“Do you ever feel like things are coming full circle?” Ronan said in a low voice. “Do you …”

He didn’t finish his sentence. The car was quiet again, unmoving – apparently he hadn’t decided whether or not to drive through the flood yet. Rain spattered. The windshield wipers clunk-sighed again.

“I guess we – Jesus,” Gansey broke off. “Jesus. Ronan?”

Terror coated his words.

“Ronan?” repeated Gansey. There was a metallic slap. Groan of a seat. Scuffling. The car shifted beneath them with the ferocity of Gansey shifting his weight. Ronan still hadn’t replied. A roar pitched low behind his words. The engine: Ronan was hitting the gas while the car was out of gear.

The sick warning in Adam had risen to an alarm.

The roar suddenly stopped; the car had been turned off.

“Oh no,” Blue said. “Oh no, the girl, too!” She moved away from Adam, fast; he heard her open the door on the other side of the car. Cool, moist air sucked into the BMW. Another door opened, another. All of them but Adam’s. Henry’s voice came from outside, deep and serious and completely devoid of humour.

“What’s happening?” Adam demanded.

“Can we —” Blue’s voice was halfway to a sob, coming from outside the driver’s-side door. “Can we pick it off him?”

“Don’t,” Ronan gasped. “Don’t touch it – don’t —”

The driver’s seat knocked back so hard that it smashed into Adam’s knees. Adam heard a sound that was unmistakably Ronan sucking in his breath.

“Oh, Jesus,” Gansey said again. “Tell me what I can do.”

Again the seat bucked. Adam’s hands clawed back against the seat behind him, quite against his will. Whatever was happening, they wanted to help it happen faster. From the front seat, Ronan’s phone began to ring and ring and ring. It was the low dull ring that Ronan had programmed for when Declan’s number called.

The worst was that Adam knew what that meant: something was happening to Matthew. No, the worst was that Adam couldn’t do anything about any of it.

“Ronan, Ronan, don’t close your eyes,” Blue said, and now she was crying. “I’m calling – I’m calling Mom.”

“Whoa, stand back!” Gansey shouted.

The entire car rocked.

Henry demanded, “What was that?”

“He’s brought it back from his dreams,” Gansey said. “When he passed out. It won’t hurt us.”

“What’s happening?” Adam demanded.

Gansey’s voice was low and miserable. It reached the edge and cracked. “He’s being unmade.”

It was impossible to believe that Adam had thought that the previous moment was the worst.

This was the worst: being blindfolded and tied in the back of a car and knowing that the soft, gasping sound was Ronan Lynch choking for breath every time he waded back to consciousness.

So much of Ronan was bravado, and there was none left.

And Adam was nothing but a weapon to kill him faster.

It felt like years ago that he had made his bargain with Cabeswater. I will be your hands. I will be your eyes. How horrified Gansey had been, and maybe he had been right. Because here was Adam stripped of all of his options. Rendered so easily and simply powerless.

His thoughts were a battlefield now, and Adam ran away into the blackness of the blindfold. It was a dangerous game, scrying when Cabeswater was so endangered, when everyone else would be too busy to notice if he also began to die in the backseat, but it was the only way he could survive being so close to Ronan’s pained gasps.

He wheeled far and fast, throwing his unconscious far away from his conscious thoughts, as far away as he could get from the truth of the car as quickly as he could manage it. There was very, very little Cabeswater left. Mostly darkness. Maybe he wouldn’t find his way back to his corrupted body. Maybe he would be lost, like

Persephone

Persephone

As soon as he thought her name, he realized that she was with him. He couldn’t tell how he knew, since he couldn’t see her. In fact, he couldn’t see anything. In fact, he found that he was once more intensely aware of the fabric of the blindfold against his eyes and the dull ache of his fingers braided and jammed against each other. Once more intensely aware of his physical reality; once more grounded inside his useless body.

“You pushed me back here,” he accused.

Ish, she replied. Mostly you let yourself get pushed.

He didn’t know what to say to her. He was too painfully glad to feel her presence again. It was not that Persephone, vague Persephone, was a creature given to providing comfort. But her brand of sense and wisdom and rules had comforted him greatly when he was chaos, and even though she had not yet really said anything to him, the mere recollection of that comfort gave him a burst of outsized happiness.

“I’m ruined.”

Mmm.

“It’s my fault.”

Mmm.

“Gansey was right.”

Mmm.

“Stop saying mmm!”

Then perhaps you should stop saying things you got tired of saying to me weeks ago.

“My hands, though. My eyes.” When he named them, he felt them. The clawing hands. The rolling eyes. They were thrilled by the destruction of Ronan. This was their purpose. How they longed to help in that dreadful task.

Who did you make that deal with?

“Cabeswater.”

Who is using your hands?

“The demon.”

That is not the same thing.

Adam didn’t reply. Once again Persephone was giving him advice that sounded good but was impossible to use in the real world. It was wisdom, not an actionable item.

You made your deal with Cabeswater, not with a demon. Even though they look the same and feel the same, they are not the same.

“They feel the same.”

They are not the same. The demon has no claim to you. You didn’t choose the demon. You chose Cabeswater.

“I don’t know what to do,” Adam said.

Yes, you do. You have to keep choosing it.

But Cabeswater was dying. Soon there might be no Cabeswater left to choose. Soon it might just be Adam’s mind, Adam’s body, and the demon. He didn’t say it out loud. It didn’t matter. In this place, his thoughts and his words were the same thing.