The Gray Man was amused. “The offer stands until I go.”
The phone rang. Upstairs, they heard the sound of Orla scrambling desperately for it. With a pleasant smile, Maura snatched the downstairs extension and listened for a moment.
“What an excellent idea. It will be harder to trace,” Maura told the phone. To the table, she said, “Gansey has a Mitsubishi that Mr. Gray can take instead of his rental. Oh, he says it was actually Ronan’s idea.”
The gesture warmed the Gray Man considerably. The reality of his escape was far more difficult than he’d admitted to any of them. There was a car to worry about, money for food, money for gas. He had left a dirty pot in the sink at his home back in Massachusetts, and he would think about it forever.
It would help if he didn’t have to steal the Champagne Disappointment. He was gifted at car theft, but he longed for simplicity.
To the phone, Maura said: “No — no, Adam’s not here. He’s with Persephone, I believe. I’m sure he’s all right. Would you like to talk to Blue? No —?”
Blue’s head ducked to her plate. She stabbed another piece of broccoli.
Maura hung up the phone. She looked narrowly at Blue. “Did you two fight again?”
Blue muttered, “Yep. Definitely.”
“I can have a talk with him as well,” the Gray Man offered.
“I’m good,” she replied. “But thanks. My mother didn’t raise me to be violent.”
“Neither,” observed the Gray Man, “did mine.”
He ate his broccoli and butter and bacon, and Maura ate her butter, and Calla ate her bacon.
It was another frenzied dance to clean up after dinner and fight for showers and television and who got which chair. Maura gently took the Gray Man’s hand and led him to the backyard instead. Under the black, spreading branches of the beech tree, they kissed until the mosquitos became relentless and the rain began to fall.
Later, as they lay in her bed, his phone buzzed a call, and this time it went to voicemail. Somehow, he always knew it would end this way.
“Hey, Dean,” said his brother. His voice was slow, easy, patient. The Allen brothers were alike, that way. “Henrietta is a pretty little place, isn’t it?”
Hurry.”
Persephone and Adam didn’t speak much through that night, or as the pugilistic sun rose the next morning, and when they did, it was usually that word: hurry. They had already driven to a dozen other locations to repair the ley line, some as far as two hours away, and now they pushed their way back into Henrietta.
Now, Adam knelt beside a diseased rose in another backyard. His already grubby hands pressed against the dirt, digging to find the stone he knew was hidden somewhere beneath. Persephone, standing watch, glanced at the rambler on the other side of the yard.
“Hurry,” she said once more. Fourth of July was already hot and unforgiving. A bank of clouds moved slowly behind the mountains, and already Adam knew how the day would go: The heat would build and build, until it snapped in another cacophonous summer thunderstorm.
Lightning.
Adam’s fingers found the stone. It was the same at every fray in the line: a stone or a body of water that confused and diffused the ley line’s direction. Sometimes Adam had only to turn a stone to feel the ley line immediately snap into place, clean as a light switch. Other times, though, he had to experiment by moving more stones into the area, or removing a stone entirely, or digging a trench to redirect a stream. Sometimes neither he nor Persephone could understand what they needed to do, and then they would draw out one or two of the tarot cards. Persephone helped him see what the cards were trying to say. Three of wands: build a bridge across the stream with these three stones. Seven of swords: Just dig out the biggest of the stones and put it in the tri-colored car.
Using the tarot cards was like when he had begun learning Latin. He danced ever closer to that moment when he would understand the sentences without having to translate each word.
He was exhausted and awake, euphoric and anxious.
Hurry.
What was it that made these stones special? He didn’t know. Not yet. Somehow, they were like the rocks at Stonehenge and Castlerigg. Something about them conducted the ley line’s force and dragged the energy out of line.
“Adam,” Persephone said again. There was no sign of a car, but she frowned at the road. Her fingers were as dirty as his; her delicate gray frock was stained. She looked like a doll dug from a landfill. “Hurry.”
This stone was larger than he expected. Twelve inches across, maybe, and who knew how deep. There was no way to get to it without digging up the rose. Hurriedly, he snatched a spade lying beside him. He spiked the dirt, twisted out the deformed rose, tossed it aside. His palms sweated.
“Sorry,” Persephone suggested.
“Pardon?”
She murmured, “You should say sorry when you kill something.”
It took him a moment to realize she meant the rose. “It was dying anyway.”
“Dying and dead are different words.”
Shamed, Adam muttered an apology before sticking the tip of the spade beneath the stone. It came free. Persephone turned a questioning look to him.
“We take this one,” he said immediately. She nodded. It went in the backseat with the others.
They had only just headed back down the street when another car pulled into the driveway they’d just abandoned.
Close.
Multiple stones were stacked in the tri-colored car now, but this latest one pressed into Adam’s consciousness more than the others. It would be useful, with the lightning, he thought. For … something. For concentrating the ley line into Cabeswater. For … making a gate.
Hurry.
“Why now?” he asked her. “Why are all these parts frayed?”
She didn’t look up from her task, which was laying cards on the dashboard. The smudgy, inked art looked like thoughts instead of images. “It’s not just fraying now. It’s only that it’s more obvious with the greater current running through it. Like a wire. In the past, priestesses would’ve taken care of the line. Maintained it. Just like we’re doing now.”
“Like Stonehenge,” he said.
“That’s a very large and cliché example, yes,” she answered softly. She glanced up at the sky. The clouds at the horizon had gotten just a little closer since he’d last looked; they were still white, but they were beginning to pile on top of one another.
“I wonder,” he said, more to himself than to her, “what it would be like if all the ley lines were repaired.”
She replied, “I expect that would be a very different world with very different priorities.”
“Bad?” he asked. “A bad world?”
She looked at him.
“Different isn’t bad, right?” he asked.
Persephone turned back to her cards. Swick. She turned over a second one.
I should call work, Adam thought. He was supposed to come in tonight. He hadn’t called in sick before. I should call Gansey.
But there was no time. They had so many more places to go before — before — Hurry.
As they pulled onto the interstate, Adam’s attention was snagged by a white Mitsubishi screaming in the opposite direction on the other side of the median. Kavinsky.
But was that Kavinsky behind the wheel? Adam craned his head to look in the mirror, but the other car was already a diminishing speck on the horizon.
Persephone turned over a card. The Devil.
All of a sudden, Adam was quite certain of why they were hurrying. He’d known since the night before that he needed to hone the line’s energy in order for Cabeswater to reappear. An important task, certainly, but not life-or-death.
But now, he knew all at once what he was hurrying for. They were restoring the ley line for Cabeswater. They were restoring it now because Ronan was going to need it. Tonight.
Hurry.