The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(104)

“Action.”

Maura laughed softly under her breath.

How terrible it would be, Blue thought, her mind on Adam again, to not have a mother who loved you?

“Yes,” she agreed. “How wise you are, Blue.”



On the other side of Henrietta, the Gray Man answered his phone. It was Greenmantle.

Without any particular preamble, he said, “Dean Allen.”

The Gray Man, phone in one hand, book in the other, didn’t immediately respond. He set his tattered edition of Anglo-Saxon riddles facedown on the side table. The television prattled in the background; one spy met another on a bridge. They were exchanging hostages. They’d been told to come alone. They hadn’t come alone.

It was taking an unexpectedly long period of time for the Gray Man to register the meaning of Greenmantle’s words. Then, once that had sunk in, it took him even longer to understand why Greenmantle was saying them.

“That’s right,” Greenmantle said. “The mystery’s gone. It wasn’t that hard to figure out who you were. Turns out Anglo-Saxon poetry is a very small field. Even at the undergrad level. And you know how well I do with undergrads.”

The Gray Man hadn’t been Dean Allen for a very long time. It was harder than one might expect to abandon an identity, but the Gray Man was more patient and devoted than most. Usually, one traded one identity for another, but the Gray Man wanted to be no one. Nowhere.

He touched the weathered spine of the riddle book.

ic eom wr?tlic wiht on gewin sceapen

Greenmantle added, “So, I want it.”

(I am a beautiful thing, shaped for fighting)

“I don’t have it.”

“Sure, Dean, sure.”

“Don’t call me that.”

nelle ic unbunden ?nigum hyran

nymte searos?led

“Why not? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

(Unstrung I obey no man; only when skillfully tied —)

The Gray Man said nothing.

“So you’re not going to change your story, Dean?” Greenmantle asked. “And yet you’re going to keep taking my calls. So that means you know where it is, but you don’t have it yet.”

For so many years he’d buried that name. Dean Allen wasn’t supposed to exist. There was a reason he’d given it up.

“Tell you what,” Greenmantle said. “I tell you what. You get the Greywaren and call me by the Fourth of July with your flight confirmation number back here. Or I tell your brother where you are.”

Hold still, Dean.

Logic swam away from the Gray Man. Very quietly, he said, “I told you about him in confidence.”

“I paid you in confidence. Turns out he’s eager to know where you are,” Greenmantle said. “We had a chat, Dean. Says he lost touch with you in the middle of a conversation he’s been wanting to finish.”

The Gray Man turned off the television, but voices still hummed in the background.

“Dean,” Greenmantle said. “You there?”

No. Not really. Color was draining from the walls.

“Do we have an agreement?”

No. Not really. A weapon didn’t come to an agreement with the hand that held it.

“Two days is plenty of time, Dean,” Greenmantle said. “See you on the other side.”





For twenty-one hours, Adam Parrish and the Gray Man slept. While they slept without dreaming, Henrietta prepared for the Fourth of July. Flags climbed poles over car dealerships. Parade signs warned would-be parallel parkers to rethink their choices. In the suburbs, fireworks were bought and dreamt. Doors were locked and, later, busted open. At 300 Fox Way, Adam quietly turned eighteen. Calla was called into her office to make certain nothing important had been stolen during a break-in. At Monmouth Manufacturing, a white Mitsubishi with a set of keys in the ignition and a knife graphic on the side appeared in the parking lot overnight. It bore a note that read, This one’s for you. Just the way you like it: fast and anonymous.

Gansey frowned at the disordered handwriting. “I think he needs to come to terms with his sexuality.”

Ronan, chewing his leather bracelets, dropped them from his teeth and said, “There is no coming to terms with having three balls.”

It was the sort of joke he normally made for Noah. But Noah wasn’t there.

Back at the psychics’ house, Adam woke up. According to Maura, he swung his legs over the sofa, walked into the kitchen where he drank four glasses of pomegranate juice and three cups of one of the more noxious healing teas, thanked Maura for the use of her couch, and then got into his tri-colored car and drove away, all within the space of ten minutes.

Fifteen minutes after that, Maura reported, Persephone came downstairs with a butterfly-shaped handbag and a pair of sensible boots with three-inch heels and laces all the way up her thighs. A taxi arrived and she climbed into it. It drove away in the same direction as the tri-colored car.

Twelve minutes after that, Kavinsky texted Ronan: ballsack. Ronan replied: shitstack. Kavinsky: coming to 4th of July? Ronan: would you stop if you knew it was destroying the world? Kavinsky: god that would be awesome

“Well?” Gansey asked.

Ronan said, “Wouldn’t bet on the negotiations.”

Seven minutes after that, Maura, Calla, and Blue climbed into the fatigued Ford, drove to get Ronan and Gansey, and headed into the simmering day.