Read Online Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater - Free Book Online Page A

smudgy about his eyes, something uncertain about
his edges. It was kind of hard to look at the place where Noah
stopped and the shadow below him began. Something unpleasant happened in Blue’s throat when she tried to make out what
was off about his face.
“I’m tired of it,” Noah said.
“Tired of what?” Gansey asked, voice kind.
“Decaying.”
He had been crying. That was what was wrong with his face,
Blue realized. Nothing supernatural.
“Oh, Noah,” she said, crouching down.
“What can I do?” Gansey asked. “We. What can we do?” Noah shrugged in a watery way.
Blue was suddenly desperately afraid that Noah might want
to actually die. This seemed like something most ghosts wanted —
to be laid to rest. It was a dreadful notion, a forever good-bye.
Her selfishness warred mightily with every bit of ethics she had
ever learned from the women of her family.
Blast. She had to.
She asked, “Do you want us to find a way to, um, to prop
erly, to lay . . .”
Before she’d even finished, Noah started shaking his head.
He hugged his legs closer. “No. Nonono.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Blue said, because it sounded
like what her mother would have said. She was certain her mother
would have added something comforting about the afterlife, but
she was unable, this time, to sound comforting when she herself
wanted to be comforted. Lamely, she finished, “You don’t have
to be afraid.”
“You don’t know!” Noah said, vaguely hysterical. “You
don’t know!”
She stretched out a hand. “Okay, hey —”
Noah repeated, “You don’t know!”
“We can talk this out,” Gansey said, as if a decaying soul was
something that could be solved through conversation. “You don’t know! You don’t know!”
Noah was standing. It was impossible, because there was not
room beneath the pool table for him to stand. But he was somehow
escaping on either side, surrounding Gansey and Blue. The maps
fluttered frantically against the green surface. A flock of dust wads
tumbled from beneath the table and raced down the streets of
Gansey’s miniature model of Henrietta. The desk lamp flickered. The temperature dropped.
Blue saw Gansey’s eyes widen behind a cloud of his own
breath.
“Noah,” Blue warned. Her head felt swimmy as Noah robbed
her of energy. She caught a whiff, strangely, of the old-carpet smell of guidance counselor’s office, and then the living, green
scent of Cabeswater. “This isn’t you!”
The swirl of wind was still rising, flapping papers and knocking over stacks of books. The Dog was barking from behind the
closed door of Noah’s old room. Goose bumps rippled on Blue’s
skin, and her limbs felt heavy.
“Noah, stop ,” Gansey said.
But he didn’t. The door to the apartment rattled. Blue said, “Noah, I’m asking you now.”
He wasn’t attending, or there wasn’t enough of the true Noah
to attend.
Standing up on her wobbly legs, Blue began to use all of the
protective visualization she’d been taught by her mother. She
imagined herself inside an unbreakable glass ball; she could see
out, but no one could touch her. She imagined white light piercing the stormy clouds, the roof, the darkness of Noah, finding
Blue, armoring her.
Then she pulled the plug on the battery that was Blue
Sargent.
The room went still. The papers settled. The light flickered
once more and then strengthened. She heard a little gasp of a sob,
and then absolute quiet.
Gansey looked shocked.
Noah sat in the middle of the floor, papers all around him,
a mint plant spilling dirt by his hand. He was all hunched over
and shadowless, his form slight and streaky, barely visible at all.
He was crying again.
In a very small voice, he told Blue, “You said I could use
your energy.”
She knelt in front of him. She wanted to hug him, but he
wasn’t really there. Without her energy, he was a paper-thin boy,
he was a skull, he was air in the shape of Noah. “Not like that.” He whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Me