There were problems with mealtimes, too: For Gwenllian, every time was mealtime. She seemed to have neither sense of fullness nor taste, and would often combine foods in manners that struck Blue as problematic. She didn’t believe in telling people how to live their lives (well, maybe a little), but it was hard to stand by and watch Gwenllian spread peanut butter on a cold hot dog.
And there was the crazy part. Forty percent of what came out of her mouth came out in song, and the rest was a varied mixture of chanting, screaming, mocking, and creepy whisper. She climbed on the roof, she talked to the tree in the backyard, and she stood on furniture. She often put things in her hair for later retrieval, and then seemed to forget they were there. In very short order, her enormous tangle of hair became a vertical repository for pencils, leaves, tissues, and matches.
“We could cut it,” Orla suggested at one point.
Persephone said, “I do not think that is a decision one human can make for another human.”
Orla asked, “Even if that other human looks like a hobo?”
It was a point on which Blue and Orla agreed.
The worst part of it was that Gansey had offered to take her away — kept offering to take her away — and Persephone insisted Gwenllian stay with them.
“It takes longer than a weekend to undo centuries of damage,” Persephone said.
“Centuries of damage are being incurred in just a weekend,” Calla replied.
“She’s a very gifted psychic,” Persephone said mildly. “Eventually she will earn her keep.”
“And pay for my therapy,” Blue added.
“Good one,” Orla said. To reward Blue for her excellent comeback, she painted Blue’s fingernails to match the Pig, a polish color, she informed Blue, that was called Belligerent Candy.
Gansey kept trying to talk with Gwenllian, but she was always sassily deferential when he came to the house.
On top of that, Gansey had some sort of school commitment that he was cagey about, Ronan and Adam kept vanishing places together, and Noah couldn’t or wouldn’t come into 300 Fox Way.
Blue was feeling a little as if she had been locked into a madhouse.
Mom, it’s time for you to come home.
The Gray Man came over midweek, much to her gratitude.
“It’s me,” he called down the hallway as he stepped inside. Blue could see him from her homework post at the kitchen table; he was tidy and dangerous looking in a gray shirt and slacks. He looked more optimistic than the last time she had seen him.
Gwenllian, who was examining the roaring vacuum cleaner but not vacuuming with it, spotted him, too. “Hello, handsome sword! Have you killed anyone today?”
“One sword knows another,” he told her mildly, placing his car keys in his pocket. “Have you killed anyone?”
She was so delighted that she turned off the vacuum cleaner so that her insane smile could be the loudest thing in the hall.
“Mr. Gray, leave her alone and come get a cup of tea,” Blue called from the kitchen table. “You’ll make her start singing again.”
The Gray Man glanced over his shoulder at Gwenllian as he came into the kitchen and did as Blue instructed, taking a few minutes to find a tea more likely to provoke sanguinity than loose stools.
“I have been employed by your friends Mr. Parrish and Mr. Lynch,” he said as he sat down opposite Blue. So this is where those two were going! He tapped one of her algebra problems until she dragged it back to her and reworked it correctly. “They have a plan for Greenmantle, and it seems quite promising.”
“What is it?”
“I would rather not tell you, as it is better the fewer people know it. Also, it is not polite table conversation,” Mr. Gray said. “I have a question for you. Your cursed cave. Do you think it is the sort of place you could hide a body? Or at least part of one?”
Blue narrowed her eyes. “There was lots of room in that cave for lots of things. Whose body? Which part?”
Gwenllian instantly manifested in the kitchen, dragging the vacuum cleaner behind her like a reluctantly walked dog. “What about the curse, lily?”
“I thought you were the curse,” Blue replied.
“Probably,” Gwenllian said carelessly. “What else is there but I? I’m known to Welshmen free, lovely Gwen, lovely Gwen, from Gower to Anglesey, lovely Gwen, oh Gwen the dead!”
Blue said, “I told you she would start singing.”
But the Gray Man just raised his eyebrows. “Weapons and poetry go hand in hand.”
Gwenllian drew herself up. “What a cunning weapon you are. A poet is how I ended up in that cave.”
“Is it a good story?” the Gray Man asked.
“Oh, it is the finest.”
Blue watched the exchange with a bit of awe. Somewhere there was a lesson in this.
The Gray Man took a sip of his tea. “You should sing it for us.”
And unbelievably, she did.
She sang a furious little song about Glendower’s poet Iolo Goch, and how he whispered war in her father’s ear (she whispered this part into Blue’s ear) and so, as blood soaked into the ground of Wales, Gwenllian did her level best to stab him to death.
“Was he sleeping?” the Gray Man asked with professional interest.
Gwenllian laughed for about a minute. Then she said, “It was at dinner. What a lovely meal he would’ve been!”
Then she spit in the Gray Man’s tea, but it seemed to have more to do with Iolo Goch than Mr. Gray.
He sighed and pushed the cup away. “So they sentenced you to that cave.”
“It was that or hanging! And I chose hanging, so they gave me the false grave instead.”
Blue squinted at Gwenllian, trying to imagine her as she had been six centuries before. A young woman, Orla’s age, the daughter of a nobleman, a witch in an age when witches were not always the best thing to be. Surrounded by war, and doing her best to stop it.
Blue wondered if she would have the courage to stab someone if she thought it would save lives.
Gwenllian dragged the vacuum cleaner back into the hall without any sort of good-bye.
“Gwenllian and vacuum, exit stage right,” Blue said.
The Gray Man pushed his tea even farther away. “Do you think you might have time to show me this cave you pulled her from? Just so I know where it is, as an option?”
The idea of leaving the house was incredibly appealing. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to see Jesse again, either. And although she was annoyed that Adam and Ronan hadn’t trusted her with whatever their Greenmantle plan was, she wanted to be helpful anyway. “Possibly. Will you feed me?”
“I won’t even spit in it.”
Blue warned Calla that she was leaving the house with a hit man, and then Mr. Gray took her to the downtown drugstore for a tuna fish sandwich (BEST TUNA FISH IN TOWN!) before driving out of Henrietta. The car zoomed and darted through the darkness in a way that seemed slightly out of the Gray Man’s control.
“This car is really terrible,” Blue said.
This was allowed, as the car was not really Mr. Gray’s. It was a hand-me-down white Mitsubishi of the sort that young men with big dreams and egos normally drove. It sported a custom license plate that read THIEF.
“It grows on you,” Mr. Gray said. He paused. “Like a cancer.”