Ronan, silent to this point, said, “I’m going to kill him.”
Gansey had a sudden, terrible vision of it: Ronan’s hands painted with blood, his eyes blank and unknowable, a corpse at his feet. It was a savage and unshakeable image, made worse because Gansey had seen enough of the pieces separately to know accurately how they’d appear added together.
The Gray Man turned swiftly.
“You will not,” he said, with as much force as Gansey had ever heard from him. “Do you hear me? You cannot.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Ronan asked. His voice was low and dangerous; infinitely more threatening than if he’d snarled his response.
“Colin Greenmantle is untouchable,” the Gray Man said. He spread his fingers wide, hand hanging in the air. “He is a spider clinging in a web. Every leg touches a thread, and if anything happens to the spider, hell rains down.”
Ronan said, “I already lived through hell.”
“You have no idea what hell is,” the Gray Man said, but not unkindly. “Do you think you’re the first son to want revenge? Do you think your father was the first he had killed? And yet Greenmantle is alive and untouched. Because we all know how it works. Before coming down here from Boston, he would have attached sixteen little threads to people like me, to computer programs, to bank accounts. The spider dies, the web twitches, suddenly your accounts are wiped clean, your younger brother becomes an amputee, your older brother dies behind the wheel of a car in D.C., Mrs. Gansey’s campaign immolates over faked scandalous photos, Adam’s scholarship vanishes, Blue loses an eye —”
“Stop,” Gansey said. He thought he might throw up. “Jesus, please stop.”
“I just want Ronan to understand that he cannot do anything stupid,” the Gray Man said. “To kill Greenmantle is to end your lives as you know it. And what good will revenge do you?”
“Says the killer,” Ronan said. Now his snarl was back, which meant he was hurting.
“Says the killer, yes, but I’m good at it,” Mr. Gray replied. “Even if he was not a spider in a dazzling web, would you be willing to go to prison for the satisfaction of killing him?”
Without a word, Ronan departed through the front door, slamming it. Gansey didn’t follow. He was torn between the impulse to mitigate Ronan’s pain and the one to let him stay hurt but cautious. Violence was a disease Gansey didn’t think he could catch. But all around him, his friends were slowly infected.
Persephone brought the Gray Man a drink; she had another one of her own. They knocked them back in unison.
“Want this?” Blue asked Gansey. She tipped the yogurt container to him so he could see that all that was left was the fruit in the bottom. He didn’t nod, but she brought it to him anyway, giving him her spoon. It had a grounding effect — the shocking slime of the blueberries, the sugar hitting his stomach, empty from school, the knowledge that her mouth had been the last thing to touch the spoon.
Blue watched him take the first bite and then turned quickly to Mr. Gray. “He’s the one who came for a reading last night, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Mr. Gray said. “As I thought. And now he is teaching Latin to the boys.”
“Why?” Gansey asked. “Why us?”
“Not you,” Mr. Gray replied. “Me. Clearly, he didn’t believe my story of fleeing with the Greywaren. He came to this house looking for Maura, because he thinks she is important to me. He has infiltrated the school because he has found out that you and I are acquainted. He wants me to know he knows I am still here and he wants me to know how much he knows about my life here.”
“What do we do?” Gansey asked. He was beginning to feel like this day had been a mistake; this was not the real first day of school; he should have stayed in bed until tomorrow and tried again.
“He’s not your problem; he’s mine,” Mr. Gray said tersely.
“He’s in my school, every day. Ronan has to look at his face every day. How is that not my problem?”
Mr. Gray said, “Because it’s not you that he wants. I will address it. Your problem is to let me address it.”
Gansey sank to a crouch. He believed in Mr. Gray’s intention, but not the statement. If he had learned anything in the last year, it was that everything in this town was tangled up.
Calla took Mr. Gray’s wrist and slowly pretended to break his arm. Shaking his head a little, he traded with her, taking her palm in one hand and her wrist in the other. He turned it with slow precision. A few times, so she could see how he was doing it. There was something satisfying about watching him competently demonstrate this act of pretend violence, something controlled and beautiful, like a dance. Everything about his clean, muscled appearance and clean, intentional process said, I’ve got it under control. Where it stood for everything.
How badly Gansey wanted to let Greenmantle be the Gray Man’s problem. But again he saw that narrowing black tunnel and the pit, and at the bottom, a grave.
Calla cursed and held her shoulder.
“Sorry,” Mr. Gray said. To Gansey, “I’ll find out what he wants.”
“Don’t get killed,” Blue said immediately.
“I don’t intend to.”
Persephone finally spoke up in her tiny voice. “I think it’s good you’ve nearly found that king.”
Gansey realized she was speaking to him. “Have I?”
“Surely,” Calla said. “It’s taken you long enough.”
That night, not long after he returned from work, Adam heard a knock at his church apartment door. When he answered it, he was first surprised that the person on the other side was real, and then he was surprised that the person was Gansey and not Ronan.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s late.”
“I know.” Gansey was in his overcoat and his wireframes; he had clearly tried to sleep and failed. “I’m sorry. Have you done your calculus yet? I can’t get number four.”
He did not say the word Greenmantle. There was nothing more to say until they heard more from Mr. Gray.
“I have, but you can look at it.” Adam let Gansey in, sweeping the letter — the letter — behind the little shelf by the door as he did. Unlike Ronan, Gansey appeared out of place inside the apartment. The hipped ceiling cramped him more; the cracks in the plaster were etched more starkly; the utilitarian plastic bins containing Adam’s things seemed even more bereft of aesthetic charm. Gansey belonged with old things, but this place was not just old, but cheap.
The letter was hidden, yes? It was. Adam could feel the outline of it glowing from behind the shelf. Gansey would pity him and hire a lawyer and Adam would feel like dirt and then they would fight —
We will not fight.
Gansey tossed off his overcoat — beneath it, he was in a T-shirt and pajama pants, which was possibly the most metaphorical outfit Adam could imagine for his friend, unless he could manage to wear another overcoat beneath the T-shirt, and another set of pajamas beneath that second overcoat, so on and so on, an endless matryoshka of Ganseys — and cast himself onto the end of the bed.
“Mom called,” Gansey said. “Do I want to meet the governor the weekend after next because it would be great if I did and did I want to bring my friends? No, Mother, I would in fact not like that. Helen will be there! Yes, Mother, I assumed so but hardly consider it a plus, as I am worried she will kidnap Adam. Fine, fine, you don’t have to, I know you’re busy but oh dot dot dot et cetera et cetera. Oh, I forgot, I brought payment for my intrusion.”