“You really did,” Helen said, reading him effortlessly. Gansey siblings were tuned to the same radio frequency. “Which one did you do it for? Which friend? The trailer park one.”

“Don’t be insulting,” Gansey replied crisply. “Who told you?”

“Paperwork told me. You’re not eighteen yet, you know. How did you even manage to convince Brulio to write that document for you? I thought he was supposed to be Dad’s attorney.”

“This has nothing to do with Dad. I didn’t spend his money.”

“You’re seventeen. What other money do you have?”

Gansey looked at her. “I take it you only read the first page of the document then.”

“That’s all that would open on my phone,” Helen said. “Why? What does the second page say? Jesus Christ. You gave Child that warehouse of yours, didn’t you?”

It sounded so clean when she put it that way. He supposed it was. One Aglionby diploma in exchange for Monmouth Manufacturing.

You probably won’t be around to miss it, he told himself.

“First of all, what has he possibly done to deserve such a thing?” Helen demanded. “Are you sleeping with him?”

Indignation cooled his voice. “Because friendship isn’t worthy enough?”

“Dick, I see you stretching to stand on the high ground, but trust me, you’re failing. You don’t just need a morality ladder to get there, you need a booster chair to put the ladder on. Do you understand what an incredibly bad position this puts Mom in if this stupidity of yours comes to light?”

“It’s not Mom. It’s me.”

Helen put her head on its side. Ordinarily he didn’t notice the age difference between them, but just then, she was very obviously a polished adult and he was a – whatever he was. “Do you think the press would care? You’re seventeen. It was the family lawyer, for God’s sake. Example of family corruption, et cetera, et cetera. I cannot believe you wouldn’t at least wait until after the election to do it.”

But Gansey didn’t know how long he had. He didn’t know if he had until after the election. This made his chest feel tight and his breaths go instantly small, so he pushed the thought away from himself as quickly as he could.

“I didn’t think about the ramifications,” he said. “For the campaign.”

“Obviously! I don’t even know what you were thinking. I was trying all the way out here to put it together and I just couldn’t.”

Gansey pushed around a lump of tomato on the cutting board. His heart was still feathered inside him. In a much smaller voice, he said, “I didn’t want him to throw it all away because his father died. He doesn’t want it now, but I wanted him to have it later, when he realized he did.”

Helen said nothing, and he knew that his sister was studying him, reading him again. He just kept pushing that lump of tomato around, thinking about how he really wasn’t even sure that Ronan needed the degree after all, and how he regretted making the deal with Child even as he hadn’t been unable to sleep until he did it. He had been wrong about a lot of things, and it was too late, now, with time running out, to fix them. It had been a lonesome and guilty secret to keep.

To his surprise, Helen hugged him.

“Little brother,” she whispered, “what’s wrong with you?”

The Ganseys were not huggers, and Helen would not ordinarily risk wrinkling her blouse, and her fine gold bracelets pressed lines into his arm, and something about all of these things combined made Gansey feel dangerously close to tears.

“What if I don’t find him,” Gansey said finally. “Glendower.”

Helen let out a sigh and released him. “You and that king. When will it end?”

“When I find him.”

“What then? What if you do find him?”

“That’s all there is.”

It wasn’t a good answer, and she didn’t like it, but she merely narrowed her eyes. She patted some wrinkles out of her blouse.

“I’m sorry I ruined Mom’s campaign,” he said.

“You didn’t ruin it. I’ll just have to, I don’t know. I’ll find some skeletons in Child’s closet to make sure he’s compliant.” Helen didn’t look entirely displeased by the task. She liked organizing facts. “Jesus. To think I thought I’d have to be dealing with hazing and marijuana possession. Who’s that girl out there, by the way? You kissed her?”

“No,” Gansey replied truthfully.

“You should,” she said.

“Do you like her?”

“She’s weird. You’re weird.”

The Gansey siblings smiled at each other.

“Let’s get this bruschetta out of here,” Helen said. “So we can get out of this weekend alive.”

It was a mistake.

Adam knew it the moment he fell into the dark mouth of the scrying bowl, but it wasn’t like he could leave Ronan there in his dream alone.

His physical body sat cross-legged back at the Barns, a ceramic dog dish serving as his scrying bowl. Ronan’s body curled on the sofa. Orphan Girl sat close to Adam, peering into the bowl along with him.

That was real.

But this was also real: this diseased symphony that was Cabeswater. The forest vomited black around him. Trees melted into black, but in reverse – long black strings of goo dripping up towards the sky. The air shuddered and darted. Adam’s mind didn’t understand how to process what it was seeing. It was the horror of the black-bleeding tree they’d seen before, only it had spread to the entire forest, atmosphere included. If there had been nothing of the true Cabeswater left, it would have been less horrifying – more easily dismissed as a nightmare – but he could still see the forest he had come to know struggling to maintain itself.

Cabeswater?

There was no answer.

He didn’t know what happened to him if Cabeswater died.

“Ronan!” Adam shouted. “Are you here?”

Maybe Ronan was only sleeping, not dreaming. Maybe he was dreaming somewhere else. Maybe he had arrived here before Adam and had already been killed in his dreams. “Ronan!”

“Kerah,” moaned the Orphan Girl.

When he looked for her, though, she was nowhere to be seen. Had she come with him, scrying after him into the bowl? Could Ronan dream another one of her into his dreams? Adam knew the answer to this: yes. He’d watched a dreamt Ronan die in front of the real Ronan. There could be infinite Orphan Girls here in this forest. Damn it. He didn’t know how to call for her. He tried: “Orphan Girl!”