He rummaged through the cluttered shelves. “We were just talking about the mechanics of bringing Glendower over here. The books say he traveled with mages — are they the ones who put him to sleep? Did he want it? Was he sleeping before he left, or did he fall asleep here?”
It suddenly seemed like a lonesome thing to be buried a sea away from your home, like being shot off into space. “Iolo Goch was one of the mages?”
“No, just a poet. You heard Malory in the car. They were very poetlitical — poet — political.” Gansey laughed at his own stumble. “Poets were political. I know that’s not really a tongue twister. I’ve been listening to Malory all day. P-p-political. Poets. Iolo composed these really flattering poems about Glendower’s past prowess and his house and lands. His family. And such. Oh, what am I even looking for here?”
He paused to locate a tiny microwave. He examined the interior of a mug before filling it. Pulling a mint leaf from his pocket to suck on, he spoke around it as the water heated. “Really, if Glendower were Robin Hood, Iolo Goch would have been … that other guy.”
“Maid Marian,” Blue said. “Little John.”
Gansey pointed at her. “Like Batman and Robin. But he died in Wales. Are we to believe he returned to Wales after leaving Glendower here? No. I reject it.”
Blue loved this ponderous, scholarly Gansey, too involved with facts to consider how he appeared on the outside. She asked, “Glendower had a wife, right?”
“Died in the Tower of London.”
“Siblings?”
“Beheaded.”
“Children?”
“A million of them, but most imprisoned and dead, or just plain dead. He lost his entire family in the uprising.”
“Poet it is, then!”
Gansey asked, “Have you ever heard that rumor that if you boil water in the microwave it will explode when you touch it?”
“Has to be pure,” she replied. “Distilled water. Regular water won’t explode because of the minerals. You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”
A roaring sound interrupted them, sudden and complete. Blue started, but Gansey just cast his eyes upward. “It’s rain on the roof. Must be dumping.”
He turned, mug in hand, and suddenly they were an inch apart. She could smell the mint in his mouth. She saw his throat move as he swallowed.
She was furious at her body for betraying her, for wanting him differently than any of the other boys, for refusing to listen to her insistence that they were just friends.
“How was your first day of school, Jane?” he asked, voice different than before.
Mom’s gone. Noah exploded. I’m not going to college. I don’t want to go home where everything is strange, and I don’t want to go back to school where everything is normal.
“Oh, you know, public school,” she said, not meeting his eyes. She concentrated instead on Gansey’s neck, which was right at eye level, and on how his collar didn’t lay quite flat against his skin all the way around because of his Adam’s apple. “We just watched cartoons all day.”
She’d meant it to be wry, but she didn’t think it quite worked.
“We’ll find her,” he said, and her chest twinged again.
“I don’t know if she wants to be found.”
“Fair enough. Jane, if —” He stopped and swirled the tea. “I hope Malory doesn’t want any milk. I completely forgot.”
She wished she could still evoke that Blue who despised him. She wished she knew if Adam would feel terrible about this. She wished she knew if fighting this feeling would make Gansey’s foretold end destroy her any less.
She shut the microwave. Gansey left the room.
Back on the sofa, Malory viewed the tea as a man would view a death sentence.
“What else?” Gansey asked kindly.
Malory shoved the Dog off him. “I’d like a new hip. And better weather. Ah — however. This is your home and I know that I’m an outsider, so far be it from me to chastise or generally overstep. That being said, were you aware there was someone under …?”
He indicated the storm-dark area beneath the pool table. If Blue squinted, she could make out a form in the black.
“Noah,” Gansey said. “Come out at once.”
“No,” Noah replied.
“Well! I see you two know each other and all is well,” Malory said, in the voice of someone who sensed trouble coming and hadn’t brought an umbrella. “I will be in my room nursing my jet lag.”
After he had retreated, Blue said with exasperation, “Noah! I called and called for you.”
Noah remained where he was, arms hugged around his body. He looked markedly less alive than he had earlier; there was something smudgy about his eyes, something uncertain about his edges. It was kind of hard to look at the place where Noah stopped and the shadow below him began. Something unpleasant happened in Blue’s throat when she tried to make out what was off about his face.
“I’m tired of it,” Noah said.
“Tired of what?” Gansey asked, voice kind.
“Decaying.”
He had been crying. That was what was wrong with his face, Blue realized. Nothing supernatural.
“Oh, Noah,” she said, crouching down.
“What can I do?” Gansey asked. “We. What can we do?”
Noah shrugged in a watery way.
Blue was suddenly desperately afraid that Noah might want to actually die. This seemed like something most ghosts wanted — to be laid to rest. It was a dreadful notion, a forever good-bye. Her selfishness warred mightily with every bit of ethics she had ever learned from the women of her family.
Blast. She had to.
She asked, “Do you want us to find a way to, um, to properly, to lay …”
Before she’d even finished, Noah started shaking his head. He hugged his legs closer. “No. Nonono.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Blue said, because it sounded like what her mother would have said. She was certain her mother would have added something comforting about the afterlife, but she was unable, this time, to sound comforting when she herself wanted to be comforted. Lamely, she finished, “You don’t have to be afraid.”
“You don’t know!” Noah said, vaguely hysterical. “You don’t know!”
She stretched out a hand. “Okay, hey —”
Noah repeated, “You don’t know!”
“We can talk this out,” Gansey said, as if a decaying soul was something that could be solved through conversation.
“You don’t know! You don’t know!”
Noah was standing. It was impossible, because there was not room beneath the pool table for him to stand. But he was somehow escaping on either side, surrounding Gansey and Blue. The maps fluttered frantically against the green surface. A flock of dust wads tumbled from beneath the table and raced down the streets of Gansey’s miniature model of Henrietta. The desk lamp flickered.
The temperature dropped.
Blue saw Gansey’s eyes widen behind a cloud of his own breath.
“Noah,” Blue warned. Her head felt swimmy as Noah robbed her of energy. She caught a whiff, strangely, of the old-carpet smell of the guidance counselor’s office, and then the living, green scent of Cabeswater. “This isn’t you!”