The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(35)

“Mr uh,” she said unpleasantly, eyes on the high-end cars.

“What?”

“I just forgot how Aglionby he was.”

“We really don’t have to go,” Gansey said. “I mean, I just need to stick my head in the door to tell him thanks, but that’s it.”

They both peered across the road at the house. Gansey thought about how strange it was that he felt uncomfortable doing this, a purposeless visit with a crowd he almost certainly knew in its entirety. He was about to admit this out loud when the front door opened. The act created a square of yellow, like a portal to another dimension, and Julius Caesar stepped out on to the wraparound porch. Julius waved a hand at the Camaro and shouted, “Yo, yo, Dick Gansey!”

Because it was not Julius Caesar; it was Henry in a toga.

Blue’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “Are you going to wear one of those?”

This was going to be terrible.

“Absolutely not,” Gansey told her. The toga looked more real than he would have liked now that he was looking right at it. “We’re not staying long.”

“Park around the corner and don’t hit any cats!” Henry shouted.

Blue circled the block, successfully avoided a white cat, and did a slow but credible job of parallel parking, even with Gansey watching closely, even with the power steering belt whining a protest.

Although Henry must have known it would not take them long, he had retreated back inside in order to be able to grandly answer the door when they rang the bell. Now he shut the door behind them, sealing them in a slightly over-warm pocket of garlic-and-rose-scented air. Gansey had expected to find students swinging from chandeliers and skating on alcohol, and although he had not necessarily wanted that, the discrepancy was off-putting. The interior was fussily tidy; a dark hall hung with carved mirrors and cramped with brittle antique furniture stretched dimly into the guts of the house. It did not look remotely like a place that might host a party. It looked like a place old ladies might go to die and remain undiscovered until the neighbours noticed a strange smell. It was utterly at odds with what Gansey knew of Henry.

It was also very quiet.

Gansey had a sudden, terrible thought that it was possible the party might be simply Henry and the two of them in togas in a fancy sitting room.

“Welcome, welcome,” Henry told them, as if he had not just seen Gansey a moment before. “Did you hit the cat?”

He had taken enormous care with his appearance. His toga was tied with more care than any tie Gansey had ever knotted, and Gansey had knotted a lot of ties. He was wearing the most chrome watch Gansey had ever seen, and Gansey had seen a lot of chromed things. His black spiked hair strove frantically upward, and Gansey had seen a lot of things striving frantically upward.

“We zigged,” Blue said tersely. “It zagged.”

“Wendybird came!” Henry exclaimed, as if he had only just noticed her. “I googled lady togas in case you did. Good work on the cat. Mrs Woo would poison us in our sleep if you’d squashed it. What’s your name again?”

“Blue,” Gansey said. “Blue Sargent. Blue, do you remember Henry?”

They eyed each other. At their previous brief meeting, Henry had managed to thoroughly offend Blue through casual self-deprecation. Gansey understood on a basic level that Henry made outrageous and offensive fun of himself because the alternative was storming into a room and flipping tables on to the money changers behind them. Blue, however, had clearly thought that he was merely a callow Aglionby princeling. And in her current mood —

“I remember,” she said coolly.

“It was not my finest moment,” Henry said. “My car and I have since made amends.”

“His electric car,” Gansey inserted with subtlety, in case Blue had missed the environmental ramifications.

Blue narrowed her eyes at Gansey and then pointed out, “You could bike to Aglionby from here.”

Henry wagged a finger. “True, true. But it is important to practise safe bicycling, and they have not yet made a helmet to accommodate my hair.” To Gansey, he said, “Did you see Cheng Two out there?”

Gansey didn’t really know Cheng2 – Henry Broadway, actually, confusingly nicknamed not because he was the second of two Chengs at Aglionby, but rather because he was the second of Henrys – aside from what everyone knew: that he was a high-speed shaker with energy drinks pumping continual voltage to his extremities. “Not unless he got a CaMr y while I wasn’t looking.”

This made Henry laugh mirthfully, as if Gansey had touched upon some previous conversation. “That’s Mrs Woo’s. Our tiny overlord. She’s around here somewhere. Check your pockets. She could be there. Sometimes she falls into these cracks between the floorboards – that’s the hazard of these great old houses. Where are Lynch and Parrish?”

“Both busy, alas.”

“That is incredible. I knew the president did not always have to act in concert with Congress and the Supreme Court; I just never thought I’d live to see the day.”

Gansey asked, “Who else is coming?”

“Just the usual suspects,” Henry said. “No one wants to see a casual acquaintance in a bedsheet.”

“You don’t know me,” Blue pointed out. It was impossible to tell what her facial expression meant. Nothing good.