Page 41 (1/2)

Noah blinked at her, vague and alarmed "I don’t … I can’t …"

Blue held her hand out

"Take it," she said "When I’et focused, she holds my hand Maybe it will help"

Hesitant, Noah reached out When he laid his palainst hers, she was shocked by how chilled it was It was not merely cold, but somehow empty as well, skin without a pulse

Noah, please don’t die for real

He let out a heaving sigh "God," he said

And his voice sounded different from before Now it sounded closer to the Noah she knew, the Noah who had passed as one of them Blue knew she wasn’t the only one to notice it, because Adalances

She watched his chest rise and fall, his breaths beco more even She hadn’t really noticed, before, if he’d been breathing at all

Noah shut his eyes He still held the carved bone loosely in his other hand, rested palrades, the date on theht They were talking with a boy who had been dead for seven years

"The sa by hornets," Adam said softly Then he said, "‘You will live because of Glendower So when they should not, and so you will live when you should not’"

"Coincidence," Ronan said, because it wasn’t

Noah’s eyes were still closed "It was supposed to do so to the ley line I don’t remember what he said it was supposed to do"

"Wake it up," Adaested

Noah nodded, his eyelids still pressed closed Blue’s entire arm felt chilled and numb "Yeah, that I didn’t care It was always his deal, and I was just going along with hi to …"

"This is the ritual Gansey was talking about," Adam said to Ronan "Someone did try it With a sacrifice as the symbolic way to touch the ley line You were the sacrifice, weren’t you, Noah? Someone killed you for this"

"My face," Noah said softly, and he turned his head away, pressing his ruined cheek into his shoulder "I can’t re alive"

Blue shuddered The late afternoon light bathing the boys and the floor was spring, but it felt like winter in her bones

"But it didn’t work," Ronan said

"I alh to do that It wasn’t for nothing But I’lad he never found that He doesn’t know He doesn’t knohere it is"

Blue shivered unconsciously, a product of both Noah’s cold hand in hers and the horror of the story She wondered if this hat it felt like for her mother and her aunts and hera séance or a reading

Do they hold hands with dead people?

She had thought dead was so more obviously not alive But Noah seemed unable to be either

Ronan said, "Okay, it’s tirip, Noah’s hand tre you for notes I’ who smashed your head in"

When Ronan said it, there was soer that included Noah, too, that somehow made him culpable

There was humiliation in his voice when Noah answered, "We were friends"

Adam said, rather more ferocious than he’d been a moment before, "A friend wouldn’t kill you"

"You don’t understand," Noah whispered Blue was afraid that he would disappear This, she understood, had been a secret, carried inside him for seven years, and he still didn’t want to confess it "He was upset He’d lost everything If he’d been thinking straight, I don’t think he would’ve … he didn’t mean to … ere friends like -- are you afraid of Gansey?"

The boys didn’t answer; they didn’t have to Whatever Gansey was to theh, Blue saw the shame flit across Adam’s expression Whatever had transpired between the two of the at him

"Come on, Noah A name" This was Ronan, head cocked, keen as his raven "Who killed you?"

Lifting his head, Noah opened his eyes He took his hand out of Blue’s and put it in his lap The air was frigid around all of them The raven was hunched far down into Ronan’s lap, and he held one hand over the top of her, protectively

Noah said, "But you already know"