- Every year on St. Mark's Eve, Blue and her mother, Maura, do the exact same thing: They go to the churchyard and watch in order to wait for the people who will die this year. Fun!
- Blue is there with her Aunt Neeve this year, and the whole thing is kind of a drag because she doesn't have any clairvoyant powers, so she's just staring into nothingness while her mom and aunt can see and hear all sorts of interesting things.
- Apparently, every single year it's Maura's job to talk to the spirits who are going to die in the next twelve months. She asks them for all of their names; it's one of her services to tell people if they or a loved one is going to die in the next year. Which is kind of morbid.
- As they arrive, Blue can't see or feel anything, but Aunt Neeve tells her that they're very attracted to Blue's energy. Well, that's creepy.
- She listens as her mom and aunt ask the spirits for their names and writes them down quickly. Someone has to be the record keeper, after all, and it might as well be Blue.
- Plus, even though Blue doesn't have psychic abilities, it turns out that just having her around makes other peoples' powers stronger—she's basically a portable psychic battery.
- Blue sits on the wall and writes down names as Neeve reads them out… until something distinctly peculiar happens.
- She sees one of the spirits. This has never happened before. What does it mean?
- The spirit is that of a boy with an Aglionby Academy sweater on. That's the hoity-toity prep school in town; Blue absolutely hates the snooty boys who go there.
- When she asks him for his name, he tells her that it's Gansey. She writes it down and then asks Neeve why she was able to see the guy.
- And that's when Neeve drops a tough truth bomb: There are only two reasons she'd see him—either she is his true love, or she will kill him. Uh-oh.