The Dream Thieves (23 page)

“Sometimes I hate you,” Blue said. “And
Orla
, of all people!”

This was because Gansey had also rented a boat, a trailer, and a truck to pull it with, and then asked Blue’s older cousin Orla to accompany them on their latest trip. The rental truck required a driver over twenty-one, and the mission, according to Gansey, required a psychic. Orla fit both purposes and was more than willing. She had arrived at Monmouth dressed for work: bell-bottoms, platform sandals, and an orange bikini top. There were acres of bare skin between the bell-bottoms and the bikini top. Her bare stomach was so clearly an invitation for admiration that Gansey could hear the dismissive voice of his father in his ear.
Girls these days
. But Gansey had seen photos of girls in his father’s days, and they didn’t look that different to him.

He exchanged a glance with Adam, because it had to be done, and of course Blue intercepted it. Her eyes narrowed. She wore two shredded tank tops and a pair of bleached cargo pants. In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job.

He was in a terrible mood.

Somewhere across Henrietta, something crackled explosively. It was either a transformer falling prey to the electric whims of the ley line or Joseph Kavinsky having premature fun with one of his infamous Fourth of July explosives. Either way, it was a good day to get out of town.

“We should get moving,” Gansey ordered. “It’s only going to get hotter.”

Just a few dozen yards away, the Gray Man sat in the Champagne Monster on Monmouth Avenue, paging through a history book and listening to
Muswell Hillbillies
while the air-conditioning played across his skin. Really, he should’ve been reading up on Welsh history — his cursory research on the Lynch brothers revealed that one of the boys they ran with was obsessed with it — but instead he indulged himself by trying his hand at a new translation of “Bede’s Death Song.” It was like an archaic crossword puzzle. When the text said
Fore ðæm nedfere nænig wiorðe
, would it be truer to the original intent of the writer to translate it as “Before the fated journey there” or “Facing the path to Death”? Pleasurable trials!

The Gray Man looked up as a boy emerged from Monmouth Manufacturing. The overgrown lot was already a mess of teens and rental vehicles and boats; they were clearly getting ready to go somewhere. The boy who had just exited was the square, showy one who looked like he was about to fall into the Senate — Richard Gansey. The third. That meant that somewhere there were at least two more Richard Ganseys. He didn’t notice the Gray Man’s rental car parallel parked in the shadows. Nor did he notice the white Mitsubishi parked just down the road. The Gray Man wasn’t the only one waiting for the Monmouth Manufacturing building to be vacated.

A fellow academic had once asked the Gray Man: “Why Anglo-Saxon history?” At the time it had struck the Gray Man as a foolish and unanswerable question. The things that drew him to that time period were surely unconscious and many-headed, diffused through his blood from a lifetime of influences. One might as easily ask him why he preferred to wear gray, why he disliked gravy of all sorts, why he loved the seventies, why he was so fascinated by brothers when he couldn’t seem to succeed at being one himself. He’d told the academic that guns had made history boring, which he knew was a lie even as he said it, and then he’d extricated himself from the conversation. Of course he thought of the true answer later, but it was too late then.

It was this: Alfred the Great. Alfred became king during one of the armpits of English history. There was no England, really, not back then. Just small kingdoms with bad teeth and abbreviated tempers. Life was, as the old saying went, nasty, brutish, short. When the Vikings came tearing onto the island, the kingdoms didn’t stand a chance. But Alfred stepped in to unite them. He made them a brotherhood, pushed out the Vikings. He’d promoted literacy and the translation of important books. Encouraged the poets and the artists and writers. He’d ushered in a renaissance before the Italians had ever considered the concept.

He was one man, but he’d changed Anglo-Saxon England forever. He imposed order and honor, and under that crushed-down grass of principle, the flower of poetry and civility had burst through.

What a hero
, the Gray Man thought.
Another Arthur.

His attention snapped up as Ronan Lynch stepped out of the old factory. He was clearly related to Declan: same nose, same dark eyebrows, same phenomenal teeth. But there was a carefully cultivated sense of danger to this Lynch brother. This was not a rattlesnake hidden in the grass, but a deadly coral snake striped with warning colors. Everything about him was a warning: If this snake bit you, you had no one to blame but yourself.

Ronan opened the driver’s side door of the charcoal BMW hard enough that the car shook, then he threw himself in hard enough that the car kept shaking, and then he slammed the door hard enough that the car shook yet more. And then he left with enough speed to make the tires squeal.

“Hm,” said the Gray Man, already preferring this Lynch brother to the last.

The rental truck pulled out with rather more care than the BMW had and headed down the street in the same direction. Then, although the lot was empty, the Gray Man waited. Sure enough, the white Mitsubishi he’d spotted before pulled in, the bass from its stereo slowly liquefying the pavement beneath it. A kid climbed out, carrying a plastic baggie full of something like business cards. He was the sort the Gray Man preferred to steer clear of; he hummed with a restless, unpredictable energy. The Gray Man didn’t mind dangerous people, but he preferred sober dangerous people. He watched the kid enter the factory and return with only an empty bag. The Mitsubishi tore off, tires squalling.

Now the Gray Man turned off the Kinks, walked across the street, and climbed the stairs to the second-floor apartment. On the landing, he discovered the contents of Mitsubishi Boy’s bag: a pile of identical Virginia driver’s licenses. Each featured a sullen photograph of Ronan Lynch beside a birth date that would’ve had him a few months away from celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday. Aside from the clearly facetious birth date, they were very good forgeries. The Gray Man held one up to the light coming through the broken window. Its maker had done a tidy job of replicating the most difficult part, the hologram. The Gray Man was impressed.

He left the licenses lying outside the door and broke into Monmouth Manufacturing. He was careful about it. One could easily break a lock. One could not easily unbreak it. As he picked the lock, he dialed his phone and propped it on his shoulder. It only took a moment for someone to pick up.

“Oh, it’s you,” Maura Sargent said. “King of swords.”

“And it’s you. The sword in my spine. I seem to have lost my wallet somewhere.” The Gray Man let the compromised door fall open. A smell of musty paper and mint rolled around him. Dust motes played over a thousand books; this wasn’t quite what he’d expected. “When you were vacuuming under Calla, did you happen to see anything?”

“Vacuuming!” Maura said. “I’ll look. Oh. Look at that. There
is
a wallet in the couch. I imagine you’ll want to pick it up. How’s work?”

“I’d love to chat about it.” The Gray Man turned the lock behind himself. If the boys came back for something, he’d have a few seconds to make a plan of action. “Face-to-face.”

“You’re quite creepy.”

“I imagine you like creepy men.”

“Probably true,” Maura admitted. “Mysterious, possibly.
Creepy
is a very strong word.”

The Gray Man moved among the cluttered parts of Gansey’s quest. He pulled down a map rolled on the wall. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for yet.

“You could give me a reading.” He smiled faintly as he said it, paging through a book on medieval weaponry that he also owned.

Maura heard the smile in his voice. “I most certainly cannot. Neither of us want that, I can promise.”

“Are you sure? I could read you more poetry when you’re done. I know a lot of poetry.”

Maura clucked. “That’s Calla’s thing.”

“And what is your thing?” The Gray Man poked at a stack of books on the Welsh language. He was so very charmed by all of these things of Richard Gansey’s. He wasn’t sure, though, that Gansey understood just how well Glendower would be hidden. History was always buried deep, even when you know where to look. And it was hard to excavate it without damaging it. Brushes and cotton swabs, not chisels and pickaxes. Slow work. You had to like doing it.

“My thing,” Maura said, “is that I never tell my thing.”

But she was pleased; he could hear it in her voice. He liked her voice, too. She had just enough Henrietta accent so you knew where she came from.

“Do I get three tries to guess it?”

She didn’t immediately answer, and he didn’t press her. Heart wounds, he knew, made one think more slowly.

While he waited, the Gray Man stooped to study Gansey’s miniature model of Henrietta. Such affection in these tiny re-created streets! He straightened, careful not to harm any of the fond buildings, and headed for one of the two small bedrooms.

Ronan Lynch’s room looked as if a bar fight had taken place within its walls. Every surface was covered with expensive bits of expensive speakers and pointy bits of pointy cages and stylishly distressed bits of stylishly distressed jeans.

“Tell me this, then, Mr. Gray: Are you dangerous?”

“To some people.”

“I have a daughter.”

“Oh. I’m not dangerous to
her
.” The Gray Man picked up a box cutter from the desk and studied it. It had been used to wound something before being hastily cleaned.

Maura said, “I just don’t know if this is a good idea.”

“Don’t you?”

He inverted a cowboy boot that seemed out of place. He gave it a shake, but nothing fell out. He couldn’t say whether the Greywaren was anywhere in the building. Looking for something without a single description … he had to imagine what a loaf of bread looked like based upon the trail of crumbs it left behind.

“I just … tell me something true about you.”

“I own a pair of bell-bottoms,” he confessed. “And an orange disco shirt.”

“I don’t believe you. You must wear it, then, next time I see you.”

“I couldn’t,” the Gray Man said, amused. “I’d have to change my name to Mr. Orange.”

“Personally,” Maura replied, “I don’t think your sense of self should be flexible. Specially not if you’re going to go around as the king of swords.”

From the main room, the doorknob clicked audibly as the lock was tested. Someone was here. Someone without a key. He told Maura, “Hold that thought. I have to go.”

“To kill someone?”

“Preferably not,” the Gray Man said in a much lower voice. He ducked behind Ronan’s half-open door. “There are nearly always easier ways.”

“Mr. Gray —”

Someone kicked open the door. The Gray Man’s careful lock-work was rendered irrelevant.

“I will,” the Gray Man interrupted softly, “call you back.”

Standing in the shadows of Ronan Lynch’s room, he watched two men stalk in. One man wore an oversized polo shirt and the other wore a T-shirt printed with a missile. The two men took in the scope of the space with obvious annoyance, and then they spread out. The oversized polo shirt clung to the area near the windows to keep watch out in the parking lot, and the other crashed through the boys’ belongings. They kicked over stacks of books and pulled out desk drawers and upended the bare mattress.

At one point, Missile turned to Polo Shirt. Missile Shirt held a pair of sunglasses up for inspection. “
Gucci.
Rich bastards.”

He dropped the sunglasses before stepping on them. One of the fractured earpieces skittered across the wide floorboards. It made it all the way to the Gray Man’s feet, but only the Gray Man was watching it. He leaned and picked up the shard, pensively thumbing the sharp, broken end.

So these were the people Greenmantle had warned him about. Fellow seekers of the Greywaren, whatever it might be. The Gray Man picked his teeth with the broken edge of the sunglasses and then used his phone to take photos of the men for Greenmantle.

Something about them was making him lose patience. Perhaps it was that they still hadn’t noticed that he was watching them. Or perhaps it was the inefficiency of their process. Whatever it was, it solidified precisely as they began to trundle through the miniature model of Henrietta. He didn’t know what the Greywaren looked like, but he was certain that he could find it without kicking in the front of a miniature cardboard courthouse.

He swiftly moved out of Ronan’s room.

“Whoa!” said Missile from the middle of the destroyed Henrietta. “Don’t move.”

By way of reply, the Gray Man stuck the sharp end of the earpiece into Polo Shirt’s neck. They fought briefly. The Gray Man used a combination of physics and the edge of the window airconditioner to gently lay the other man down on the floor.