Blue Lily, Lily Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

pinpoint a precise location
for Cabeswater’s task, he was sure it was on the other side of these
toll booths. There was no other way in.
But he also knew the contents of his pockets, and it was not
fifteen dollars.
I can come back another day.
He was so tired of doing things another day, another way, a
cheaper way, a day when Gansey could tidy the edges. This was
supposed to be something he could do by himself, his power as
the magician, tapped into the ley line.
But the ley line couldn’t get him through a toll plaza. If Gansey had been here, he would have breezily tossed
the bills out of the Camaro. He wouldn’t have even thought
about it.
One day , Adam thought. One day.
As he sat in line, he plucked his wallet free, and then, when
it failed to produce enough, he began digging for change under
the seats. It was a moment that would have been both easier
and worse if he’d been with Gansey, Ronan, and Blue. Because then IOUs would have had to be created, the haves assuring them it wasn’t necessary to be paid back, the have-nots insisting that
it was.
But since it was only Adam, lonesome Adam, he just silently
looked at the meager sum he’d managed to scrape together. $12.38.
He would not beg at the booth. He had very little of anything except for some damned dignity, and he couldn’t bring
himself to hand that through the driver’s side window. It would have to be another day.
He didn’t get angry. There was no one to get angry at. He
just allowed himself a brief moment of leaning his temple against
the driver’s side window, and then he pulled out of line and
backed onto the shoulder to turn around.
As he did, his attention was drawn to the vehicles still in line.
Two of the cars were exactly what Adam might imagine: a minivan with a young family in it, a sedan with a laughing college-aged
couple in it. But the third car was not quite right. It was a rental
car — he could see the barcode sticker stuck in the corner of the
windshield. Perhaps that was not strange; a tourist might fly in
and visit the park. But on the dashboard was a device Adam was
very familiar with: an electromagnetic frequency reader. Another
device sat next to it, although he wasn’t sure what that one was.
A geophone, maybe.
The sort of tools Gansey and the others had used for hunting for the ley line. The sort they’d used to find Cabeswater. Then he blinked, and the dashboard of the car was empty.
Had always been empty. It was just a rental car with a bored family in it. A month ago, Adam wouldn’t have understood why he was seeing things that weren’t real. But now he knew Cabeswater better, and he understood that what he had just seen
was real — just real in a different place, or a different time. Someone else had come to Henrietta looking for the ley line.

3
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    apey neat downer,” Blue said, “to see how far it goes.” “How far what goes?” Gansey demanded. He
replayed her words, but they remained nonsense. “Lynch, turn that down .”
It had been several days since their trip into the cave of ravens and now they were on the way to the airport to pick up Dr. Roger Malory, international ley line expert and aged mentor of Gansey’s. Ronan lounged in the passenger seat. Adam keeled against a window in the back, his mouth parted in the unaware sleep of the exhausted. Blue sat behind Gansey, clutching his headrest in an effort to be heard.
“This car ,” she despaired.
Gansey knew his reliable and enormous Suburban would have been a more logical choice for the trip, but he wanted the old Camaro to be the first thing the professor saw, not the expensive new SUV. The Camaro was shorthand for the person he had become, and he wanted, more than anything, for Malory to feel that person had been worth the trip. The professor did not fly, but he had flown three thousand miles for him. Gansey couldn’t fathom how to repay such a kindness, especially considering the circumstances under which he had left England.
“I said maybe we