Henry was wearing trousers by the time Blue and Gansey met up with him and the Gray Man in the Fresh Eagle. The grocery store was almost completely empty and had the glittering timelessness that such places began to take on after a certain hour of night. Overhead, a song played about getting out of someone’s dreams and into their car. There was only one cashier, and she didn’t look up as they walked through the automatic doors. They found Henry standing in the cereal aisle looking at his phone, while Mr Gray stood at the end of the aisle convincingly reading the back of a tin of steel cut oats. Neither drew attention. Mr Gray blended in because his profession had taught him to blend in. Henry did not blend in – he reeked of money from his snazzy jacket and Madonna shirt down to his black trainers – but he nonetheless failed to stand out in any remarkable way: Henrietta was no stranger to his sort of youthful Aglionby money.
Henry had been holding a box of cereal of the sort that was bad for you but good for marshmallows, but he put it back on the shelf when he spotted them. He seemed far more jittery than he had been at the toga party. Probably, Blue mused, a side effect of being held at gunpoint earlier.
“The question I’m asking myself,” Gansey said, “is why I’m in the Fresh-Fresh-Eagle at eleven P.M.”
“The question I was asking myself,” Henry replied, “was why I was in a thug’s car at I-don’t-even-know P.M. Sargent, tell me you are not part of this sordid ring of thieves.”
Blue, hands in the pockets of her hoodie, shrugged apologetically and gestured with her chin to the Gray Man. “He’s sort of dating my mom.”
“What a tangled web we weave,” Gansey said in an electric, jagged sort of way. He was keyed up after the night at the Barns, and Henry’s presence only encouraged it. “This wasn’t the next step I wanted to take in our friendship, though. Mr Gray?”
He had to repeat Mr Gray’s name, because it turned out that the Gray Man had not been pretending to look at the oatmeal tin; he had actually been reading the back of it.
He joined them. He and Blue exchanged a side hug and then he turned her by her shoulders to examine the stitches above her eyebrow. “Those are neatly done.”
“Are they?”
“You probably won’t have a scar.”
“Damn,” Blue said.
Gansey asked him, “Was the Fresh Eagle your idea or Henry’s?”
Mr Gray replied, “I thought it might be comforting. It’s well-lit, on camera, but not audio-recorded. Safe and secure.”
Blue had not thought about the Fresh Eagle that way before.
Mr Gray added cordially, “I am sorry about the fright.”
Henry had been watching this entire exchange closely. “You were doing your job. I was doing my job.”
What a truth this was. While Blue had grown up learning the principles of internal energy and getting told bedtime stories, Henry Cheng had grown up contemplating how far he would go to protect his mother’s secrets under duress. The idea that they had been any part of this made her feel so uncomfortable that she said, “Let’s stop doing jobs now and start doing solutions. Can we talk about who’s coming here and why? Wasn’t that the whole point of this exchange? Someone’s coming somewhere to get something, and everybody’s freaked out?”
Henry said, “You’re a lady of action. I see why R. Gansey added you to his cabinet. Walk with me, President.”
They walked with him. They walked through the cereal aisle, the baking aisle and the canned goods aisle. As they did, Henry described what he had been told about the upcoming sale with all the enthusiasm of a good student delivering a presentation on a natural disaster. The meeting of artefact-selling denizens was to happen the day after the Aglionby fund-raiser, the better to disguise the influx of strange cars and people into Henrietta. An unknown number of parties would descend for a viewing of the object for sale – a magical entity – so that these potential buyers could confirm for themselves the otherworldliness of the product. Then an auction would follow – payment and the exchange of the item, as always, to take place in a separate location out of the view of prying eyes; no one wanted to have their proverbial wallet lifted by a fellow buyer. Further pieces might be available for sale; inquire within.
“A magical entity?” Blue and Gansey echoed at the same time that the Gray Man said, “Further pieces?”
“Magical entity. That was all the description was. It is meant to be a big secret. Worth the trip! They say.” Henry traced a smiley face on the exterior of a box of microwave macaroni and cheese. The logo was a tiny bear with a lot of teeth; it was hard to tell if it was smiling or grimacing. “I have been told to keep myself busy and to not accept candy from any strange men.”