The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(51)

“My thing,” Maura said, “is that I never tell my thing.”

But she was pleased; he could hear it in her voice. He liked her voice, too. She had just enough Henrietta accent so you knew where she came from.

“Do I get three tries to guess it?”

She didn’t immediately answer, and he didn’t press her. Heart wounds, he knew, made one think more slowly.

While he waited, the Gray Man stooped to study Gansey’s miniature model of Henrietta. Such affection in these tiny re-created streets! He straightened, careful not to harm any of the fond buildings, and headed for one of the two small bedrooms.

Ronan Lynch’s room looked as if a bar fight had taken place within its walls. Every surface was covered with expensive bits of expensive speakers and pointy bits of pointy cages and stylishly distressed bits of stylishly distressed jeans.

“Tell me this, then, Mr. Gray: Are you dangerous?”

“To some people.”

“I have a daughter.”

“Oh. I’m not dangerous to her.” The Gray Man picked up a box cutter from the desk and studied it. It had been used to wound something before being hastily cleaned.

Maura said, “I just don’t know if this is a good idea.”

“Don’t you?”

He inverted a cowboy boot that seemed out of place. He gave it a shake, but nothing fell out. He couldn’t say whether the Greywaren was anywhere in the building. Looking for something without a single description … he had to imagine what a loaf of bread looked like based upon the trail of crumbs it left behind.

“I just … tell me something true about you.”

“I own a pair of bell-bottoms,” he confessed. “And an orange disco shirt.”

“I don’t believe you. You must wear it, then, next time I see you.”

“I couldn’t,” the Gray Man said, amused. “I’d have to change my name to Mr. Orange.”

“Personally,” Maura replied, “I don’t think your sense of self should be flexible. Specially not if you’re going to go around as the king of swords.”

From the main room, the doorknob clicked audibly as the lock was tested. Someone was here. Someone without a key. He told Maura, “Hold that thought. I have to go.”

“To kill someone?”

“Preferably not,” the Gray Man said in a much lower voice. He ducked behind Ronan’s half-open door. “There are nearly always easier ways.”

“Mr. Gray —”

Someone kicked open the door. The Gray Man’s careful lock-work was rendered irrelevant.

“I will,” the Gray Man interrupted softly, “call you back.”

Standing in the shadows of Ronan Lynch’s room, he watched two men stalk in. One man wore an oversized polo shirt and the other wore a T-shirt printed with a missile. The two men took in the scope of the space with obvious annoyance, and then they spread out. The oversized polo shirt clung to the area near the windows to keep watch out in the parking lot, and the other crashed through the boys’ belongings. They kicked over stacks of books and pulled out desk drawers and upended the bare mattress.

At one point, Missile turned to Polo Shirt. Missile Shirt held a pair of sunglasses up for inspection. “Gucci. Rich bastards.”

He dropped the sunglasses before stepping on them. One of the fractured earpieces skittered across the wide floorboards. It made it all the way to the Gray Man’s feet, but only the Gray Man was watching it. He leaned and picked up the shard, pensively thumbing the sharp, broken end.

So these were the people Greenmantle had warned him about. Fellow seekers of the Greywaren, whatever it might be. The Gray Man picked his teeth with the broken edge of the sunglasses and then used his phone to take photos of the men for Greenmantle.

Something about them was making him lose patience. Perhaps it was that they still hadn’t noticed that he was watching them. Or perhaps it was the inefficiency of their process. Whatever it was, it solidified precisely as they began to trundle through the miniature model of Henrietta. He didn’t know what the Greywaren looked like, but he was certain that he could find it without kicking in the front of a miniature cardboard courthouse.

He swiftly moved out of Ronan’s room.

“Whoa!” said Missile from the middle of the destroyed Henrietta. “Don’t move.”

By way of reply, the Gray Man stuck the sharp end of the earpiece into Polo Shirt’s neck. They fought briefly. The Gray Man used a combination of physics and the edge of the window airconditioner to gently lay the other man down on the floor.

It happened so quickly that Missile had only just reached them when the Gray Man wiped his hands on his slacks and stepped over the body.

“Jesus F. Christ,” said Missile. He pointed a knife at the Gray Man.

This fight lasted slightly longer than the first. It was not that Missile was bad; it was that the Gray Man was better. And once the Gray Man had relieved the other man of his knife, it was over immediately. Missile crouched in the wreckage of Henrietta, fingers braced on the floorboards, gasping for breath.

“Why are you here?” the Gray Man asked him. He rested the tip of the knife as far into the man’s ear as it would go without making a mess.

The man was already trembling, and unlike Declan Lynch, he folded at once. “Looking for an antique for an employer.”