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“You’re a very sick man,” the priest told the Gray Man. “I can find you help. ”
“I think,” the Gray Man said, lowering the priest onto a case of new missals, “I’ve found some. ”
He felt it when every single machine in the Champagne Blight illuminated like a Christmas tree, flashing and wailing and surging for all that they were worth. When it first began, his first thought was: Yes. Yes, that is exactly what it feels like.
And then he remembered why he was there.
The lights flared, the meters surged, the alerts screamed.
This was not a test.
Slowly, inexorably, the readings drew him out of town, rewarding him with ever stronger results. The Gray Man felt it even now, in the inevitability of this treasure hunt. Every so often the machines would sag, the readings flickering. And then, just as he began to suspect the abnormality had vanished for good, leaving him adrift, the meters would explode in light and sound again, even stronger than before.
This was not a test.
He was finding the Greywaren today.
He could feel it.
40
At eleven the next morning, Gansey received a series of texts from Ronan. The first was merely a photograph. It was a close-up of a part of Ronan’s anatomy that he hadn’t seen before. An Irish flag was twist-tied to it. It was not the most grotesque display of nationalism Gansey had ever seen, but it was close.
Gansey received the text while in the middle of his mother’s tea party. Drugged by the poor sleep on the sofa, numbed by the demure socialization occurring all around him, and haunted by the fight with Adam, he didn’t immediately process the possible implications of such a photograph. Understanding was only beginning to prickle when a second text came in.
before you hear it from anyone else, i wrecked the pig
Gansey was suddenly very awake.
but don’t worry man i got it under control say hi to your mom for me In most ways, the timing was lucky. Because Gansey had
inherited from his mother an extreme distaste of showing the uglier emotions in public (“Everyone’s face is a mirror, Dick — endeavor to make them reflect a smile”), receiving the news while surrounded by an audience of fine china and laughing ladies in their fifties bought him time to figure out how to react.
“Is everything all right?” asked the woman across from him. Gansey blinked at her. “Oh, yes, thank you. ”
There were no circumstances under which he would’ve
answered that question in any other way. Possibly if he’d discovered a family member had died. Possibly if one of his limbs had been separated from his body.
Possibly.
As he accepted a tray of cucumber sandwiches from the woman on his right to pass to the woman on his left, he wondered if Adam had woken up yet. He suspected Adam wouldn’t come down, even if he was awake.
His mind replayed the image of Adam casting the figurines to the floor.
“These sandwiches are delightful,” said the woman on his right to the woman on his left. Or possibly to him.
“They’re from Clarissa’s,” Gansey said automatically. “The cucumbers are local. ”
Ronan took my car.
At that moment, Gansey’s memory of Ronan and his filthy smile didn’t look very different from Joseph Kavinsky and his matching dirty grin. Gansey had to remind himself that they had very important differences. Ronan was broken, Ronan was fixable, Ronan had a soul.
“I’m so pleased with the movement to keep food local,” said the woman on his right, possibly to the woman on his left. Or maybe to him.
Ronan had charm. It was just buried deep.
Ver y deep.
“It tastes fresher,” said the woman on his left.
The thing was, Gansey had known what happened on Friday nights when Ronan’s BMW had come back smelling of burning brakes and a clutch under duress. And he’d taken the Camaro keys with him when he left for a reason. So this wasn’t a surprise.
“Really, the advantages are in the reduced fuel and transportation costs,” Gansey said, “that are passed on to the consumer. And to the environment. ”
But what did he mean wrecked?
Gansey’s mind was on overload. He could feel his synapses murdering one another.
“One wonders about those trucking jobs that are lost, though,” said the woman on the right. “Pass the sugar, would you?”
Say hi to your mom?
“I sort of feel the local infrastructure needed to process and sell the produce will end up with a null sum job loss,” Gansey said. “The biggest challenge will be adjusting people’s expectations to the seasonality of produce they’ve come to expect year-round. ”
Wrecked.
“You’re probably right,” said the woman on his left. “Though I do love having peaches in winter. I’ll take the sugar, too, if you would?”
He passed a bowl of lumpy brown sugar cubes from the woman on his right to the woman on his left. Across the table, Helen was animatedly gesturing to a creamer shaped like a genie’s lamp. She looked fresh as a newscaster.
Glancing up, she caught Gansey’s eye, and then she tapped the corners of her mouth with her napkin, said something to her conversation partner, and stood up. She pointed at Gansey and gestured toward the door to the kitchen.
Gansey excused himself and joined her in the kitchen. It was the only part of the house that hadn’t been renovated in the last two decades, and it was always dark and vaguely scented by onions. Gansey stopped by the espresso machine. He had an immediate, distant memory of his glamorous mother placing a frothing pitcher’s thermometer under his tongue to check for fever. Time felt irrelevant.
The door swung shut behind Helen.
“What?” he asked in a low voice.
“You looked like you spent your last joy bill. ”
He hissed, “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. I was just trying it out. ”
“Well, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. And anyway, I’ve got plenty of joy bills. Loads. ”
Helen said, “What’s happening there on your phone?”
“A very small joy debit. ”
His older sister’s smile shone brightly. “You see, it does work. Now, did you or did you not need to get out of that room?”
Gansey inclined his head in slight acknowledgment. Gansey siblings knew each other well.
“You’re so welcome,” Helen said. “Let me know if you need me to write a joy check. ”
“I really don’t think it works. ”
“Oh, I think it has promise,” she replied. “Now, if you excuse me, I must get back to Ms. Capelli. We’re talking about space adaptation syndrome and the Coriolis effect. I just wanted you to know what you’re missing. ”
“Missing is a strong term. ”
“Yes. Yes, it is. ”
She pushed through the swinging door. Gansey stood in the dim, root-vegetable-scented kitchen until it had stopped swinging. Then he called Ronan’s number.
“Dick,” Kavinsky said. “Gansey. ”
Pulling the phone back from his head, Gansey confirmed he had actually dialed the correct number. The screen read RONAN LYNCH. He couldn’t quite understand how Ronan’s phone had ended up in Kavinsky’s hands, but stranger things had happened. At least now the text messages made sense.
“Dick-Three,” Kavinsky said. “You there?”
“Joseph,” Gansey said pleasantly.
“Funny I should hear from you. Saw your car running around last night. It’s got half a face now. Poor bastard. ”
Gansey closed his eyes and let out a whisper of a sigh.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Kavinsky said. “Come again? I know, I know — that’s what Lynch says. ”
Gansey set his teeth in a very straight line. Gansey’s father, Richard Campbell Gansey II, had also gone to a boarding school, the now defunct Rochester Hal
l. His father, collector of things, collector of words, collector of money, offered tantalizing stories. In them, Gansey caught glimpses of a utopian community of peers intent on learning, keen with the pursuit of wisdom. This was a school that didn’t just teach history — no, it wore the past like a comfortable jacket, beloved for all of its frayed ends. Gansey II described students — comrades, really — forming bonds of brotherhood that would last for the rest of their lives. It was C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, Tolkien and his Kolbítar, Glendower and his poet Iolo Goch, Arthur and his knights. It was a community of scholars just outside of adolescence, a sort of Marvel comic where every hero represented a different arm of the humanities.
It was not toilet-papered trees and whispered bribes, frontlawn hacky sack and faculty affairs, gifted vodka and stolen cars.
It was not Aglionby Academy.
Sometimes, the difference between that utopia and the reality exhausted Gansey.
“All right, now,” Gansey said. “This was great. You giving this phone back to Ronan at any point?”
There was silence. It was a slick sort of silence, the sort that would make bystanders turn their head to note it, same as a loud laugh.
Gansey didn’t quite care for it.
“He’s going to have to try harder,” Kavinsky said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what Lynch says, too. ”
Gansey could hear the crooked smile in Kavinsky’s voice. He asked, “Do you ever think your humor veers too much on the side of prurient?”
“Man, don’t SAT at me. Here’s what’s up. The Ronan you know is no more. He’s having a coming of age moment. A — a — bildungsroman. Goddamn me! SAT that, Dick-dick-dick. ”
“Kavinsky,” Gansey said evenly. “Where’s Ronan?”
“Right here. WAKE UP, FUCKWEASEL, IT’S YOUR GIRLFRIEND!” Kavinsky said. “Sorry. He’s totally pissed. Can I take a message?”
Gansey had to take a very long minute to compose himself. He discovered, on the other side of the minute, that he was still too angry to speak.
“Dickie. You still there?”
“I’m here. What do you want?”
Kavinsky said, “Same thing I always want. To be entertained. ”
The phone went dead.
As Gansey stood there, he suddenly recalled a story about Glendower, one that had always bothered him. Glendower was a legend in most ways. He’d risen in rebellion against the English when every other medieval man his age was giving old age and death the stink eye. He’d united the people, defeated impossible odds, and ridden across Wales on rumors of his magical powers. A lawyer, a soldier, a father. A mystical giant who’d left a permanent footprint.
But this story — some of the Welsh weren’t convinced that throwing sticks at their English neighbors would improve Wales’s dire straits. In particular, one of Glendower’s cousins, a man named Hywel, thought Glendower was out of his lawyerly mind. In the way of most families, he expressed his difference of opinion by raising a small army. This might have put off most princes, but not Glendower. He was a lawyer and — like Gansey — a believer in the power of words. He arranged to meet Hywel alone in a deer park to talk it all over.
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