When Blue arrived home in her soaking-wet clothing, Noah was kneeling in the tiny, shaded front yard of 300 Fox Way. Orla breezed right inside without saying hello to him. As a psychic, she probably saw him, but as Orla, she didn’t care. Blue stopped, though. She was pleased he was there. She rearranged the Camaro wheel under her arm and wiped damp hair off her forehead.
“Hey, Noah.”
He was too busy being ghostly to attend to her, however.
Currently, he was engaged in one of his creepiest activities: reenacting his own death. He glanced around the tiny yard as if appraising the forest glen containing only himself and his friend Barrington Whelk. Then he let out a terrible, mangled cry as he was struck from behind by an invisible skateboard. He made no sound when he was hit again, but his body jerked convincingly. Blue tried not to look as he bucked a few more times before falling to the ground. His head jerked; his legs bicycled.
Blue took a deep, uneven breath. Though she had seen him do it four or five times now, it was always unsettling. Eleven minutes. That was how long the entire homicidal portrait lasted: one boy’s life destroyed in less time than it took to cook a hamburger. The last six minutes, the ones that took place after Noah had first fallen but before he actually died, were excruciating. Blue considered herself a fairly steadfast, sensible girl, but no matter how many times she heard his torn-up breath seizing in his throat, she felt a little teary.
Between the twisted roots of the front yard, Noah’s body jerked and stilled, finally dead. Again.
Gently, she asked, “Noah?”
He was on the ground and then, just like that, he was standing beside her. It was like a dream, where the middle part was cut out, the getting from point A to point B.
It was another of his creepy things.
“Blue!” he said, and patted her damp hair.
She hugged him tightly; he was chilly against her damp clothing. She was always so worried he wouldn’t snap out of it at the end.
“Why do you do that?” she demanded.
Noah had reverted to his normal, safe self. The only evidence of his true nature was the ever-present smudge on his cheek where the bone had been smashed in. Otherwise he was once again slouched, mild, and eternally dressed in his Aglionby uniform.
He looked vaguely bewildered and pleased to have a girl clinging to him. “That?”
“What you did. Just now.”
He shrugged, formless and amiable. “I wasn’t here.”
But you were, Noah, she thought. But whatever part of Noah that still existed to pour thoughts and memories into this form mercifully disappeared for the eleven minutes of his death. She wasn’t sure if his amnesia over the whole thing made it more or less creepy.
“Ah, Noah.”
He draped an arm over her shoulders, too cold and weird himself to notice that she was also damp and cold. They wandered to the door like that, a pretzel of dead boy and not-psychic girl.
Of course, he wouldn’t come in. Blue suspected he couldn’t. Ghosts and psychics competed for the same power source, and in an energy showdown between Noah and Calla, there was no doubt in Blue’s mind who would come out the victor. She would have asked Noah to confirm this, but he was notoriously disinterested in the details of his afterlife. (Once, Gansey had tersely asked, “Don’t you care how it is that you’re still here?” and Noah had answered with remarkable acumen, “Do you care how your kidneys work?”) “You aren’t going to D.C., are you?” Noah asked with some anxiety.
“Nope.” She’d meant to just say it with no inflection whatsoever, but in truth, she felt curiously bereft at the idea of Gansey and Adam both leaving town. She felt, actually, exactly like Noah sounded.
Daringly, Noah offered, “I’ll let you into Monmouth.”
Blue blushed immediately. One of her most hidden and persistent fantasies was an impossible one: living in Monmouth. She’d never really be one of the group, she thought, as long as she was living here at 300 Fox Way. She’d never really be one of them as long as she wasn’t an Aglionby student. Which meant she’d never really be one of them as long as she was a girl. The unfairness of it, the wanting, kept her up some nights. She couldn’t believe Noah had guessed her desire so accurately. To cover her embarrassment, she huffed, “And I’d hang out all day with you and Ronan?”
Gleefully, Noah said, “There’s a pool table now! I’m the worst at pool ever! It’s wonderful.” His arm tightened around her shoulders. “D’oh. Incoming.”
A man headed up the sidewalk toward them. He was carefully put together and overwhelmingly … gray. At the same time that Blue appraised this Gray Man, she got the idea that she was also being appraised.
At the end of the moment, they both eyed each other with a sort of mutual decision to not underestimate the other.
“Hello,” he said cordially. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
First of all, the way he phrased it meant that he could see Noah, which not everyone could. Second of all, he was polite in a way that was unlike anything Blue had encountered before. Gansey was polite in a way that squashed the other party smaller. Adam was polite to reassure. And this man was polite in a keen, questioning sort of way. He was polite like tentacles were polite, testing the surface carefully, checking to see how it reacted to his presence.
He was, Blue decided suddenly, very clever. Nothing to be trifled with.
She gestured to her soaked clothing. “This is performance art. We’re reenacting ‘The Little Mermaid.’ Not the Disney version.”
This was her own little tentacle test.
The Gray Man smiled agreeably. “Is he the prince? Do you stab him or do you turn into foam at the end?”
“Foam, of course,” said Blue, enormously gratified.
“I always thought she should have stabbed him,” he mused. “I’m looking for Maura.”
“Ah.” Now it all made sense. This was Mr. Gray. She’d heard his name whispered between Maura, Calla, and Persephone over the past few days. Especially between Calla and Persephone. “You’re the hit man.”
Mr. Gray had the good grace to look efficiently startled. “Oh. And you’re the daughter. Blue.”
“The one and only.” Blue fixed a penetrating gaze on him. “So, do you have a favorite weapon?”
Without missing a beat, he replied, “Opportunity.”
Now she raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Come on. Noah, I’ll be back out in a sec.”
She led the Gray Man inside. As always, new visitors made her over-aware of the house’s unorthodox appearance. It was two houses knitted together, and neither structure had been a palace to begin with. Narrow hallways leaned eagerly toward one another. A stray toilet gurgled constantly. The wood floors were as buckled as the sidewalk out front, as if roots threatened to come between the boards. Some of the walls were painted in vivid purples and blues, and some of them maintained wallpaper from decades before. Faded black-and-white photographs hung beside Klimt prints and old metal scissors. The entire decor was a victim of too much thrift-store shopping and too many strong personalities.
Oddly enough, the Gray Man — a serene spot of neutral color in the middle of the riot — didn’t look out of place. Blue watched him watching his surroundings as they made their way into the bowels of the house. He didn’t seem like the sort of person one could sneak up on.
Again, she thought, Don’t underestimate him.
“Oh!” croaked Jimi. She squeezed her ample mass past the Gray Man. “I’ll get Maura!”
As Blue maneuvered him toward the kitchen, she asked, “What, precisely, is your intention with my mother?”
“That seems very frank,” Mr. Gray said.