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"Hell yeah, you are" Kavinsky retrieved yetthat, too -- and joined Ronan on the hood of the faulty Camaro They drank in silence for several reen pills into Ronan’s pal besides Twizzlers He asted on dreaht twisted and blackened in him, curled like burned paper

"Bonus round," Kavinsky said Then: "Open"

He put an iue Ronan tasted just an instant of sweat and rubber and gasoline on his fingertips Then the pill hit his stomach

"What’s this one do?" Ronan asked

Kavinsky said, "Dying’s a boring side effect"

It took only a edback

Ronan was a stranger in his own body The sunset cut into his gaze, slantwise and insistent As his muscles twitched, he lowered hiainst the hood, the heat of the h to be unbearable He closed his eyes This wasn’t the hurtling-to-sleep pill of before This was a liquid fatality He could feel his brain shutting down

After a roan as Kavinsky leaned over hi slowly over the skin on his back A slow arc between his shoulder blades, drawing the pattern of his tattoo Then sliding down his spine, tensing everyto nothing, nothing at all

Ronan didn’t move If he moved, the touch on his spine would stab hi back

But when his eyes slitted, battling sleep, Kavinsky was just doing another line of coke off the roof, body stretched over the windshield

He ain the Caain Orphan Girl crouched on the other side of it, eyes sad The leaves quivered and faded

He felt this place’s power dissipating

He crept toward the car

In

Out

"Ronan," whispered Orphan Girl "Quid furantur a nos?"

(Why do you steal froy as the dead

Ronan whispered, "Just one more Please" She stared at him "Unum Amabo te It’s not for me"

In

Out

But he didn’t hide this ti fro place The dream, suddenly aware, shuddered around him Flickered The trees leaned away

He hadn’t stolen Chainsaw, the truest thing he’d ever taken fro to steal the car Not this tiain "Let ant line of the roof When he lifted his palreen His heart thudded as he rubbed pollen-covered fingertips against each other The air was suddenly hot, sweat sticky in the crease of his elbows, gasoline pricking his nostrils This was a ot in, the seat burned his bare skin He are of everything around him, down to the scuffed vinyl beneath the improperly restoredcranks

He was lost in ti?

"Call it by na Gansey’s Cabeswater, please"

He turned the key The engine turned, turned, turned, finicky as it had always been It was as real as anything had ever been

When it caught, he woke up

Kavinsky grinned in the windshield at hi

Air sputtered in the air-conditioning vents, scented with gasoline and exhaust Ronan didn’t have to look under the hood to know that the thundering he felt in his feet caht he knehy Cabeswater had disappeared Which et his ht er Whichback to Gansey

He rolled down the"I’"

For a moment, Kavinsky’s face was perfectly blank, and then Kavinsky flickered back onto it He said, "You’re shitting ine Exhaust and dust swirled in a wild torht-hundred rp was back the way it was

"Running back to your ah"

"You’re a player in his life, Lynch"

The difference between us and Kavinsky, Gansey whispered in Ronan’s head, is weneed hi brake

Kavinsky threw up a hand like he was going to hit so ly This felt like athat had happened to this point "Wait You thought -- it was never gonna be you and ht?"

Kavinsky’s expression was scorched "There’s only with ainst ainst Kavinsky There was never any possibility of with "It was never going to be you and me"

"I will burn you down," Kavinsky said