Blue Lily, Lily Blue (9 page)

his one says ‘grass-fed organic cheddar from New Zealand,’” said Greenmantle, shutting the door behind him. The empty hall immediately fell dark without the

evening light from outside. Holding his parcel close to his face in order to see the label, and speaking loudly to be heard through the house, he continued, “‘A mild cheddar cheese made from grass-fed, farm-fresh organic milk. Ingredients: cow’s milk, salt, starter cultures’ — so, like, Dave Brubeck, Warhol, things like that — ‘coagulating enzyme,’ oh, that is mainstream media.”

He dropped his coat on the chair by the front door, and then, after a moment’s consideration, his pants as well. Piper’s lust was like a single bear trap in the wilderness. It was nearly impossible to find if you were looking for it, but it was something you wanted to be prepared for if you stepped into it by accident.

“I hope that silence means you are getting the crackers out.” Greenmantle stepped into the kitchen. Cracker-fetching was not, in fact, the cause of Piper’s silence. She stood in the dining area with a pissy look on her face and pink yoga pants on her legs and a gun pointed to her head.

Greenmantle’s former employee, the Gray Man, was the holder of said gun. Both he and Piper were silhouetted against the window that looked into the cow pasture. The Gray Man looked good, healthy, tan, as if Henrietta and mutiny suited him. Piper looked angry, not at the Gray Man, but at Greenmantle.

It had taken the Gray Man longer to appear than Greenmantle had expected.
Well, at least he was here now.
“I guess I’ll just get the crackers myself, then,” Greenmantle said, dropping the block of cheese on the center island. “Sorry I’m not dressed for company.”
“Don’t move,” the Gray Man said, cocking his chin toward the gun in his hand. It was black and shocking-looking, although Greenmantle had no idea what kind it was. The silvery ones looked less dangerous to him, although he supposed that was a fallacy that could get him into trouble. “Do not move.”
“Oh,
stop
,” Greenmantle said with exasperation, turning to get the cutting board from the counter. “You’re not going to shoot Piper.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Greenmantle fetched the crackers and a plate and a knife from the knife block and assembled them in a reasonable way. Squinting one eye closed, he held up a piece of cheese. “Do you think this is the right size? Should I slice it thinner? These are the crackers we have to go with it.”
“That piece is the size of an entire udder,” Piper said.
“I’m sorry, this knife isn’t very sharp. Mr. Gray. Seriously. The gun? Don’t you think it’s a bit theatrical?”
The Gray Man didn’t lower the weapon. It continued looking dangerous, as did the Gray Man. He was very good at looking scary, but his job description was to be the most intimidating thing in the room at any given time.
Mr. Gray asked, “Why are you here?”
Ah, and the dance began.
“Why
I’m
here
?
” Greenmantle said. “I’m more bewildered about why
you’re
here, since you specifically told me you had stolen my things and run away to West Palm Springs.”
What a day that had been, with Laumonier being Laumonier and those damn Peruvian textiles getting stopped in customs before he ever even got to see them and then the Gray Man shitting the bed.
“I told you the truth first. And that wasn’t good enough.”
Greenmantle butchered a piece of cheese. “Oh right, the . . . ‘truth.’ Which one was that again? Of course. The
truth
was the one where you told me that the artifact that had been rumored to be in this area for over a decade and had in fact been traced pretty conclusively back to that loser Niall Lynch
didn’t even exist
. I rejected that truth, as I recall. I’m trying to remember why I’d do such a thing. Do you remember, treasure, why I decided that was a lie?”
Piper clucked her tongue. “Because you’re not a total idiot?”
Greenmantle shook the knife in the direction of his wife. Spouse. Partner. Lover. “Yes, it was that one. I remember now.”
The Gray Man said, “I told you it wasn’t an artifact, and I stand by that. It’s a phenomenon, not a thing.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Gray,” Greenmantle said pleasantly. He put a cheese cracker in his mouth and spoke around it. “How do you think I knew what it was called? Niall Lynch told me. Fucking braggart. He thought he was invincible. Can I pour you some wine? I’ve got this abusive red I brought with me. It’s a thing of beauty.”
The Gray Man gave him a cool look. His hit man look. Greenmantle had always liked the idea of being a mysterious hit man, but that career goal invariably paled in comparison with his enjoyment of going out on the town and having people admire his reputation and driving his Audi with its custom plate (GRNMNTL) and going on cheese holidays in countries that put little hats over their vowels like so: ê.
“What do you want from me?” Mr. Gray asked.
Greenmantle replied, “If we had a time machine, I’d say you could zip back and do what I asked the first time, but I guess
that
ship has sailed off into the sea of clusterfuck. Do you want to open the wine? I always cork it. No? All right, then. I guess you understand that you’re going to have to be an example.”
He crossed the kitchen and placed a cheese cracker on Piper’s tongue. He offered one to the Gray Man, who neither accepted it nor lowered the gun. He continued, “I mean, what would the others think if I let you get away with this? Would not be good. So, although I’ve enjoyed our time together, I guess that means you’re probably going to have to be destroyed.”
“Then shoot me,” the Gray Man said without fear.
He really was a work of art, the Gray Man. A hit man action figure. All his nobility did was prove what the Greenmantle already knew: There were things in this town the Gray Man considered more important than his own life.
“Oh, Mr. Gray. Dean. You know better. No one remembers a corpse. I know you are aware of how this works.” Greenmantle cut another piece of cheese. “First I’m going to hang out here, just
observing
. Taking in the view. Figuring out the best breakfast places, seeing the tourist sights, watching you sleep, figuring out everything that’s important to you, finding that woman you fell in love with, planning the best way to make destroying all of the above publicly excruciating for you. Et cetera and so forth.”
“Give me another one, but not so much cheese,” Piper said.
He did so.
The Gray Man said, “If you are going to dismantle my life anyway, there’s no motivation for me to not just kill you and Piper right now.”
“Talk dirty to me,” Greenmantle said. “Like old times. There’s actually another option, Mr. Gray. You can give me the Greywaren, just like I asked, and then we’ll film a short video of you cutting off your own trigger finger, and then we’ll call it a day.”
He held up his hands like Lady Justice, weighing the cheese in one hand with the knife in the other. “Either/or.”
“And if there’s no Greywaren?”
Greenmantle said, “Then there’s always the public destruction of everything you love. Options: the American Dream.”
The Gray Man seemed to be considering. Usually everyone else looked frightened by this point of this conversation, but it was possible the Gray Man didn’t have emotions.
“I’ll need to think about it.”
“Sure you do,” Greenmantle said. “Shall I give you a week? No, nine days. Nine’s very three plus three plus three. I’ll just keep looking around while you decide. Thanks for dropping by.”
The Gray Man backed away from Piper, gun still pointed at her, and then disappeared through a door behind her. The room was silent.
“Isn’t that a closet?” Greenmantle asked.
“It’s the door to the garage, you piece of shit,” Piper said, with characteristic affection. “Now I’ve missed yoga, and what am I going to tell them? Oh, I had a gun pointed to my head. Also, I told you to throw out those boxers months ago. The band’s all stretched out.”
“That was me,” he said. “I stretched it. Get it?”
Piper’s voice remained as the rest of her left. “I’m tired of your hobbies. This is the worst vacation I’ve ever been on.”

In the still-rainy evening, it grew prematurely dark inside, the corners of the garage consumed by a gloom that the fluorescents overhead couldn’t reach. He had spent countless hours working there, though, so his hands knew where to find things even when his eyes did not.

Now he was stretched over the engine of an old Pontiac, the grimy radio on the shop shelves keeping him company. Boyd had set him on the task of changing a head gasket and closing up shop. Dinner, he said, was for old men like him. The long monotony of head gaskets was for young men like Adam.

It wasn’t difficult work, which was worse, in a way, because his unoccupied mind whirred. Even as he mentally went over the details of the major events of 1920s United States history for a quiz, he had plenty of leftover brainpower to consider how his back ached from leaning over the engine, the grease he could feel in his ear, the frustration of this rusted head stud, the proximity of his court date, and the presence of others here on the ley line.

He wondered if Gansey and the others had really gone out in the rain to explore Coopers Mountain. Part of him hoped that they hadn’t, though he tried his best to kill the baser emotions regarding his friends— if he let them run wild, he would be jealous of Ronan, jealous of Blue, jealous of Gansey with either of the other two. Any combination that didn’t involve Adam would provoke a degree of discomfort, if he let it.

Don’t fight with Blue.
There was no point telling himself not to fight with Ronan.
They would fight again, because Ronan was still breathing. Outside the shop, the wind blew, spattering rain against the
small, streaky windows of the garage doors. Dry leaves rustled up
against the walls and skittered away. It was that time of year
when it could be hot or cold from day to day; it was neither summer nor fall. An in-between, liminal time. A border.
As he shifted to better reach the engine block, he felt a cool
breeze around his ankles, playing just inside the cuff of his
slacks. His hands ached; they were even more chapped. When he
was a kid, he used to lick the back of them, not realizing at first
that it made them even more chapped in the long run. It had
been a hard habit to break. Even now, as they stung, he resisted
the impulse to relieve the discomfort for just a second. Outside, the wind blew again, more leaves rattling the windows. Inside, something shifted and clicked. Something settling
in the garbage can, maybe.
Adam rubbed his arm against his cheek, realizing only as he
did it that his arm had a smear of grease on it. There was no
point wiping off his face, though, until he was done for the night. There was another click from inside the shop. He paused in
his work, wrench hovered above the engine, top of his skull
touching the open hood overhead. Something seemed different,
but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
The radio was no longer playing.
Adam warily eyed the old radio. He could just see it, two
bays away, on the other side of the Pontiac and a pickup truck
and a little Toyota. The power light was off; possibly it had
finally died.
But still, Adam asked the empty garage, “Noah?” It was unlike Noah to be intentionally scary, but Noah had
been less
Noah
than usual lately. Less Noah and more dead. Something popped.
It took Adam a second to realize that it was the portable
work light he had hanging from the edge of the hood. It had
gone dark.
“Noah? Is that you?”
Adam suddenly had the terrible and looming
feeling
that
something was behind him, watching him behind his back. Something close enough to blow a chill around his ankles again.
Something big enough to block out some of the light from the
incandescent bulb by the side door.
It was not Noah.
Outside, thunder suddenly crashed. Adam broke. He scrambled out from beneath the hood, spinning, pressed back against
the car.
There was nothing there but concrete block, calendars, tools
on walls, posters. But one of the wrenches on the tool wall was
swinging. The other side of the garage was dim in a way that
Adam couldn’t remember it being.
Go away, go away —
Something touched the back of his neck.
He closed his eyes.
All at once, Adam understood. This was Cabeswater, trying
to make itself understood. Persephone had been working with
him to improve their communication: Normally, he asked it each
morning what it needed, while he flipped tarot cards or scryed
into his bathroom sink. But he hadn’t asked since school began. So now it forced him to listen.
Cabeswater
, Persephone had said once, quiet and stern,
is not the
boss of you.
Something clattered on the table by the opposite wall. Adam said, “Wait!”
He dove for his messenger bag as the room darkened further.
His fingers found his notebooks, textbooks, envelopes, pens, the
forgotten candy bar. Something else fell over, closer by. For an
airless minute he thought he had left the tarot cards back in the
apartment.
It won’t hurt me. This will be scary, but it won’t hurt me
— But fear hurt, too.
Just because it tantrums
, Persephone had added,
doesn’t make it more
right than you.
The cards. Crouching by his bag, Adam snatched out the
velvet bag and tumbled the deck into his hands. Persephone had
been teaching him all kinds of meditation methods, but there
would be no meditating now. Shivering, he shuffled the deck as
oil in the pan beneath the Pontiac began to tip, a furious ocean. He slapped down three cards on the concrete floor.
Death, the
Empress, the Devil.
Think, Adam, think, get inside it —
The closest fluorescent buzzed harshly, suddenly over-bright,
then just as suddenly out.
Adam’s subconscious fled through Cabeswater’s conscious
ness, both of them tangled up in this strange bargain he’d made.
Death, the Empress, the Devil.
Three sleepers, yes, yes, he knew that,
but they only needed one, and anyway, what did Cabeswater care
about who was sleeping on the ley line, what did it
need
from Adam? His mind focused on a branched thought, traveled along a
limb, to a trunk, down to roots, into the ground. In that darkness and dirt and rock, he saw the ley line. Finally, he saw the
connection and where it broke and understood what Cabeswater
was asking him to repair. Relief washed over him.
“I get it,” he said out loud, falling back, catching himself on
the cold concrete. “I’ll do it this week.”
The shop immediately returned to normal. The radio had
resumed playing; Adam hadn’t heard the moment it had started
up again. Although Cabeswater’s means of communication could
be terrifying — apparitions, black dogs, howling winds, faces in
mirrors — the point was never to intimidate. He knew that. But
it was hard to remember it as the walls shifted and water beaded
on the inside of windows and imaginary women sobbed in his ear. It always stopped as soon as Adam understood. It only ever
wanted him to understand.
He heaved a big breath next to his tarot cards. Time to get
back to work.
But.
He heard something. There should not have been anything,
not anymore.
But something was scraping on the shop door. It was a dry,
thin noise, like paper tearing. A claw. A nail.
But he’d
understood
. He’d promised to do the work. He wanted to tell himself that it was only a leaf or a branch.
Something ordinary.
But Henrietta was no longer someplace ordinary.
He
was no
longer someone ordinary.
“I said I understood,” Adam said. “I
get
it. This week. Does
it need to be sooner?”
There was no response from within the garage, but outside,
something light and uneasy moved past one of the windows, high
off the ground. There was just enough light to see its scales. Scales.
Adam’s pulse sped, his heart beating so hard that it hurt. Surely Cabeswater believed him; he had never let it down
before. There were not rules, but there was trust.
A noise came just outside the door:
tck-tck-tck-tck.
The garage door hurtled open. It sounded like a freight train
as it roared along its tracks on the ceiling.
In the grim evening, in the deep-blue-black rain of it, a pale
monster reared. It was needle claws and savage beaks, ragged
wings and greasy scales. It was so against everything that was real
that it was hard to even see it truly.
Terror owned Adam. The old terror, the one that was just as
much confusion and betrayal as fear itself.
He had done everything right. Why was this still happening
if he’d done everything right?
The horror of an animal took a scratching, slithering step
toward Adam.
“Shoo, you ugly bastard,” said Ronan Lynch.
He stepped out of the rain and into the shop; he had been
hidden in the dark in his jacket and his dark jeans. Chainsaw clung to his shoulder. Ronan lifted a hand to the white beast as if casting off a ship. The creature drew its head back, side-by-side
beaks parting.
“Go on,” Ronan said, unafraid.
It took flight.
Because it was not just any monster; it was Ronan Lynch’s
monster. A night horror brought to vicious life. It floated up into
the dark, strangely graceful once its face was out of sight. “Damn, Ronan, damn,” Adam gasped, ducking his head.
“Oh, God. You scared the shit out of me.”
Ronan smirked. He didn’t understand that Adam’s heart was
actually going to explode. Adam wrapped his arms over the back
of his neck, curling into a ball on the concrete, waiting to feel
like he wasn’t going to die.
He heard the garage door rattle closed again. The temperature rose immediately as the wind was locked out.
A boot shoved Adam’s knee.
“Get up.”
“You asshole,” Adam muttered, still not lifting his head. “Get up.”
“It wasn’t going to hurt you. I don’t know why you’re pissing
yourself.”
Adam uncurled. He was slowly getting enough function back
to be more annoyed than afraid. He pushed to his feet. “There’s
more going on in the world than just you, Lynch.”
Ronan turned his head sideways to read the cards.
“What’s this?”
“Cabeswater.”
“What the fuck is wrong with your face?”
Adam didn’t reply to this. “Why was it with you?” “I was at the Barns. It followed the car.” Ronan prowled
around the Pontiac, peering at the process inside with a disinterested lack of comprehension. Chainsaw flapped down to crouch
on the engine block, head ducked.
“Don’t,” Ronan warned. “That’s toxic.”
Adam wanted to ask what it was that Ronan had been doing
at the Barns all of these days and evenings, but he didn’t press.
The Barns was Ronan’s family business, and family was private. “I saw your shitbox in the lot on the way back,” Ronan said.
“And I figured, anything to avoid Malory for a few more
minutes.”
“Touch i ng.”
“I know. What do you think of the idea of researching
Greenmantle’s spiderweb? Possible? Not possible?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“Do it, then, for me,” Ronan said.
Adam laughed in disbelief. “Do it for you! Some of us have
homework, you know.”
“Homework! What’s the point?”
“Passing grades? Graduation?”
Ronan swore in a way that indicated further disinterest. “Are you just trying to make me angry?” Adam asked. Ronan picked up a socket from the worktable on the other
side of the Pontiac. He studied it in a way that suggested he contemplated its merit as a weapon. “Aglionby is kind of pointless
for people like us.”
“What is ‘people like us’?”
“I’m not going to use it,” Ronan said, “to get some job with
a tie —” He made a hanging motion above his neck, head tilted.
“And you could find a way to make the ley line work for you
since you’ve already bargained with it.”
Adam retorted, “What’s it you see me doing right now?
Where is it we even are?”
“Insultingly close to that Toyota is where
I
am.”
“I’m at work. Two hours from now, I’m going to my next job
for another four hours. If you’re trying to convince me that I
don’t need Aglionby after I have
killed
myself over it for a year,
you’re wasting your breath. Be a loser if you want to, but don’t
make me part of it to make yourself feel better.”
Ronan’s expression was cool over the top of the Pontiac.
“Well,” he said, “fuck you, Parrish.”
Adam just looked at him witheringly. “Do your homework.” “Whatever. I’m getting out of here.”
By the time Adam had leaned to get a rag to get the grease out
of his ear, the other boy had gone. It was as if he had taken all of
the noise of the garage with him; the wind had died down, so the
leaves no longer rattled, and the radio’s tuning had shifted so
that the station was ever so slightly fuzzy. It felt safer, but also
lonelier.
Later, Adam walked out through the cool, damp night to his
small, shitty car. As he sank into the driver’s seat, he found something already sitting on the seat.
He retrieved the object and held it up under the feeble interior
cab light. It was a small white plastic container. Adam twisted off the lid. Inside was a colorless lotion that smelled of mist and moss. Replacing the lid with a frown, he turned the container over, looking for more identifying features. On the bottom,
Ronan’s handwriting labeled it merely:
manibus.
For your hands.