The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) - Maggie Stiefvater Page 0,37

the wind had dragged the clouds across the entire sky. It was going to be a wild night.

Many years before this afternoon, a psychic had told Maura Sargent that she was “a judgemental but gifted clairvoyant with a talent for bad decision-making.” The two of them had been standing by the side of an I-64 exit ramp about twenty miles outside of Charleston, West Virginia. Both had bags on their backs and their thumbs out. Maura had hitchhiked from points further west. The other psychic had hitchhiked from points south. They did not know each other. Yet.

“I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” said Maura.

“Shocking,” snarled the other psychic, but in a way that made it kind of another compliment. She was a harder weapon than Maura, more unforgiving, already tempered by blood. Maura liked her at once.

“Where are you headed?” Maura asked. A car approached; they both stuck out their thumbs. The car vanished on to the interstate; they put their thumbs down. They were not yet discouraged; it was a green and rippling summer of the sort that made anything seem possible.

“East, I guess. You?”

“Same. Feet are walking me there.”

“My feet are running,” the other psychic said, grimacing. “How far east?”

“I guess I’ll know when I get there,” Maura said thoughtfully. “We could travel together. Set up shop when we get there.”

The other psychic raised a knowing eyebrow. “Turning tricks?”

“Continuing education.”

They both laughed, which was how they knew they would get along. Another car came; they put out their thumbs; the car went.

The afternoon continued.

“What’s this?” said the other psychic.

A mirage had appeared at the end of the exit ramp, only now that they looked a bit harder, it was a real person, behaving like an unreal person. She was walking directly up the middle of the asphalt towards them, gripping an overstuffed butterfly-shaped bag in one hand. She had high, old-fashioned boots laced all the way up beyond where her peculiar dress ended. Her hair was a blond frothy cloud and her skin was chalky. Except for her black eyes, everything about her was as pale as the psychic beside Maura was dark.

Both Maura and the other psychic watched this third person labour up the exit ramp, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility of motorized vehicles.

Just as the pale young woman had nearly reached them, an elderly Cadillac rounded the corner on to the exit ramp. The woman had plenty of time to leap out of the way, but she didn’t. Instead, she paused and tugged up the zipper on her butterfly bag as the Cadillac’s brakes squealed mightily. The car came to a stop inches away from her legs.

Persephone peered at Maura and Calla.

“I think you’ll find,” she told them, “that this lady is going to give us a ride.”

Twenty years had passed since that meeting in West Virginia, and Maura was still a judgmental but gifted clairvoyant with a talent for bad decisions. But in the years between, she’d grown used to being a member of an inseparable three-headed entity that shared decision making equally. They’d let themselves think that would never end.

It was so much harder to see things clearly without Persephone.

“Picked up anything?” Mr Gray asked.

“Go around again,” Maura replied. They headed back through Henrietta as store lights flickered in time with an unseen ley line. The rain had stopped, but evening had come on, and Mr Gray turned on the headlights before rebraiding his fingers with hers. He was acting as driver as Maura tried to solidify an increasingly urgent hunch. It had begun this morning when she woke up, an ominous feeling like one had after waking from a bad dream. Instead of fading as the day went on, however, it only grew more pointed, focusing on Blue, and Fox Way, and a creeping darkness that felt like passing out.

Also her eye hurt.

She’d been doing this for long enough to know that there was nothing wrong with it. There was something wrong with someone else’s eye at some point in time, and Maura was just tuned into the station. It irritated her, but it wasn’t an action item. The hunch was. The problem with pursuing bad feelings was that it was always difficult to tell if one was running towards a problem to fix it, or running to a problem to create it. It would’ve been easier if it had still been the three of them. Usually Maura started a project, Calla made it into a tangible thing, and Persephone sent it