Blue Lily, Lily Blue (16 page)

don’t even know what to get. A kennel?” Ronan asked. Adam didn’t reply. They were in a large, glowing big box store looking at toiletries. He picked up a bottle of shampoo

and put it back down. His clothing was still flecked with blood from the apocalyptic drizzle and his soul still smarted from the mongrel comment. Gwenllian — Gansey had texted Ronan her identity — had been in a cave for six hundred years and had gotten his number at once. How?

Ronan picked up a bottle of shampoo and tossed it in the cart Adam pushed.
“That one’s fourteen dollars,” Adam said. He found it impossible to turn off the part of his brain that added up the sum of groceries. Perhaps this was what Gwenllian could see in the furrow of his eyebrows.
The other boy didn’t even turn around. “What else? Flea collar?”
“You already did a dog joke. With ‘kennel.’”
“So I did, Parrish.” He continued down the aisle, shoulders square, chin tilted haughtily. He did not look like he was shopping. He looked like he was committing larceny. He swept some toothpaste into the basket. “Which toothbrush? This one looks fast.” He sent it plummeting in with the other supplies.
The discovery of Gwenllian was doing odd things to Adam’s brain. Disbelief shouldn’t have been an option after all of the things that had happened with the ley line and Cabeswater, but Adam realized that he still hadn’t truly believed that Glendower might still be sleeping under a mountain somewhere. And yet here was Gwenllian, buried in the same legendary way. His final skepticism had been taken from him.
“What do we do now?” Adam asked.
“Get a doghouse. Damn. You’re right. I really can’t think of another joke.”
“I mean now that we have Gwenllian.”
Ronan made a sound that indicated he didn’t find this line of thought interesting. “Do what we were doing before. She doesn’t matter.”
“Everything matters,” Adam replied, recalling his sessions with Persephone. He contemplated adding deodorant to the cart, but he wasn’t sure if there was any point getting it for someone who had been born before it was invented.
“Gansey wants Glendower. She’s not Glendower.” Ronan started to say something and then didn’t. He hurled a bottle of shave cream into the cart, but no razor. It was possible it was for him, not Gwenllian. “I’m not sure we shouldn’t stop while we’re ahead, anyway. We have Cabeswater. Why do we need Glendower?”
Adam thought of the vision of Gansey dying on the ground. He said, “I want the favor.”
Ronan stopped so abruptly in the middle of the aisle that Adam nearly ran the cart into the back of his legs. The six items in the bottom skittered forward. “Come on, Parrish. You still think you need that?”
“I don’t question the things that moti —”
“Blah blah blah. Right, I know. Hey, look at that,” Ronan said.
The two of them observed a beautiful woman standing by the garden section, attended by three male store workers. Her cart was full of tarps and hedge trimmers and various things that looked as if they might be easily weaponized. The men held shovels and flagpoles that didn’t fit in the cart. They seemed very eager to help.
It was Piper Greenmantle. Adam said wryly, “She doesn’t strike me as your type.”
Ronan hissed, “That’s Greenmantle’s wife.”
“How do
you
know what she looks like?”
“Oh, please. Now
that’s
what we should be thinking about. Have you researched him yet?”
“No,” Adam said, but it was a lie. It was difficult for him to ignore a question once it had been posed, and Greenmantle was a bigger question than most. He admitted, “Some.”
“A lot,” Ronan translated, and he was right, because, strangely enough, Ronan knew a great deal about how Adam worked. It was possible Adam had always been aware of this but had preferred to consider himself— particularly the more unsightly parts of himself — impenetrable.
With a last glance at the blonder Greenmantle, they made their way through the checkout line. Ronan swiped a card without even looking at the total—
one day, one day, one day
—and then they headed back out into the bright afternoon. At the curb, Adam realized he was still pushing the cart with its single bag nestled in the corner. He wondered if they were supposed to have gotten more things, but he couldn’t imagine what they would have been.
Ronan pointed at the cart. “Get in there.”
“What?”
He just continued pointing.
Adam said, “Give me a break. This is a public parking lot.”
“Don’t make this ugly, Parrish.”
As an old lady headed past them, Adam sighed and climbed into the basket of the shopping cart. He drew his knees up so that he would fit. He was full of the knowledge that this was probably going to end with scabs.
Ronan gripped the handle with the skittish concentration of a motorcycle racer and eyed the line between them and the BMW parked on the far side of the lot. “What do you think the grade is on this parking lot?”
“C plus, maybe a B. Oh. I don’t know. Ten degrees?” Adam held the sides of the cart and then thought better of it. He held himself instead.
With a savage smile, Ronan shoved the cart off the curb and belted toward the BMW. As they picked up speed, Ronan called out a joyful and awful swear and then jumped onto the back of the cart himself. As they hurtled toward the BMW, Adam realized that Ronan, as usual, had no intention of stopping before something bad happened. He cupped a hand over his nose just as they glanced off the side of the BMW. The unseated cart wobbled once, twice, and then tipped catastrophically onto its side. It kept skidding, the boys skidding along with it.
The three of them came to a stop.
“Oh God,” Adam said, touching the road burn on his elbow. It wasn’t that bad, really. “God, God. I can feel my teeth.”
Ronan lay on his back a few feet away. A box of toothpaste rested on his chest and the cart keeled beside him. He looked profoundly happy.
“You should tell me what you’ve found out about Greenmantle,” Ronan said, “so that I can get started on my dreaming.”
Adam picked himself up before he got driven over. “When?”
Ronan grinned.

his house is lovely. So many walls. So, so many walls,” Malory said as Blue entered the living room a little later. The cushions of the couch ate him gratefully.

Behind the closed door of the reading room, the murmur of Gansey’s voice rose briefly before being buried by Calla’s. They were fighting with Persephone, or talking while she was in the same room with them. It was hard to tell the difference.

“Thanks,” said Blue.
“Where is that insane woman?”
Blue had just finished hauling all Neeve’s things off the mattress in the attic so that Gwenllian could stay up there. Her hands still smelled like the herbs Neeve had used for her divination and the herbs Jimi had used to try to vanquish the herbs Neeve had used for divination. “She’s up in the attic, I guess. Do you really think she’s Glendower’s daughter?”

“I see no reason to disbelieve,” Malory said. “She does seem to be outfitted in a period dress. It’s rather a lot to take in. It’s a pity one can’t publish it in a journal. Well, I suppose one could, if one wanted his career to be over in a conclusive way.”

“I wish she would just talk straight,” Blue said. “She says my father was the one who tied her up and put her to sleep, only she told us that she never slept. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? How can you just be alive and awake for six hundred years?”

The Dog gave Blue a thin, wry look that indicated he believed that was how Gwenllian had come to be the way that she was.
“It seems likely that this Artemus was also the individual who sent Glendower to sleep,” Malory observed. “I don’t mean to be rude, but the idea that he also fathered you strains the credulity rather.”
“Rather,” Blue echoed. She didn’t have an emotional stake in it either way: Her father had always been a stranger to her, and whether or not he also turned out to be a six-hundred-year-old crazy person didn’t change that. It was interesting that Gwenllian had been tied up and sent to sleep by someone named Artemus, and interesting that this Artemus person apparently looked a lot like Blue, and interesting that Maura had also said that Blue’s father was named Artemus, but
interesting
wouldn’t find Maura.
“Although one considers that tapestry,” Malory said.
The old tapestry from the flooded barn. Blue saw it again — her three faces, her red hands. “What does one consider about it?”
“One doesn’t know. Is she staying here?” Malory asked.
“I guess. For now? Probably she’ll kill us all in our beds, no matter what Persephone says.”
“I think it’s wise that she stays here,” Malory said. “She belongs here.”
Blue blinked at him. Although the crotchety professor had grown on her since she’d first met him, she certainly wouldn’t have pegged him for the sort to consider other people enough to be able to offer interpersonal insight.
“Would you like to know what service the Dog provides?” he asked.
This didn’t seem to have any bearing on his previous statement, but Blue’s curiosity devoured her. With restraint, she replied, “Oh, well. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“I feel uncomfortable all the time, Jane,” Malory said. “That’s what the Dog is for. The Dog is a psychiatric dog. The Dog is trained so that if the Dog senses I am having anxiety, he does something to improve the situation. Such as sit beside me, or lie on my chest, or place my hand in his mouth.”
“Are you anxious a lot?”
“It’s a terrible word,
anxious
. It makes one think of wringing hands and hysteria and bodices. Rather I simply don’t care for people because people — my, they are going at it, aren’t they?”
This was because Calla had just shouted in the other room, “DON’T GIVE ME THAT VACUOUS PREP BOY STARE.”
Blue had previously been pleased to not be looped into the serious discussion in the reading room, but now she was reconsidering.
Malory continued, “I was paired with the Dog directly before this trip, and I must say I did not imagine it would be so challenging to travel with a canine. Not only was it quite a thing to find a place for the Dog to relieve himself, the Dog was constantly trying to lie on my chest while I was standing in that dreadful security line.”
The Dog did not look sorry.
Malory continued, “It is not the outside of people that bothers me, but the inside. Ever since I was a child, I have been able to see auras, or what-have-you. Personhood. And if the person —”
“Wait, did you say you could see
auras
?”
“Jane, I didn’t expect you to be judgmental, of all people.”
Blue was well familiar with the idea of auras — energy fields that surrounded all living objects. Orla had gone through a period in her teens of telling everyone what their auras said about them. She had told Blue that her aura had meant she was short. She had been a pretty awful teenager.
“I wasn’t judging!” she assured Malory. “I was clarifying. This relates to the Dog because . . . ?”
“Because when people are too close to me, their auras touch me, and if too many auras touch me, it confuses me and makes me what doctors have foolishly called anxious. Doctors! Fools. I don’t know if Gansey ever told you how my mother was murdered by the British healthcare system —”
“Oh, yes,” Blue lied swiftly. She was very interested in hearing about how Malory saw auras, which was firmly in her circle of interests, and less interested in hearing about deaths of mothers, which was decidedly outside of her circle of interests.
“It’s a shocking story,” Malory said, with some relish. Then, because of Blue’s face or stature, he told her the story. He finished with, “And I could see her aura slowly vanish. So you see, this is how I know that Gwenllian belongs in a place like this.”
Blue dragged an expression back onto her face. “Hold on. What? I missed something in here.”
“Her aura is like yours — it’s
blue
,” he said. “The clairvoyant aura!”
“Is it?” She was going to be extremely annoyed if this was how she had gotten her name — like naming a puppy
Fluffy
.
“That color of aura belongs to those who can pierce the veil!”
She decided that telling him that she couldn’t, in fact, pierce the veil would only prolong the conversation.
“It’s why I was originally drawn to Gansey,” Malory continued. “Despite his mercurial personality, he has a very pleasant and neutral aura. I don’t feel like I am with another person when I am with him. He doesn’t take from me. He is a little louder now, but not very much.”
Blue had only a very limited understanding of what mercurial meant, and that limited understanding was having a very bad time of trying to apply it to Gansey. She asked, “What was he like, back then?”
“They were glorious days,” Malory replied. Then, after a pause, he added, “Except for when they weren’t. He was smaller then.”
The way he said
smaller
made it seem as if he wasn’t talking about height, and Blue thought she knew what he meant.
Malory continued, “He was still trying to prove that he hadn’t just hallucinated. He was still quite obsessed with the event itself. He seems to have grown out of that, fortunate for him.”
“The event — the stinging? The death, I mean?”
“Yes, Jane, the death. He puzzled it over all the time. He was always drawing bees and hornets and stuff-and-such. Got screaming nightmares over it— he had to get his own place, since I couldn’t sleep with it, as you might well imagine. Sometimes these fits would happen during the day, too. We’d just be toddling through some riding path in Leicestershire and next thing I knew he’d be on the ground clawing his face like a mental patient. I let him be, though, and he’d run his course and be fine like nothing had happened.”
“How terrible,” whispered Blue. She imagined that easy smile Gansey had learned to throw up over his true face. With shame, she recalled how she had once wondered what would have made a boy like
him
, a boy with everything, ever learn such a skill. How unfair she’d been to assume love and money would preclude pain and hardship. She thought of their disagreement in the car the night before with some guilt.
Malory hadn’t seemed to hear her. “Such a researcher, though. Such a keen nose for hidden things. You can’t train that! You have to be born with it.”
She heard Gansey’s voice in the cave, hollow and afraid:
“Hornets.”
She shivered.
“Of course, then he just went one day,” Malory mused.
“What?” Blue focused abruptly.
“I should not have been surprised,” the professor said in an offhand voice. “I knew he was a great traveler. But we were not truly done researching, I thought. We had a bit of a toss-up, patched it up. But then, one morning, he was just gone.”
“Gone how?”
The Dog had climbed onto Malory’s chest and now licked his chin. Malory didn’t push him away. “Oh, gone. His things, his bags. He left much of it behind, what he didn’t need. But he never returned. It was months before he called me again, like nothing had happened.”
It was hard to imagine Gansey abandoning anything that way. All around him were things he clung to ferociously. “He didn’t leave a note, or anything?”
“Just gone,” Malory said. “After that, his family called me sometimes, trying to find out where he’d gone.”
“His
family
?” She felt like she was being told a story about a different person.
“Yes, I told them what I could, of course. But I didn’t really know. It was Mexico before he came to me, then Iceland after, I think, before the States. I doubt I know the half of it still. He picked himself up and moved so easily, so quickly. He had done it so many times before England, Jane, and it was old hat to him.”
Past conversations were slowly realigning in Blue’s head, taking on new shades of meaning as they did. She recalled one charged night on the side of a mountain, looking down at Henrietta lit like a fairy village.
Home
, he’d said, like it pained him. Like he couldn’t believe it.
It wasn’t exactly like the story Malory had just told conflicted with the Gansey she knew. It was more like the Gansey she’d seen was a partial truth.
“It was cowardice and stupidity,” Gansey said from the doorway. He leaned on the doorjamb, hands in pockets, as he often did. “I didn’t like good-byes, so I just abstained, and I didn’t think about the consequences.”
Blue and Malory both peered at him. It was impossible to tell how long he’d been standing there.
“It’s very decent of you,” he continued, “to not say anything about it to me. It’s more than I deserved. But know that I’ve regretted it, a lot.”
“Well,” said Malory. He seemed profoundly uncomfortable. The Dog looked away. “Well. What is the verdict on your cavewoman?”
Gansey put a mint leaf in his mouth; it was impossible to not think of the night before, when he’d put one in hers. “She stays here, for now. That wasn’t me, that was Persephone. I offered to fix the first floor of Monmouth. That might still end up being what happens.”
“Who is she?” Blue asked. She tried the name: “Gwenllian.” She wasn’t saying it right— the double
ll
s were not said anything like they looked.
“Glendower had ten children with his wife, Margaret. And at least four . . . not with her.” Gansey said this part with distaste; it was clear that he didn’t find this fitting for his hero. “Gwenllian is one of the four illegitimate on record. It’s a patriotic name. There were two other very famous Gwenllians who were associated with Welsh freedom.”
There was something else he wanted to say, but he didn’t. It meant it was unpleasant or ugly. Blue said, “Spit it out, Gansey. What is it?”
He said, “The way she was buried— the tomb door had Glendower on it, and so did the coffin lid. Not an image of her. We can ask her, though getting real information out of her is quite a thing, but it seems likely to me that she was buried in a shill grave.”
“What’s that?”
“Sometimes when there’s a very rich grave, or a very important one, they’ll put a duplicate grave somewhere nearby, but easier to find, to give grave robbers something to find.” Blue was scandalized. “His own daughter?”
“Illegitimate,” Gansey said, but he was unhappy as he did. “You heard her. As punishment for something. It is all so distasteful. I am starving. Where did Par — Adam and Ronan go?”
“To get supplies for Gwenllian.”
He looked at his enormous and handsome watch with an enormous and puzzled frown. “Has it been long?”
She made a face. “Ish?”
“What do we do now?” Gansey asked.
From the other room, Calla bellowed, “GO BUY US PIZZA. WITH
EXTRA CHEESE
, RICHIE RICH.”
Blue said, “I think she’s starting to like you.”