The Raven Boys (6 page)

Gansey himself sat at an old desk with his back to them, gazing out an east-facing window and tapping a pen. His fat journal lay open near him, the pages fluttering with glued-in book passages and dark with notes. Adam was struck, as he occasionally was, by Gansey’s agelessness: an old man in a young body, or a young man in an old man’s life.

“It’s us,” Adam said.

When Gansey didn’t reply, Adam led the way to his oblivious friend. Girlfriend made a variety of noises that all began with the letter
O
. With a variety of cereal boxes, packing containers, and house paint, Gansey had built a knee-high replica of the town of Henrietta in the center of the room, and so the three visitors were forced to walk down Main Street in order to reach the desk. Adam knew the truth: These buildings were a symptom of Gansey’s insomnia. A new wall for every night awake.

Adam stopped just beside Gansey. The area around him smelled strongly of mint from the leaf he chewed absently.

Adam tapped the earbud in Gansey’s right ear and his friend startled.

Gansey jumped to his feet. “Why, hello.”

As always, there was an all-American war hero look to him, coded in his tousled brown hair, his summer-narrowed hazel eyes, the straight nose that ancient Anglo-Saxons had graciously passed on to him. Everything about him suggested valor and power and a firm handshake.

Girlfriend stared.

Adam remembered finding him intimidating when he first met him. There were two Ganseys: the one who lived inside his skin, and the one Gansey put on in the morning when he slid his wallet into the back pocket of his chinos. The former was troubled and passionate, with no discernible accent to Adam’s ears, and the latter bristled with latent power as he greeted people with the slippery, handsome accent of old Virginia money. It was a mystery to Adam how he could not seem to see both versions of Gansey at the same time.

“I didn’t hear you knock,” Gansey said unnecessarily. He knocked fists with Adam. Coming from Gansey, the gesture was at once charming and self-conscious, a borrowed phrase of a another language.

“Ashley, this is Gansey,” Declan said, in his pleasant, neutral voice. It was a voice that reported tornado damage and cold fronts. Narrated side effects of small blue pills. Explained the safety procedures of this 747 we’re flying in today. He added, “Dick Gansey.”

If Gansey was thinking Declan’s girlfriend was expendable, a renewable resource, he didn’t show it. He merely said, voice just a little chilly as he corrected, “As Declan knows, it’s my father who’s Dick. For me, it’s just Gansey.”

Ashley looked more shocked than amused.
“Dick?”

“Family name,” Gansey said, with the weary air of someone trotting out a tired joke. “I try my best to ignore it.”

“You’re Aglionby, right? This place is crazy. Why don’t you live on the school grounds?” Ashley asked.

“Because I own this building,” Gansey said. “It’s a better investment than paying for dorm housing. You can’t sell your dorm after you’re done with school. And where did that money go? Nowhere.”

Dick Gansey III hated to be told that he sounded like Dick Gansey II, but right then, he did. Both of them could trot out logic on a nice little leash, wearing a smart plaid jacket, when they wanted to.

“God,” Ashley remarked. She glanced at Adam. Her eyes didn’t linger, but still, he remembered the fray on the shoulder of his sweater.

Don’t pick at it. She’s not looking at it. No one else notices it.

With effort, Adam squared his shoulders and tried to inhabit the uniform as easily as Gansey or Ronan.

“Ash, you won’t believe why Gansey came here, of all places,” Declan said. “Tell her, Gansey.”

Gansey couldn’t resist talking about Glendower. He never could. He asked, “How much do you know about Welsh kings?”

Ashley pursed her lips, her fingers pinching the skin at the base of her throat. “Mmmm. Llewellyn? Glendower? English Marcher lords?”

The smile on Gansey’s face could have lit coal mines. Adam hadn’t known about Llewellyn or Glendower when he’d first met Gansey. Gansey had needed to describe how Owain Glynd
r — Owen Glendower to non-Welsh speakers — a medieval Welsh noble, had fought against the English for Welsh freedom and then, when capture seemed inevitable, disappeared from the island and from history altogether.

But Gansey never minded retelling the story. He’d related the events like they’d just happened, thrilled again by the magical signs that had accompanied Glendower’s birth, the rumors of his power of invisibility, the impossible victories against larger armies, and, finally, his mysterious escape. When Gansey spoke, Adam saw the green swell of the Welsh foothills, the wide glistening surface of the River Dee, the unforgiving northern mountains that Glendower vanished into. In Gansey’s stories, Owain Glynd
r could never die.

Listening to him tell the story now, it was clear to Adam that Glendower was more than a historical figure to Gansey. He was everything Gansey wished he could be: wise and brave, sure of his path, touched by the supernatural, respected by all, survived by his legacy.

Gansey, now fully warmed to his tale, enchanted again by the mystery of it, asked Ashley, “Have you heard of the legends of sleeping kings? The legends that heroes like Llewellyn and Glendower and Arthur aren’t really dead, but are instead sleeping in tombs, waiting to be woken up?”

Ashley blinked vapidly, then said, “Sounds like a metaphor.”

Perhaps she wasn’t as dumb as they’d thought.

“Maybe so,” Gansey said. He made a grandiose gesture to the maps on the wall, covered with the ley lines he believed Glendower had traveled along. Sweeping up the journal behind him, he paged through maps and notes as examples. “I think Glendower’s body was brought over to the New World. Specifically, here. Virginia. I want to find where he’s buried.”

To Adam’s relief, Gansey left out the part about how he believed the legends that said Glendower was still alive, centuries later. He left out the part about how he believed the eternally sleeping Glendower would grant a favor to whoever woke him. He left out the part about how it haunted him, this need to find this long-lost king. He left out the midnight phone calls to Adam when he couldn’t sleep for obsessing about his search. He left out the microfiche and the museums, the newspaper features and the metal detectors, the frequent flier miles and the battered foreign language phrase books.

And he left out all the parts about magic and the ley line.

“That’s crazy,” Ashley said. Her eyes were locked on the journal. “Why do you think he’s here?”

There were two possible versions of this answer. One was grounded merely in history and was infinitely suitable for general consumption. The other added divining rods and magic to the equation. Some days, some rotten days, Adam believed the former, and only barely. But being Gansey’s friend meant that more often he hoped for the latter. This was where Ronan, much to Adam’s dissatisfaction, excelled: His belief in the supernatural explanation was unwavering. Adam’s faith was imperfect.

Ashley, either because she was transient or because she’d been deemed skeptical, got the historical version. In his best professor voice, Gansey explained a bit about Welsh place names in the area, fifteenth-century artifacts found buried in Virginia soil, and historical support for an early, pre-Columbus Welsh landing in America.

Midway through the lecture, Noah — Monmouth Manufacturing’s reclusive third resident — emerged from the meticulous room directly next to the office Ronan had claimed as his bedroom. Noah’s bed shared the tiny space with a piece of mysterious equipment Adam guessed was some sort of printing press.

Noah, stepping farther into the room, didn’t so much smile at Ashley as goggle at her. He wasn’t the best with new people.

“That’s Noah,” Declan said. He said it in a way that confirmed Adam’s assumption: Monmouth Manufacturing and the boys who lived in it were a tourist stop for Declan and Ashley, a conversation piece for a later dinner.

Noah extended his hand.

“Oh! Your hand is
cold
.” Ashley cupped her fingers against her shirt to warm them.

“I’ve been dead for seven years,” Noah said. “That’s as warm as they get.”

Noah, unlike his pristine room, always seemed a little grubby. There was something out of place about his clothing, his mostly combed-back fair hair. His unkempt uniform always made Adam feel a little less like he stuck out. It was hard to feel like part of the Aglionby crowd when standing next to Gansey, whose crisp-as-George-Washington white collared shirt alone cost more than Adam’s bicycle (anyone who said you couldn’t tell the difference between a shirt from the mall and a shirt made by a clever Italian man had never seen the latter), or even Ronan, who had spent nine hundred dollars on a tattoo merely to piss off his brother.

Ashley’s obliging giggle was cut off as Ronan’s bedroom door opened. A cloud like there would never be sun again crossed Declan’s face.

Ronan and Declan Lynch were undeniably brothers, with the same dark brown hair and sharp nose, but Declan was solid where Ronan was brittle. Declan’s wide jaw and smile said,
Vote for me
while Ronan’s buzzed head and thin mouth warned that this species was poisonous.

“Ronan,” Declan said. On the phone with Adam earlier, he had asked,
When will Ronan
not
be available?
“I thought you had tennis.”

“I did,” Ronan replied.

There was a moment of silence, where Declan considered what he wanted to say in front of Ashley, and Ronan enjoyed the effect that awkward silence had on his brother. The two elder Lynch brothers — there were three total at Aglionby — had been at odds for as long as Adam had known them. Unlike most of the world, Gansey preferred Ronan to his elder brother Declan, and so the lines had been drawn. Adam suspected Gansey’s preference was because Ronan was earnest even if he was horrible, and with Gansey, honesty was golden.

Declan waited a second too long to speak, and Ronan crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve got quite the guy here, Ashley. You’ll have a great night with him and then some other girl can have a great night with him tomorrow.”

A fly buzzed against a windowpane far above their heads. Behind Ronan, his door, covered with photocopies of his speeding tickets, drifted closed.

Ashley’s mouth didn’t make an
O
so much as a sideways
D
. A second too late, Gansey punched Ronan in the arm.

“He’s sorry,” Gansey said.

Ashley’s mouth was slowly closing. She blinked at the map of Wales and back to Ronan. He’d chosen his weapon well: only the truth, untempered by kindness.

“My brother is —” said Declan. But he didn’t finish. There wasn’t anything he could say that Ronan hadn’t already proven. He said, “We’re going now. Ronan, I think you need to reconsider your —” But again, he had no words to end the sentence. His brother had taken all the catchy ones.

Declan snagged Ashley’s hand, jerking her attention away and toward the apartment door.

“Declan,” Gansey started.

“Don’t try to make this better,” Declan warned. As he pulled Ashley out into the tiny stairwell and down the stairs, Adam heard the beginnings of damage control:
He has problems, I told you, I tried to make sure he wouldn’t be here, he’s the one who found Dad, it messed him up, let’s go get seafood instead, don’t you think we look like lobster tonight? We do.

The moment the apartment door was closed, Gansey said, “Come on, Ronan.”

Ronan’s expression was still incendiary. His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn’t that he didn’t condone them; he couldn’t understand them.

“So he’s a man-whore. It’s not your problem,” Gansey said. Ronan was not really Gansey’s problem, either, in Adam’s opinion, but they’d had this argument before.

One of Ronan’s eyebrows was raised, sharp as a razor.

Gansey strapped his journal closed. “That doesn’t work on me.
She
had nothing to do with you and Declan.” He said
you and Declan
like it was a physical object, something you could pick up and look underneath. “You treated her badly. You made the rest of us look bad.”