advised, "Poke its eye" "Gansey!" Blue said