“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 for ever, 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 harbour ferry. The room was charmless and utilitarian – dirty glass windows set in raw metal, everything as cold as the black harbour and just as fishy smelling. Birthday decorations remained from a previous celebration, but age and dim lighting rendered them colourless and vaguely ominous as they rattled in a draught.
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 artefact trade for as long as they’d been in Boston, and they’d had little competition until the preppy upstart Greenmantle had got into it. Sellers had got greedy. Artefacts had got 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 towards caution and one towards 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.