The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(92)

Maura looked at it sadly. “How can you tell?”

“Because you made it.”

Straightening the daisy chain on her head, Maura patted the remaining chair and sat on the bricks beside it. The Gray Man sagged into it.

“Oh, dear,” Persephone said, observing this bonelessness of the Gray Man. “So you found out, did you?”

By way of response, he drained his glass. The readings had taken him to a clearing with one hundred white Mitsubishi Evolutions and two drunk boys manifesting their dreams. He had watched them for hours. Each minute, each impossible dream, each overheard snatch of conversation had hammered in the truth.

“What happens now?” Maura asked.

The Gray Man said, “I’m a hit man, not a kidnapper.”

Maura frowned. “But you think your employer might be.”

The Gray Man was not sure what he thought Greenmantle might be. He knew that Greenmantle didn’t like to lose, and he knew that he had been obsessed with the Greywaren for at least five years. He also knew he himself had bludgeoned the last Greywaren to death with a tire iron. Although the Gray Man had killed quite a few people, he had never destroyed any of the artifacts he’d been sent to collect.

This was all more complicated than he’d expected.

“It’s definitely those two boys, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question, though. The Gray Man tried to imagine bringing one of them back to Greenmantle. He was unaccustomed to transporting live victims for any distance. It struck him as oddly distasteful, a different animal from outright killing.

“Two?” Calla echoed. She and Persephone looked at each other.

“Well,” Persephone said in her small voice. She used a cocktail umbrella to rescue a gnat in her drink. “That makes more sense.”

“It’s not a thing,” Maura said. “That’s what’s important. It’s not a thing any more than … conjunctivitis is a thing.”

Rubbing her eye, Persephone murmured, “That’s a strangely unpleasant metaphor, Maura.”

“It’s nothing you can take back,” Maura clarified. She added pointedly, “And we know at least one of the boys. We’d be very angry if you took him. I’d be very angry with you.”

“He’s not a very kind man,” the Gray Man said. It hadn’t gotten in the way of their relationship before; kindness had, until then, been largely lost on the Gray Man.

“So you couldn’t explain what nice boys they are?” Persephone asked.

Calla growled, “They are not nice boys. Well, at least one of them isn’t.”

The Gray Man said, “I don’t expect it would make a difference to him anyway.”

With a deep sigh, he leaned his head far back and closed his eyes, as defenseless as he’d ever been. The afternoon sun lit his face and neck and muscled biceps, and also lit Maura looking at them.

They all took a drink, except for the Gray Man, who had already finished his. He didn’t want to kidnap a boy, he didn’t want to anger Maura, he wanted … he just wanted. Cicadas sang madly from the trees. It was so impossibly summer.

He wanted to stay.

“Well,” Calla said, checking her watch and standing. “I don’t envy you. I’ve got my boxing. Must run. Ta. Ta. Maura, don’t get murdered.”

Maura waved the switchblade.

Persephone, standing as well, said, “I’d give that to Blue, if I were you. I’m going to go work on my thing. My stuff. My PhD. You know.”

The Gray Man opened his eyes, and now Persephone stopped in front of him, her hands folded around her empty glass. She looked very small and delicate and not-really-there in comparison to his knotted presence. She removed one hand from her glass to gently pat his knee. “I know you’ll do the right thing, Mr. Gray.”

She and Calla slid the door shut behind themselves. Maura scooted her butt a few inches closer and leaned against his leg. It struck the Gray Man as a very trusting gesture, putting her back to a hit man. His previously lifeless heart flopped hopefully. He carefully rearranged the daisy chain in her hair, and then he took out his phone.

Greenmantle answered at once. “Give me good news.”

The Gray Man said, “It’s not here.”

There was a long pause. “Sorry, the connection is bad. Say it again?”

The Gray Man didn’t like repeating himself unnecessarily. He said, “All of the readings are because of an old fault line that runs along these mountains. They’re pointing you to a place, not a thing.”

Another pause, uglier in quality than the first. Greenmantle said, “So, who got to you? Was it one of Laumonier’s? What did he say he’d pay you? You know what — goddamn, this is not the day you want to mess with me. Today of all days.”

The Gray Man said, “I’m not angling for more money.”

“So you’re keeping it for yourself? I feel like that should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.” Usually, it took Greenmantle a few minutes to work himself up to a frenzy, but it was clear the Gray Man had interrupted one already in progress. “All these years I’ve trusted you, you creepy, sick bastard, and now —”

“I don’t have it,” the Gray Man interrupted. “I’m not cheating you.”

Beside him, Maura ducked her head and shook it a little. Even without knowing Greenmantle, she’d already guessed what the Gray Man knew: This wasn’t going to work.