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Gansey crossed his ar of the dead wasp pressed against the mesh of the wastebasket He waited for Ronan to elaborate, but all the other boy said was, "I catch you staring at a wasp again, though, I’ for a reply, he turned away and retreated back to his room

Slowly, Gansey picked up his shoe frohtened, he realized Noah had drifted froaze flickered from Gansey to the wastebasket The wasp’s body had slipped down several inches, but it was still visible

"What?" Gansey asked Sohtened faces surrounding him, hornets on his skin, the sky blue as death above hiiven another chance, and lately, the weight of needing to make it matter felt heavier

He looked away from Noah, out the wall of panes Even now, it see presence of the nearby ible thing It was as excruciating as the iht Things felt bigger He may not have found the line, or the heart of the line, but so

Noah said, "Don’t throw it away"

Chapter 17

Several days later, Blue woke up soed shadows froht since the reading, thoughts about Adaant features and the memory of Gansey’s bowed head crowded into her mind as soon as sleep relinquished its hold Blue couldn’t help replaying the chaotic episode over and over in her mind Calla’s volatile response to Ronan, Adae, the fact that Gansey was not just a spirit on the corpse road But it wasn’t just the boys that she was concerned with, though, sadly, it didn’t see that seized her the most was the idea that herIt pinched like a collar

Blue pushed off the covers She was getting up

She bore a grudging fondness for the weird architecture of 300 Fox Way; it was a sort of halfhearted affection born of nostalgia s for the yard behind the house were anything butbeech tree sheltered the entire backyard Its beautiful, perfectly symmetrical canopy stretched from one fence line to the other, so dense that it tinted even the hottest sureen Only the heaviest rain could penetrate the leaves Blue had a satchelful ofby theit hiss and tap and scatter across the canopy without ever reaching the ground Standing under the beech tree, it felt like she was the beech, like the rain rolled off her leaves and off the bark, sh, Blue made her way down to the kitchen She pushed open the back door, using two hands to close it silently behind her After dark, the yard was its oorld, private and dih wooden fence, covered withback porches, and the inscrutable canopy of the beech blocked theminutes for her eyes to adjust to the relative dark, but not tonight

Tonight, an eerie, uncertain light flickered on the trunk of the tree Blue hesitated just outside the door, trying to ht as it shifted on the pale, gray bark Laying a hand against the side of the house -- it was still warm from the heat of the day -- she leaned forward From here, she saw a candle around the other side of the tree, nestled in the bare snake-roots of the beech A treain

Blue took a step off the cracked brick patio, then another, glancing behind her again to see if anyone watched from the house Whose project was this? A few feet away frole of sathered in theht, like another candle beneath the black surface

Blue held her breath tight inside her as she took another step

In a loose sweater and broom skirt, Neeve knelt near the candle and the little root-pool With her pretty hands folded in her lap, she was as motionless as the tree itself and as dark as the sky overhead

Blue’s breath ca her eyes to Neeve’s barely visible face, her breath jerked out of her once ain

"Oh," Blue breathed "I’m sorry I didn’t know you were here"

But Neeve didn’t reply When Blue looked closer, she saw that Neeve’s eyes were unfocused It was her eyebrows that really did it for Blue; they had no expression to them somehow Even more vacuous than Neeve’s eyes were those forht, neutral lines

Blue’s first thought was so medical -- weren’t there seizures where the sy there? What were those called? -- but then she thought of the bowl of cran-grape juice on the kitchen table It was far more likely that she’d interrupted some sort of meditation

But it didn’t look like meditation It looked like … a ritual Her mother didn’t do rituals Maura had once told a client hotly, I am not a witch And once she had said sadly to Persephone, I am not a witch But perhaps Neeve was Blue wasn’t certain what the rules were in this situation

"Who’s there?" asked Neeve

But it was not Neeve’s voice It was so deeper and farther away

A nasty little shiver ran up Blue’s arms Soht it was a bird

"Coht," said Neeve

The waterreflection of the solitary candle As Blue cast her gaze wider, she saw a five-pointed star marked around the beech tree One point was the candle, and another the pool of dark water An unlit candle marked the third point and an eht that she was mistaken, that it was not a five-pointed star after all But then she realized: Neeve was the final point