The cows lowed curiously. Greenmantle experimentally flipped them off; their expressions didn’t change. “They’re here now.”
“Not the cows. I’m getting more life insurance for you and they need your blood. Friday. Be here.”
He ducked back inside and creaked down to the kitchen. Piper stood at the counter in a pink bra and underwear, chopping a mango. Her blond hair was a curtain around her head. She didn’t look up.
“I’m teaching Friday,” he said. “Think of the children. How much life insurance do we need?”
“I have certain standards of living I want to maintain if something terrible happens to you in the middle of the night.” She stabbed at him with the knife as he stole a piece of mango. He avoided a wound only because of his speed, not her lack of intention. “Just come right back after class. Don’t fritter around like you’ve been doing.”
“I’m not frittering,” Greenmantle said. “I am being quite purposeful.”
“Yes, I know, getting revenge, having testicles, whatnot.”
“You can help, if you want. You’re so much better with directions and things.”
She couldn’t quite hide that the appeal to her ego pleased her. “I can’t until Sunday. I have eyebrows on Wednesday. Bikini line on Thursday. Don’t come home on Saturday. Fritter on Saturday. I’m having people come sage the house.”
Greenmantle swiped another piece of mango; the knife came a little closer this time. “What does that mean?”
“I saw a flier. It’s getting rid of the bad energy in a place. This house is full of it.”
“That’s just you.”
She tossed the knife into the sink, where it would remain until it died. Piper was not much for housework. She had a very narrow skill set. She drifted toward the bedroom, on her way to have a bath or take a nap or start a war. “Don’t get us killed.”
“No one’s going to kill us,” Greenmantle said with certainty. “The Gray Man knows the rules. And the others …” He rinsed the knife and put it back in the knife block.
“The others what?”
He hadn’t realized she was still in the room. “Oh, I was just thinking about how I saw one of Niall Lynch’s sons today.”
“Was he a bastard, too?” Piper asked. Niall Lynch had been responsible for seven moderately unpleasant and four extremely unpleasant months in their collective lives.
“Probably. God, but he looked just like that fucker. I can’t wait to fail him. I wonder if he knows who I am. I wonder if I should tell him.”
“You are such a sadist,” she said carelessly.
He knocked his knuckles on the counter. “I’m going to go see which jaw those cows have teeth on.”
“Bottom. I saw it on Animal Planet.”
“I’m going anyway.”
As he tried to remember which door led to the mudroom, he heard her say something to him, but he didn’t catch it. He’d already dialed the number of a Belgian contact who was supposed to be looking into a fifteenth-century belt buckle that gave the wearer bad dreams. It was taking this guy forever to run it down. Too bad he couldn’t put the Gray Man on it; he’d been the best. Right up until he’d betrayed Greenmantle, of course.
He wondered how long it would take the Gray Man to come to him.
When Gansey and Ronan arrived at 300 Fox Way after school, Calla was being attacked in the living room by a man dressed entirely in gray. Blue, Persephone, and the furniture lurked against the walls. The man stood in perfect fighting form, legs a little wider than his shoulders, one foot forward. He had a solid grip on one of her hands. In Calla’s other hand she held a Manhattan, which she was trying not to spill.
The Gray Man was smiling thinly. He had extraordinary teeth.
The boys had entered without knocking, familiarly, and now Gansey eased his messenger bag to the old buckled floorboards and stood in the doorway to the living room. He wasn’t sure if the situation required intervention. The Gray Man was a (possibly retired) hit man. Nothing to be trifled with.
But still, if Calla wanted help, surely she would’ve put her drink down. Surely Blue would not be merely eating yogurt.
“Show me again,” Calla said. “I didn’t see it, I don’t think.”
“I’ll do it a little harder,” Mr. Gray replied, “but I don’t want to actually break your arm.”
“You were nowhere close,” she assured him. “Put your back into it.”
She sipped her Manhattan. He clasped her hand and wrist again, his skin pale against hers, and swiftly turned her entire arm. Her shoulder tipped downward sharply; she snatched at her drink and cackled. “That one I felt.”
“Now do it to me,” Mr. Gray said. “I’ll hold your drink.”
Putting his hands in his pockets, Gansey leaned against the doorjamb, watching. He knew instinctively that the dreadful news he carried was the sort of burden that would only get heavier once shared. He allowed himself a moment before the storm, letting the atmosphere of the house do its usual work on him. Unlike Monmouth Manufacturing, 300 Fox Way was cramped with extraneous people and whimsical objects. It hummed with conversation, music, telephones, old appliances. It was impossible to forget that all of these women were plugged into the past and tapped into the future, connected to everything in the world and to one another.
Gansey didn’t so much visit as get absorbed.
He loved it. He wanted to be a part of this world, even though he understood there were endless reasons why he could never be. Blue was the natural result of a home like this: confident, strange, credulous, curious. And here he was: neurotic, rarified, the product of something else entirely.
“What else?” Calla asked.
“I can show you how to unhinge my jaw, if you like,” Mr. Gray said kindly.
“Oh, yes, that — well, there is Richard Gansey the Third,” Calla said, catching sight of him. “And the snake. Where is Coca-Cola?”
“Work,” Gansey said. “He couldn’t get off.”
Persephone waved vaguely from behind a tall, light pink drink. Blue didn’t wave. She had seen Gansey’s expression.
“Does the name Colin Greenmantle mean anything to you?” Gansey asked Mr. Gray, though he already knew the answer.
Handing Calla her drink, the Gray Man wiped his palms on his slacks. The excellent teeth had vanished. “Colin Greenmantle was my employer.”
“He’s our new Latin teacher.”
“Oh, dear,” said Persephone. “Would you like a drink?”
Gansey realized she was talking to him. “Oh, no, thank you.”
“I need another one,” she said. “I’m making one for you, too, Mr. Gray.”
The Gray Man crossed to the window. His car, an unsubtle white Mitsubishi with an enormous spoiler, was parked outside, and both he and Ronan studied it pensively. After a very long moment, the Gray Man said, “He’s the man who asked me to kill Ronan’s father.”
Gansey knew that he could not be hurt by the casualness of the statement — Mr. Gray was a hit man, Niall Lynch had been his mark, he had not known Ronan then, and ethically Mr. Gray’s profession was probably no worse than a professional mercenary — but it did not change that Ronan’s father was dead. He reminded himself that the Gray Man had merely been the uncaring weapon. Greenmantle was the hand that wielded it.