The Dream Thieves (7 page)

“It will do your homework,” Noah added.

“And it’s been dating your girlfriend,” Ronan finished.

Blue scowled. “Are you all drunk?”

They dismissed her question and instead excitedly demonstrated the principles of the wooden box. She was less surprised than most people would have been to discover it was a magical translating box. She was more surprised to discover the boys had possessed the forethought to bring the other dictionaries.

“We wanted to know if it was always right,” Gansey said. “And it seems to be.”

“Hold on,” Blue replied. She left the boys to take the drink orders of a couple at table fourteen. They both wanted iced tea. Nino’s was unfairly famous for its iced tea — there was even a sign in the window proclaiming that it had the best in Henrietta — despite the fact that Blue could attest to the tea-making process being completely unremarkable.
Raven boys must be easy prey to propaganda
, she thought.

When she returned, she leaned on the table beside Adam, who touched her wrist. She didn’t know what to do in response. Touch it back? The moment had passed. She resented her body for not giving her the correct answer. She asked, “What is that other language, by the way?”

“We don’t know,” Gansey said, around his straw. “Why is the tea so good here?”

“I spit in it. Let me see this thing.”

She accepted the box. It had some heft to it, as if one would find workings to all these dials inside. It felt, actually, a lot like Gansey’s journal on Glendower. It had been lavishly dreamt — not what she’d expected of Ronan.

Fingers careful on the smooth, cool dials, Blue moved the wheels on the English side of the box so that they read
blue
. Buttons sucked in and wheels turned on the other sides of the box, fluid and silent.

Blue turned it slowly to read each side:
hyacinthus
,
celea
. One side was blank.

Gansey pointed to each side for her. “Latin, Coptic, Sanskrit, something we don’t know, and … this is supposed to be Greek. Isn’t that funny that it’s blank?”

Derisively, Ronan said, “No. The ancient Greeks didn’t have a word for blue.”

Everyone at the table looked at him.

“What the hell, Ronan?” said Adam.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Gansey mused, “how this evidently successful classical education never seems to make it into your school papers.”

“They never ask the right questions,” Ronan replied.

At the front of the restaurant, the door opened. It would fall to Blue to seat the new party, but she lingered by the table, frowning at the box.

She said, “I have a right question. What is the language on this side?”

Ronan’s expression was petulant.

Gansey tilted his head. “We don’t know.”

Blue pointed at Ronan, who curled a lip. “
He
does. Somewhere in there. I know it.”

“You don’t know shit,” Ronan said.

There was the very briefest of pauses. It was true that this sort of venom was not unusual from Ronan. But it had been a very long while since it had been used so forcefully on Blue. She drew herself up, everything prickling.

Then Gansey said, very slowly, “Ronan, you’re never going to talk to Jane like that again.”

Both Adam and Blue stared at Gansey, who concentrated his gaze on his napkin. It wasn’t what he said but how he looked at no one when he said it that made the moment strange.

Blue, feeling oddly warm around the cheeks, told Gansey, “I don’t need you to stand up for me. Don’t
you
” — this was directed at Ronan — “think I’ll let you talk to me like that. Especially not just because you’re mad I’m right.”

As she whirled toward the front, she heard Adam say, “You’re such a
dick
,” and Noah laugh. Her spirits sank as she saw who stood at the hostess stand: Joseph Kavinsky. He was unmistakable: the sort of raven boy who was clearly an import from elsewhere. Everything about his facial structure — the long nose; the hollowed-out, heavy-lidded eyes; the dark arch of his eyebrows — was completely unlike the Valley faces she’d grown up with. Like many of the other raven boys, he sported massive sunglasses, spiked hair, a small earring, a chain around his neck, and a white tank top. But unlike the other raven boys, he terrified Blue.

“Hey, baby doll,” he greeted Blue. He was already standing too close, moving restlessly. He was always moving. There was something erratic and vulgar about the full line of his lips, like he’d swallow her if he got close enough. She hated the smell of him.

He was infamous, even at her school. You wanted something to get you through your exams, he had it. You wanted a fake license, he could get it. You wanted something to hurt you, he was it.

“I am not a baby doll,” Blue said icily, picking up a laminated menu. Her face was burning again. “Table for one?”

But he wasn’t even listening to her. He rocked on his heels, jerking his chin up to see who else was in the restaurant. Without looking at her again, he said, “My party’s already here.”

He walked away. Like she’d never been there.

She wasn’t sure if she couldn’t forgive Kavinsky for always managing to make her feel so insignificant, or herself, for knowing it was coming and being unable to guard herself against it.

She stuffed the menu back in the hostess station and stood there for a second, hating them all, hating this job, feeling strangely humiliated.

Then she took a deep breath and filled up table fourteen’s tea.

Kavinsky headed directly to the large table in the back, and the postures of the other boys all changed drastically. Adam looked at the table with a studied disinterest. Smudgy Noah ducked his head down into his shoulders, but couldn’t take his eyes off the newcomer. Gansey stood, leaning against the table, and there was something threatening rather than respectful about it. Ronan, however, was the one who had transformed the most. Though his casual position — arms crossed — remained the same, his shoulders were knotted with visible tension. Something about his eyes was ferocious and alive in the same way that they had been when he’d launched the plane in the field.

“I saw your POS out front,” Kavinsky told Gansey. “And I remembered I had something for Lynch.”

Laughing, he dropped a dry, tangled pile in front of Ronan.

Ronan eyed the gift, one eyebrow raised in glorious disdain. Leaning back, he pulled one of the strands to reveal that it was a collection of wristbands identical to the ones he always wore.

“How sweet, man.” Ronan lifted it higher, like spaghetti. “It goes with everything.”

“Like your mom,” Kavinsky agreed with good humor.

“What am I supposed to do with them?”

“Hell if I know. I just thought of you. Regift them. White rabbit shit.”

“Elephant,” murmured Gansey.

“Don’t bring politics into this, Dick,” Kavinsky replied. He slapped a palm on Ronan’s shaved head and rubbed it. Ronan looked ready to bite him. “Well, I’m out. Things to do. Enjoy your book club, ladies.”

He didn’t even look at Blue as he left.
Him not hitting on you is a good thing
, she told herself. She felt invisible. Unseeable.
Is this how Noah feels?

Gansey said, “The only thing that gives me any joy is imagining the used car dealership he’ll be working in by the time he’s thirty.”

Ronan, head down, kept studying the leather bands. One of his hands was a fist. Blue wondered what the real meaning of Kavinsky’s gift was. She wondered if Ronan knew the real meaning.

“Like I said,” Gansey muttered. “Trouble.”

T
he Gray Man hated his current rental car. He got the distinct impression it hadn’t been handled enough by humans when it was young, and now would never be pleasant to be around. Since he’d picked it up, it had already tried to bite him several times and had spent a considerable amount of time resisting his efforts to achieve the speed limit.

Also, it was champagne. Ridiculous color for a car.

He would have returned it for another, but the Gray Man made a point of staying unmemorable if he could. His previous rental had acquired an unfortunate and possibly incriminating stain in the backseat. Better to put some distance between himself and it.

After dutifully filling the car with Greenmantle’s machines and dials, the Gray Man went on an electrical goose chase. He didn’t mind terribly that the flashing lights and humming alarms and scattered needles weren’t painting a coherent map to the Greywaren. Henrietta had considerable charms. The downtown was populated by daintily greasy sandwich shops and aggressively down-home junk shops, swaybacked porches and square columns, all of the buildings tired but tidy as library books. He peered through the car window as he passed by. Locals on chairs on porches peered back.

The readings continued to be meaningless, so he parked the Champagne Monstrosity at the corner drugstore, which advertised best tuna fish in town! He ordered a sandwich and a milkshake from a red-lipped lady, and as he leaned on the stainless-steel counter, the power went out.

The red-lipped lady used a meaty fist to thump the now-dormant milkshake machine and swore in a soft accent that made it sound affectionate. She assured him, “It’ll come back on in a minute.”

All of the shelves and greeting cards and pharmaceuticals looked eerie and apocalyptic in the indirect light from the front windows. “Does this happen a lot?”

“Since this spring, yes, sir. Goes out. Gets them surges, too, blows out them transformers and everything catches fire. Turns on the stadium lights, too, down at Aglionby, when nobody’s there for a game. Sure all those terrible boys are gone for the summer. Well, most all of them. But you’re not staying, are you?”

“A few weeks.”

“Then you’ll be here for the Fourth.”

The Gray Man had to drag up a mental calendar. He didn’t celebrate many holidays.

“You come down here and see the county show,” she said, giving his half-blended milkshake a dispirited twitch. “You get yourself a nice view of the fireworks from the courthouse. Don’t be fooled by those other ones.”

“The ones people do at home?”

“The Aglionby ones,” she said. “Some of them boys blow up all kinds of things they shouldn’t be getting into. Terrorize the old ladies. Don’t know why the sheriff don’t stop him.”

“Him?” The Gray Man was interested in how the plural
Aglionby ones
suddenly became a singular
him
.

She seemed to be in a reverie, watching cars go slowly by the big pane-glass windows. Eventually, she continued, “Probably it’s HEPCO’s fault; they knew their wires was old, but do they replace them? No.”

He blinked at the sudden shift in conversation. “HEPCO?”

“Beg pardon? Oh, Henrietta Electric Power Company.” Only, with her accent it sounded like
Henretta Lektrick Poywurr Cuhmpuhnnay.
As if invoked by her voice, the electricity came back on. “Oh, there it is back again. Told you there’s no need for worries.”

“Oh,” the Gray Man said, with a glance at the crackling fluorescent lights overhead, “I wasn’t worried.”

She chuckled. It was a deeply satisfied and knowing sort of laugh. “I reckon not.”

The tuna fish was good. It was the only one he’d had since he arrived, however, so he couldn’t say whether it was the best in town.

He kept driving. Victorians turned into fields as he crossed over the interstate, past steepled barns and white farmhouses, active goats and deceased pickup trucks. Everything was painted in the same color palette, ruddy greens and deep-green reds; even the rubbish looked as if it had grown from the sloping hills. Only the mountains looked out of place, blue ghosts on every horizon.

Much to the Gray Man’s surprise, Greenmantle’s meters seemed to be coming to a consensus.

They led him onto another back road. Ramblers and mailboxes poked through the soil.

His phone rang.

It was his brother.

The Gray Man’s stomach wrung itself out.

The phone rang only twice.
Missed call
. His brother had never intended for him to pick up; he merely wanted this: the Gray Man stopping the car, wondering if he was supposed to return the call. Wondering if his brother was going to call back. Untangling the wired threads in his gut.