At this, Gansey rolled over onto his back and folded his hands on his chest. He wore a salmon polo shirt, which, in Blue’s opinion, was far more hellish than anything they’d discussed to this point.

Instead, though, as he drew nearer, his mind kept drifting back to Gansey's voice in the cave the day before. The tremulous note in it. The fear - a fear so profound that Gansey could not bring himself to climb out of the pit, though there was nothing physically preventing him. He had not known that Richard Gansey III had it in him to be a coward.Adam remembered crouching on the kitchen floor of his parents' double-wide, telling himself to take Gansey's oft-repeated advice to leave. "Just put what you need in the car, Adam."But he had stayed. Hung in the pit of his father's anger. A coward, too.Adam felt like he needed to reconfigure every conversation he'd ever had with Gansey in light of this new knowledge.

Gansey clucked at his bedraggled reflection in the dark-framed mirror hanging in the front hallway. Chainsaw eyed herself briefly before hiding on the other side of Ronan's neck; Adam did the same, but without the hiding-in-Ronan's-neck bit. Even Blue looked less fanciful that usual, the lighting rendering her lampshade dress and spiky hair as a melancholy Pierrot.