Ryan James

Ryan James is Ava’s boyfriend whose easy charm and apparent closeness make his later betrayal especially painful. His story turns on the gap between the boy who shares jokes, kisses, and ordinary dates with her and the Coterie recruit who was assigned to watch her for Venus. When he finally explains his family history and his search for belonging, the disclosure gives his choices a context without restoring the trust they have destroyed.

Identity and First Impressions

Ryan first appears sprawled across a bench with a book shut, making himself comfortable against Ava’s lap while asking her to discuss it rather than write his paper. Their exchange establishes the teasing rhythm of the relationship: he pleads with an exaggerated, knowingly irresistible expression, while she calls his request cheating. His charm is not incidental to the scene; Ava recognizes that his hazel eyes make refusal difficult, and he knows the effect they have.

Their playfulness continues through an argument about The Count of Monte Cristo. Ava shoves him off her lap when he insults the classic, but he keeps laughing, returns to the bench, and receives her help brushing grass from his jacket. Mud season supplies the damp, unpolished setting for their flirtation. Ryan kisses her temple, puts an arm around her, and jokes about why he dates someone so mean. Ava answers in kind, even as her narration admits uncertainty about what draws him to her beyond his looks and appeal.

That appeal is rendered through specific, familiar details: curly brown hair that looks perpetually tousled, a lean build, and lips that make Ava feel unlike herself. She describes him as having the air of someone caught with a hand in the cookie jar, an impression that makes him seem just mischievous enough to be fun. The image also acquires an uneasy resonance in retrospect: Ryan’s playful surface is paired with concealment, though Ava initially reads it as part of his charm.

A cigarette and Ava’s old-fashioned Zippo extend their intimacy into a small ritual. Ryan takes a cigarette from his pocket and pats himself down for a lighter; Ava produces hers, flicks it open, and lights it for him. He calls her readiness with a light one point in her favor. The exchange is domestic and teasing, a detail of shared familiarity that later contrasts with the knowledge that he was also observing her for Venus.

Courtship and Growing Suspicion

At the bookstore where Ava works, Ryan arrives as she finishes tidying before the doors open and asks to take his favorite girl to lunch. Her reply—that favorite implies there are others—keeps their flirtation in motion. These scenes place him within the ordinary life Ava shares with Cade: work, reading, and time together, far removed on the surface from the Coterie job Ava associates with being ordered to kill.

Their relationship is not free of insecurity. At a restaurant, Ryan complains that he had planned a surprise only to discover that Ava was a VIP there and seemed to have another boyfriend, perhaps two; he even wonders whether he is the one on the side. Ava answers with a joke about building a harem in Boston and sending him billowy pants and a diamond collar. He laughs, then pulls her close and kisses her with a force Ava experiences as an attempt to reclaim her. The scene shows both their practiced banter and his jealousy: the joke restores their closeness for the moment, but the underlying suspicion is real.

Ryan’s social world is less comfortable for Ava. One Friday, she expects to go out with him alone but finds herself squeezed into a Volvo with Brittany and Brittany’s latest conquest. Their conversation stalls, and Ava struggles to connect with the group’s talk about a party and conventional teenage life. Brittany mocks Ava’s clothing as hobo chic. The episode does not establish Ryan’s own attitude toward the insult, but it does place their relationship among people and expectations that leave Ava feeling out of place.

The Coterie and the Betrayal

Ryan’s explanation begins with his family. His biological mother was one of the Selkies; she recovered her skin and left long ago. The woman he calls his mother is his father’s second wife. Ryan says that after his biological mother returned from the water, she looked at him, judged him human like his father, and told him that he belonged on land. She left without apology or tears. Ava’s understanding of Selkie stories—of seal-like beings who can shed their skins and become human—makes the account legible to her, while Ryan’s description of the encounter emphasizes rejection and the human identity he could not change.

A couple of months before the confession, Ryan heard about the Coterie from another young person like himself, whom he describes as a half-breed who had come up short. He went to the organization and told them where he was from. Venus then told him about Ava and what she was. Ryan’s account suggests that Venus saw an opportunity in a human boy who could serve as bait for a runaway Firebug. Ava asks whether she was his ticket into the Coterie; Ryan answers that he was supposed to watch her. Ava names that role as spying, while he treats the distinction between watching and spying as negligible.

The disclosure recasts the earlier intimacy without erasing it. Ryan’s arrival at the bookstore, his attentiveness, and his place in Ava’s daily life coexist with an assignment to monitor her. His statement that he wanted what Ava had connects his own sense of exclusion to his interest in her, but the evidence does not turn that longing into an excuse: he chose to approach the Coterie, and Venus used his access to Ava for her own purposes.

Hostage Crisis and Aftermath

During the confrontation with Venus, Ava tries to exploit Owen’s expectation that she is frightened and proposes a trade: herself for Cade, with Ryan also allowed to leave if he wants to. She presents the offer as a way to prevent further harm, though she privately admits that she would like the chance to punish Ryan herself. Owen agrees to take the proposal to Venus. The offer shows that, even after what Ryan has put her through, Ava initially leaves open the possibility of his escape.

That possibility collapses when Ava approaches the clearing and sees Cade bound and kneeling before Venus and Owen, while Ryan stands unbound behind Venus. Ryan is unharmed and appears willing to be there. Ava concludes that much of the crisis has stemmed from his betrayal, though she recognizes that Venus might have found another way to set events in motion. She cannot know how things would have unfolded if she had stayed away from him. Faced with Cade’s treatment, she refuses to argue for Ryan’s safety.

Later, Ryan grabs Ava from behind and holds her as the fighting continues. Venus then appears battered rather than untouched: mud and blood mark her clothes, her hair has come undone, and a cut on her temple is healing. The sequence places Ryan’s physical closeness to Ava in the service of Venus’s power, reversing the intimacy of their earlier embraces. Ava sees him restraining her, not protecting her.

After Venus’s defeat, Ryan is alive but severely damaged by the several days Venus held him in thrall. At Grandma Rose’s, he is shaky and sick, sometimes screaming; Rose compares his condition to someone coming down from heroin. Venus has also apparently fed on him, and he has not been eating well. Ava is allowed to see him only once before Sid and Ikka take him home. His bruised appearance and disinterest in the care someone has given his hair and face make his survival a starkly limited comfort to her.

When Ryan reaches out, Ava does not take his hand. She wants to know why he put her through what he did, and he responds by telling her about his mother and the Coterie. The account closes on explanation rather than reconciliation: Ryan reveals the rejection and longing behind his choices, but the relationship remains marked by his surveillance, his presence with Venus, and Ava’s refusal to resume their former closeness.