“But the imprecise nature of the fortunes stole some of their power. The predictions could be dismissed as coincidences, hunches. They were a chuckle in the Walmart parking lot when you ran into an old friend as promised. A shiver when the number seventeen appeared on an electric bill. A realization that even if you had discovered the future, it really didn’t change how you lived in the present. They were truth, but they weren’t all of the truth.”

Clairvoyance impacts the story’s world and characters. Rather than employing an exact process or knowing things beyond a shadow of a doubt, Blue’s family sees things that are vague, meaning they can be interpreted in any number of ways later on. Thus, the predictions are only as true as someone wants them to be, meaning they are both powerful and weak, depending on how someone uses the information. The outcome depends more on what a person chooses to do rather than on the information given. The final line of this quotation gets at the heart of the choices Blue and the boys make throughout the book. With the information Blue’s family offers them, they can continue as they’ve been or try to change things to align with the prediction. However, changing doesn’t guarantee that anything will work out differently than it would have anyway; that is, changing the present may not have much of an impact on the future.

“Is this how we make our way to death? Blue wondered. A stumbling fade-out instead of a self-aware finale?”

Blue watches Gansey’s spirit lumber through the churchyard on St. Mark’s Eve. This is the first time Blue has ever seen a spirit, and she is struck by how slow and uncertain Gansey seems to be. Blue’s thoughts offer two possibilities for the