The Raven King

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “A storage closet is not a bedroom,” Blue said. “For starters.”

  “The past decades have been stressful for him,” Maura said.

  “The past few centuries have been stressful for Gwenllian, and she’s out on the counter at least!”

  From the toilet, Jimi said, “You can’t compare one person’s coping capacity to another, hon.”

  Calla snorted.

  “Is that why you guys are all in a bathtub?” Blue asked.

  “Don’t be mean,” Maura replied. “We were trying to make contact with Persephone. And no, before you ask, it didn’t work. And while we’re on the topic of you doing things that are unwise, where exactly did you disappear to? Being suspended is not a vacation.”

  Blue bristled. “I was not on vacation! Ronan dreamt up his inner child, or something, and we had to take her to his mother. While we were there, we saw the three women from that tapestry I told you about, and a tree that looked messed up, and Gansey could have died really easily and I would have been right there beside him!”

  The women looked pitying, which maddened Blue further.

  She said, “I want to warn him.”

  There was silence.

  She hadn’t known she was going to say it until it came out of her mouth, but it was out now. She filled the quiet. “I know you said before that it would only ruin someone’s life to know, and it wouldn’t save them. I get that. But this is different. We’re gonna find Glendower, and we’re gonna ask for Gansey’s life to be saved. So we need Gansey to stay alive until then. And that means he has to stop charging into danger!”

  Her thin hope couldn’t bear more pity at that point, but luckily, that wasn’t what she got. The women all exchanged looks, considering. It was hard to tell if they were making decisions based upon ordinary means or psychic ones.

  Then Maura shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Sure, okay,” Maura said. She glanced again at Calla for verification; Calla lifted her eyebrows. “Tell him.”

  “Really?”

  Blue must have expected them to push back harder, because when they didn’t, she felt like she’d had a chair snatched from under her. It was one thing to inform them that she was going to tell Gansey he was going to die. It was another thing to imagine telling him. There was no undoing it once it was done. Blue squeezed her eyes shut — be sensible, get yourself together — and opened them.

  Mother looked at daughter. Daughter looked at mother. Maura said, “Blue.”

  Blue allowed herself to deflate.

  Jimi blew out the candle she was holding and set it beside the toilet. Then she put her arms around Blue’s hips and tugged her onto her lap, like she would have when Blue was small. Well, Blue was still small. When Blue was young. The toilet groaned beneath them.

  “You’re going to collapse the toilet,” Blue said, but she let Jimi fold her arms around her and pull her into her ample bosom. She sighed shakily as Jimi rubbed her back and clucked to herself. Blue could not understand how this childish comfort was at once soothing and suffocating. She was both glad for it and wishing that she could be someplace with fewer threads tying her to every challenge or sadness in her life.

  “Blue, you know it’s not a bad thing that you want to leave Henrietta, right?” her mother asked from the tub. This was so precisely what Blue had been thinking about that she couldn’t tell if her mother had brought it up because her mother was a good psychic or merely because she knew her well.

  Blue shrugged against Jimi. “Pshaw.”

  “It’s not always running away,” Jimi said, her voice deep and rumbling through her chest to Blue’s ear. “To leave.”

  Calla added, “We’re not going to think you hate Fox Way.”

  “I don’t hate Fox Way at all.”

  Maura swatted Orla’s hand away; Orla was trying to braid Maura’s damp hair. “I know. Because we’re great. But the difference between a nice house and a nice prison is really small. We chose Fox Way. We made it, Calla and Persephone and I. But it’s only your origin story, not your final destination.”

  This wisdom of Maura’s made Blue quite cross for some reason.

  “Say something,” Orla said.

  Blue didn’t quite know how to say it; she didn’t know quite what it was. “It … just feels like such a waste. Falling in love with all of them.” All of them really meant all of them: 300 Fox Way, the boys, Jesse Dittley. For a sensible person, Blue thought that maybe she had a problem with love. In a dangerous voice, she added, “Don’t say ‘it’s good life experience.’ Do not.”

  “I’ve loved a lot of people,” Orla said. “I would say it’s good life experience. Anyway, I told you ages ago those guys were going to leave you behind.”

  “Orla,” snapped Calla, as Blue’s next breath was a little uneven. “It confounds me, sometimes, to imagine what you must tell your poor clients on the phone.”

  “Whatever,” said Orla.

  Maura shot Orla a dark look over her shoulder, and then said, “I wasn’t going to say good life experience. I was going to say that leaving helps, sometimes. And it’s not always a forever good-bye. There’s leaving and coming back.”

  Jimi rocked Blue. The toilet lid creaked.

  “I don’t think I can go to any of the colleges I want,” Blue said. “The counselor doesn’t think so.”

  “What do you want?” Maura asked. “Not out of college. Out of life.”

  Blue swallowed the truth once, because she was ready to move from crisis and crying to solutions and stability. Then she said the truth slowly and carefully, so that it would be manageable. “What I always wanted. To see the world. To make it better.”

  Maura also seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “And are you sure that college is the only way to do that?”

  This was the sort of impossible answer Blue’s guidance counselor would give her after looking at her financial and academic situation. Yes, she was sure. How else could she change the world for the better, without finding out first how to do it? How could she get a job that would pay her to be in Haiti or India or Slovakia if she didn’t go to college?

  Then she remembered that it was not her guidance counselor asking; it was her psychic mother.

  “What do I do?” Blue asked cannily. “What have you guys seen me doing?”

  “Traveling,” Maura replied. “Changing the world.”

  “Trees in your eyes,” Calla added, more gently than usual. “Stars in your heart.”

  “How?” Blue asked.

  Maura sighed. “Gansey’s offered to help you, hasn’t he?”

  It was a guess that didn’t require psychic ability, only a minimal grasp of Gansey’s personality. Blue angrily tried to get up; Jimi wouldn’t let her. “I’m not going to ride the Gansey charity train.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Calla said.

  “Like what?”

  “Bitter.” Maura considered, and then added, “I just want you to look at your future as a world where anything is possible.”

  Blue shot back, “Like Gansey not dying before April? Like me not killing my true love with a kiss? Any of those possibilities?”

  Her mother was quiet for a long minute, during which Blue realized that she was longing naively for her mother to tell her that both of those predictions could be wrong and that Gansey would be all right. But finally, her mother simply replied, “There’s going to be life after he dies. You have to think about what you’re going to do after.”

  Blue had been thinking about what she was going to do after, which was why she’d had a crisis in the first place. “I’m not going to kiss him, anyway, so that can’t be how he goes.”

  “I don’t believe in the concept of true love,” Orla said. “It’s a construct of a monogamous society. We’re animals. We make love in the bushes.”

  “Thanks for your contribution,” Calla said. “Let’s give Blue’s prediction a call and let it know.”

  “Do you love him?” Maura
asked curiously.

  “I’d rather not,” Blue replied.

  “He has lots of negative qualities I can help you hone in on,” her mother offered.

  “I’m already aware of them. Infinitely. It’s stupid, anyway. True love is a construct. Was Artemus your true love? Is Mr. Gray? Does that make the other one not true? Is there just one shot and then it’s over?”

  This last question was asked with the most flippancy of any of them, but only because it was the one that hurt the most. If Blue was nowhere near ready to take on Gansey’s death, she was certainly nowhere near ready to take on the idea of him being dead long enough for her to happily waltz into a relationship with someone she had not even met yet. She just wanted to keep being best friends with Gansey forever, and maybe one day also have carnal knowledge of him. This seemed like a very sensible desire, and Blue, as someone who had sought to be sensible her entire life, was feeling pretty damn put out that this small thing was being denied her.

  “Take my mom card,” Maura said. “Take my psychic card. I don’t know the answers to these questions. I wish I did.”

  “Poor baby,” Jimi murmured into Blue’s hair. “Mmm, I’m so glad you never got any taller.”

  “For crying out loud,” Blue said.

  Calla heaved herself to standing, grabbing for the shower rod to balance herself. The bathwater churned beneath her. She swore. Orla ducked her head as water drained from Calla’s blouse.

  Calla said, “Enough crying altogether. Let’s go make some pie.”

  Five hundred miles away, Laumonier smoked a cigarette in the main room of an old harbor ferry. The room was charmless and utilitarian — dirty glass windows set in raw metal, everything as cold as the black harbor and just as fishy smelling. Birthday decorations remained from a previous celebration, but age and dim lighting rendered them colorless and vaguely ominous as they rattled in a draft.

  Laumonier’s eyes were on the distant lights of the Boston skyline. But Laumonier’s mind was on Henrietta, Virginia.

  “First move?” Laumonier asked.

  “I don’t know if this is an action item,” Laumonier replied.

  “I would like some answers,” Laumonier said.

  The Laumonier triplets were mostly identical. There were slight differences — one was a hair shorter, for instance, and one had a noticeably broader jaw. But what individuality they had in appearance they had destroyed by a lifelong practice of only using their surname. An outsider would know he was not speaking to the same Laumonier that he had at a prior visit, but the brothers would have both referred to themselves by the same name, so he would have to treat them as the same person. There were not really Laumonier triplets. There was only Laumonier.

  Laumonier sounded dubious. “How do you suppose to get these answers?”

  “One of us goes over there,” Laumonier said, “and queries him.”

  Over there meant to the Back Bay home of their old rival Colin Greenmantle and queries meant doing something unpleasant to him in return for half a decade of wrongs. Laumonier had been in the magical artifact trade for as long as they’d been in Boston, and they’d had little competition until the preppy upstart Greenmantle had gotten into it. Sellers had gotten greedy. Artifacts had gotten expensive. Hired muscle had become necessary. Laumonier felt that both Colin Greenmantle and his wife, Piper, had watched far too many mob movies.

  Now, however, Colin had shown some weakness by retreating from his long-held territory of Henrietta. Alone. There was no sign of Piper.

  Laumonier wanted to know what this meant.

  “I’m not opposed to that,” said Laumonier, breathing a cloud of cigarette smoke into the close room. His insistence on smoking made it impossible for the other two to quit, an excuse all of them appreciated.

  “Well, I am,” Laumonier replied. “I don’t want to make a mess. And that mercenary of his is terrifying.”

  Laumonier tapped ash off his cigarette and glanced up at the streamers as if imagining setting them alight. “The word is that the Gray Man is no longer working for him. And we’re perfectly capable of discretion.”

  Laumonier shared name and goals, but not methodology. One of them leaned toward caution and one toward fire, leaving the last as peacekeeper and devil’s advocate.

  “Surely there is another way to find out about —” Laumonier began.

  “Don’t say that name,” the other two interrupted at once.

  Laumonier pursed his lips. It was a dramatic gesture, as all of the brothers had quite a lot going on in the mouth area, an effect that skewed handsome, sort of, on one of them and obscene, sort of, on another.

  “So we go over there to talk—” Laumonier started again.

  “Talk,” snorted Laumonier, playing with his cigarette lighter.

  “Stop that, please. It is like you are a schoolboy thug.” This Laumonier had retained his accent to use in situations just such as this. It added weight to his disdain.

  “The lawyer says I shouldn’t commit another misdemeanor for at least six months,” Laumonier said plaintively. He stubbed out his cigarette.

  Laumonier buzzed softly.

  Although it would have been unsettling for any of the brothers to randomly buzz, there was an additional creeping discomfort to the sound that immediately chilled the atmosphere.

  The other two regarded each other suspiciously — wary not of each other, but of everything that was not each other. They examined the buzzing brother for signs of medical infirmity and then for evidence of an ancient amulet stolen from a French tomb, a mysterious bracelet shadily acquired in Chile, an ominous belt buckle pilfered from Mongolia, or an inscrutable scarf crafted from a Peruvian gravecloth. Anything that might carry supernatural side effects.

  They found nothing, but the buzzing did not stop, so they methodically searched the room, running hands under chairs and along ledges, occasionally glancing at the other to be certain that there was only one buzzing Laumonier still. If it was malevolent, Greenmantle was the most likely candidate. They had other enemies, of course, but Greenmantle was the closest to home. In all the ways.

  Laumonier found nothing of supernatural interest, only a cache of desiccated ladybugs.

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  Laumonier turned back to the buzzing brother, who had both stopped buzzing and dropped his cigarette. It glowed impotently on the pressed metal floor. He frowned off at the harbor in an introspective way somewhat opposed to his usual nature.

  “Was that him?” Laumonier asked.

  Laumonier frowned. “It was not his voice, was it?”

  The previously buzzing brother asked, “Can you hear me? I’m new to this.”

  It was certainly not his voice. And it was certainly not his facial expression. His eyebrows moved in a way that they had always been capable of, surely, but never been asked to. It made him look at once younger and more intense.

  Laumonier collectively felt a twinge of possible understanding.

  “Who is this?” demanded Laumonier.

  “It’s Piper.”

  It was a name that had an immediate and visceral effect on Laumonier: rage, betrayal, shock, and then back around to rage and betrayal. Piper Greenmantle. Colin’s wife. Her name had not been breathed in conversation before, and yet here she was busting into it anyway.

  Laumonier said, “Piper! How is it Piper? Get out of him.”

  “Oh, is that how this works?” Piper asked with curiosity. “Is it creepy? A possession-phone?”

  “It is you,” said Laumonier wonderingly.

  “Hi, Dad,” Piper said.

  Although it had been years, Laumonier still knew his daughter’s mannerisms very well.

  Laumonier said, “I cannot believe it. What do you want? How is your p.o.s. husband these days?”

  “He’s in Boston without me,” Piper replied. “Probably.”

  “I was just asking to see what you would say,” Laumonier replied. “I already knew that.”

  Piper said, “
You were right; I was wrong. I don’t want to fight anymore.”

  The Laumonier who had stubbed his cigarette now dabbed his eye in a sentimental way.

  The Laumonier who never stopped smoking snapped, “Ten years and now you ‘don’t want to fight anymore’?”

  “Life’s short. I’d like to go into business with you.”

  “Let me make sure I have my facts straight. You nearly got us sent to jail last year. Your husband killed a supplier for some artifact that doesn’t exist. You are possessing us. And you want to do business with us? That does not sound like Colin Greenmantle’s pretty little wife.”

  “No, it sure doesn’t. That’s why I’m calling. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

  “What sort of tree is this leaf attached to?” Laumonier asked suspiciously.

  “A nice one with supernatural roots,” Piper replied. “I’ve got something amazing down here. Huge. Buy of a lifetime. Of a century. I need you to pull out the stops, get everyone down here to bid for it. It’s gonna be big.”

  Laumonier looked hopeful. “We —”

  The only Laumonier still actively smoking interrupted, “After August? I don’t think you can expect us to just swing in to business. Call me crazy, my love, but I don’t trust you.”

  “You’re just going to have to take my word on it.”

  “That’s the least valuable thing you could offer,” Laumonier replied coolly. He handed his cigarette to his other brother so that he could dig under his coat and sweater collar to his rosary beads. “You’ve devalued that quite a bit in the last ten years.”

  “You are the worst father,” Piper snapped.

  “In fairness, you are the worst daughter.”

  He pressed the rosary against the previously buzzing brother’s head. Immediately, he spat blood and fell to his knees, his own expression resolving in his face once more.

  “That,” Laumonier said, “was what I suspected.”

  “I can’t believe you hung up on her before I could say good-bye,” Laumonier replied, wounded.

  “I think I was just possessed,” Laumonier said. “Did you guys see anything?”