The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(49)
It took the Gray Man several days to realize he had lost his wallet. He would have noticed it sooner if he hadn’t been overcome by gray days — days where morning seemed bled of color and getting up unimportant. The Gray Man often didn’t eat during them; he certainly didn’t keep track of time. He was at once sleeping and awake, both of them the same, dreamless, listless. And then one morning he would open his eyes and find the sky had become blue again.
He had several gray days in the basement of Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast, and after he’d roused himself at dawn and shakily eaten something, he reached into the back pocket of his pants and found it empty. His fake ID and useless credit cards — the Gray Man paid for everything in cash — all gone. It must be at 300 Fox Way.
He’d try to swing back there later. He checked his phone for messages from Greenmantle, let his eyes skip unseeingly over his brother’s missed call from days before, and finally consulted his jotted, coded notes to himself.
He glanced out the window. The sky was an unreal shade of blue. He always felt so alive that first day. Humming a bit, the Gray Man pocketed his keys. Next stop: Monmouth Manufacturing.
Gansey hadn’t been doing well with Cabeswater’s disappearance. He’d tried to come to grips with it. This was just another setback, and he knew he needed to treat it like every other setback: make a new plan, find another lead, throw all the resources in a new direction. But it didn’t feel like any other setback.
He had spent forty-eight hours more or less awake and restless and then, on the third day, he had bought a side-scan sonar device, two window airconditioners, a leather sofa, and a pool table.
“Now do you feel better?” Adam had asked drily.
Gansey had replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Hey, man,” Ronan said, “I like the pool table.”
The entire situation made Blue apoplectic.
“There are children starving in the streets of Chicago,” she said, her hair bristling with indignation. “Three species go extinct every hour because there’s no funding to protect them. You are still wearing those incredibly stupid boat shoes, and of all the things that you have bought, you still haven’t replaced them!”
Gansey, bewildered, observed his feet. The movement of his toes was barely visible through the tops of his Top-Siders. Really, in light of recent events, these shoes were the only things that were right in the world. “I like these shoes.”
“Sometimes I hate you,” Blue said. “And Orla, of all people!”
This was because Gansey had also rented a boat, a trailer, and a truck to pull it with, and then asked Blue’s older cousin Orla to accompany them on their latest trip. The rental truck required a driver over twenty-one, and the mission, according to Gansey, required a psychic. Orla fit both purposes and was more than willing. She had arrived at Monmouth dressed for work: bell-bottoms, platform sandals, and an orange bikini top. There were acres of bare skin between the bell-bottoms and the bikini top. Her bare stomach was so clearly an invitation for admiration that Gansey could hear the dismissive voice of his father in his ear. Girls these days. But Gansey had seen photos of girls in his father’s days, and they didn’t look that different to him.
He exchanged a glance with Adam, because it had to be done, and of course Blue intercepted it. Her eyes narrowed. She wore two shredded tank tops and a pair of bleached cargo pants. In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job.
He was in a terrible mood.
Somewhere across Henrietta, something crackled explosively. It was either a transformer falling prey to the electric whims of the ley line or Joseph Kavinsky having premature fun with one of his infamous Fourth of July explosives. Either way, it was a good day to get out of town.
“We should get moving,” Gansey ordered. “It’s only going to get hotter.”
Just a few dozen yards away, the Gray Man sat in the Champagne Monster on Monmouth Avenue, paging through a history book and listening to Muswell Hillbillies while the airconditioning played across his skin. Really, he should’ve been reading up on Welsh history — his cursory research on the Lynch brothers revealed that one of the boys they ran with was obsessed with it — but instead he indulged himself by trying his hand at a new translation of “Bede’s Death Song.” It was like an archaic crossword puzzle. When the text said Fore e?m nedfere n?nig wioree, would it be truer to the original intent of the writer to translate it as “Before the fated journey there” or “Facing the path to Death”? Pleasurable trials!
The Gray Man looked up as a boy emerged from Monmouth Manufacturing. The overgrown lot was already a mess of teens and rental vehicles and boats; they were clearly getting ready to go somewhere. The boy who had just exited was the square, showy one who looked like he was about to fall into the Senate — Richard Gansey. The third. That meant that somewhere there were at least two more Richard Ganseys. He didn’t notice the Gray Man’s rental car parallel parked in the shadows. Nor did he notice the white Mitsubishi parked just down the road. The Gray Man wasn’t the only one waiting for the Monmouth Manufacturing building to be vacated.