With a sigh, Adam climbed out. He knocked on the top of the BMW, and Ronan pulled slowly away. Above him, the stars were brutal and clear.

As Adam stepped up the three steps to the house, the front door opened, light flashing down across his legs and feet. His father left the door hanging open as he stood in it, staring down his son.

"Hi, Dad," Adam said.

"Don’t ‘hi, dad’ me," his father replied. He was already revved up. He smelled like cigarettes, although he didn’t smoke. "Come home at midnight. Trying to hide from your lies?"

Warily, Adam asked, "What?"

"Your mother was in your room today and she found something. Can you guess what it would be?"

Adam’s knees were slowly liquefying. He did his best to keep most of his Aglionby life hidden from his father, and he could think of several things about himself and his life that wouldn’t please Robert Parrish. The fact that he didn’t know precisely what had been found was agonizing. He couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.

Robert Parrish grabbed Adam’s collar, forcing his chin up. "Look at me when I’m talking to you. A pay stub. From the factory."

Oh.

Think fast, Adam. What does he need to hear?

"I don’t understand why you’re angry," Adam said. He tried to keep his voice as level as possible, but now that he knew it was about the money, he didn’t know how to get out of it.

His father drew Adam’s face a bare inch from his, so that Adam could feel the words as well as hear them. "You lied to your mother about how much you made."

"I didn’t lie."

This was a mistake, and Adam knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

"Do not look in my face and lie to me!" his father shouted.

Even though he knew it was coming, Adam’s arm was too slow to protect his face.

When his father’s hand hit his cheek, it was more sound than feeling: a pop like a distant hammer hitting a nail. Adam scrambled for balance, but his foot missed the edge of the stair and his father let him fall.

When the side of Adam’s head hit the railing, it was a catastrophe of light. He was aware in a single, exploded moment of how many colors combined to make white.

Pain hissed inside his skull.

He was on the ground by the stairs without any recollection of the second between hitting the railing and the ground. His face was caked with dust; it was in his mouth. Adam had to put together the mechanics of breathing, of opening his eyes, of breathing again.

"Oh, come on," his father said, tired. "Get up. Really."

Adam slowly pushed himself to his hands and knees. Rocking back, he crouched, knees braced on the ground, while his ears rang, rang, rang. He waited for them to clear. There was nothing but an ascending whine.

Halfway down the drive, he saw the brake lights on Ronan’s BMW.

Just go, Ronan.

"You’re not playing that game!" Robert Parrish snapped. "I’m not going to stop talking about this just because you threw yourself on the ground. I know when you’re faking, Adam. I’m not a fool. I can’t believe you’d make this kind of money and throw it away on that damn school! All of those times you’ve heard us talking about the power bill, the phone?"

His father was far from done. Adam could see it in the way he pushed off his feet with every step down the stairs, from the coil in his body. Adam drew his elbows into his body, ducking his head, willing his ears to clear. What he needed to do was put himself in his father’s head, to imagine what he had to say to defuse this situation.

But he couldn’t think. His thoughts crashed explosively across the dirt in front of him, in time with the rhythm of his heart. His left ear screamed at him. It was so hot that it felt wet.

"You lied," growled his father. "You told us that school was giving you money to go. You didn’t tell me you were making" — he stopped long enough to withdraw a battered piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It shook in his hand — "eighteen thousand, four hundred and twenty-three dollars a year!"

Adam gasped an answer.

"What’s that?" His father came in close. Grabbing Adam’s collar, he pulled his son up, as easy as he’d lift a dog. Adam stood, but only just. The ground was sliding away from him, and he stumbled. He had to struggle to find the words again; something was fractured inside him.

"Partial," Adam gasped. "Partial scholarship."

His father bellowed something else at him, but it was into his left ear, and there was nothing but a roar on that side.

"Do not ignore me," his father growled. And then, inexplicably, he turned his head from Adam, and he shouted, "What do you want?"

"To do this," Ronan Lynch snarled, smashing his fist into the side of Robert Parrish’s face. Beyond him, the BMW sat, the driver’s side door hanging open, headlights illuminating clouds of dust in the darkness.

Ronan, said Adam. Or maybe he only thought it. Without his father holding him up, he staggered.

Grabbing Ronan’s shirt, Adam’s father propelled him back toward the double-wide. But it only took Ronan a moment to get his feet under him. His knee found Parrish’s gut. Doubled over, Adam’s father snatched a hand toward Ronan. His fingers passed harmlessly over Ronan’s shaved head. It set him back just half a second. Parrish crashed his skull into Ronan’s face.

Out of his right ear, Adam heard his mother screaming at them to stop. She was holding the phone, waving the phone at Ronan like that would make him stop. There was only one person who could stop Ronan, though, and Adam’s mother didn’t have that number.

"Ronan," said Adam, and this time he was certain he said it out loud. His voice sounded strange to him, stuffed with cotton. He took a step and the ground slid out from under him entirely. Get up, Adam. He was on his hands and knees. The sky looked the same as the ground. He felt fundamentally broken. He couldn’t stand. He could only watch his friend and his father grappling a few feet away. He was eyes without a body.

The fight was dirty. At one point Ronan went down and Robert Parrish kicked, hard, at his face. Ronan’s forearms came up, all instinct, to protect himself. Parrish lunged in to rip them free. Ronan’s hand lashed out like a snake, dragging Parrish to the ground with him.

Adam caught bits and pieces: his father and Ronan rolling, dragging, punching. Red and blue flashing strobes bounced off the sides of the double-wide, lighting the fields for a second at a time. The cops.

His mother was still yelling.

It was all just noise. What Adam needed was to be able to stand, to walk, to think, and then he could stop Ronan before something awful happened.

"Son?" An officer knelt beside him. He smelled like juniper. Adam thought he might choke on it. "Are you okay?"

With the officer’s hand helping him, Adam stumbled to his feet. Across the dirt, another officer dragged Ronan off Robert Parrish.

"I’m okay," Adam said.

The cop released his arm and then, as quickly, caught it again. "Boy, you’re not okay. Have you been drinking?"

Ronan must have caught this question because, from across the lot, he shouted an answer. It involved a lot of profanity and the phrase beats the shit.

Adam’s vision shifted and cleared, shifted and cleared. He could make out Ronan, dimly. Appalled, he asked, "Is he being cuffed?"

This can’t happen. He can’t go to jail because of me.

"Have you been drinking?" the cop repeated.

"No," Adam replied. He was still not steady on his feet; the ground slanted and pitched with every move of his head. He knew he looked drunk. He needed to get himself together. Only this afternoon he’d touched Blue’s face. It had felt like anything was possible, like the world soared out in front of him. He tried to channel that sensation, but it felt apocryphal. "I can’t —"

"Can’t what?"

Can’t hear out of my left ear, Adam thought.

His mother stood on the porch, watching him and the cop, her eyes narrowed. Adam knew what she was thinking, because they’d had the conversation so many times before: Don’t say anything, Adam. Tell him you fell down. It really was a little your fault, wasn’t it? We’ll deal with it as a family.

If Adam turned his father in, everything crashed down around him. If Adam turned him in, his mother would never forgive him. If Adam turned him in, he could never come home again.

Across the lot, one of the officers put his hand on the back of Ronan’s head, guiding him down into the police car.

Even without the hearing in his left ear, Adam heard Ronan’s voice clearly. "I said I’ve got it, man. Do you think I’ve never been in one of these before?"

Adam couldn’t move in with Gansey. He had done so much to make sure that when he moved out, it would be on his own terms. Not Robert Parrish’s. Not Richard Gansey’s.

On Adam Parrish’s terms, or not at all.

Adam touched his left ear. The skin was hot and painful, and without his hearing to tell him when his finger was close to his ear cavity, his touch felt imaginary. The whine in the ear had subsided and now there was … nothing. There was nothing at all.

Gansey said, You won’t leave because of your pride?

"Ronan was defending me." Adam’s mouth was dry as the dirt around them. The officer’s expression focused on him as he went on. "From my father. All this … is from him. My face and my …"

His mother was staring at him.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her and say it. Even with his eyes closed, he felt like he was falling, like the horizon pitched, like his head tilted. Adam had the sick feeling that his father had managed to knock something crucial askew.

And then he said what he couldn’t say before. He asked, "Can I … can I press charges?"

Chapter 37

Whelk missed the good food that came with being rich.

When he’d been home from Aglionby, neither of his parents had ever cooked, but they’d hired a chef to come in every other evening to make dinner. Carrie, the chef’s name had been, an effusive but intimidating woman who adored chopping things up with knives. God, he missed her guacamole.

Currently, he sat on the curb of a now-closed service station, eating a dry burger he’d bought from a fast-food joint several miles away; the first fast-food burger he’d had in seven years. Uncertain of just how hard the cops might be looking for his car, he’d parked out of the reach of the streetlight and returned to the curb to eat.

As he chewed, a plan was falling into shape, and the plan involved sleeping in the backseat of his vehicle and making another plan in the morning. It was not confidence inspiring, and his spirits were low. He should’ve just abducted Gansey, now that he considered it, but abduction took so much more planning than theft, and he hadn’t left the house prepared to put someone in his trunk. He hadn’t left the house prepared to do anything, actually. He’d merely seized the opportunity when Gansey’s car had broken down. If he’d considered the matter at all, he would’ve abducted Gansey for the ritual later, after he’d gotten to the heart of the ley line.