“But are we sure?” Malory asked. “Do we know where he was buried? That he was buried?”
“Or if he was just made into nightgowns, you mean?” Gansey caught sight of Blue then, and he rewarded her with his best smile — not his polished one, but the more foolish number that meant he was excited. “Hallo, Jane. Tell me what Iolo Goch means to you.”
Blue pulled her thoughts from Ronan’s mask and Noah and school. “A chest cold?”
“Glendower’s closest poet,” Gansey corrected. “Also, very funny.”
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” he replied, but he sounded cheerful about it.
Malory lowered his mass onto the leather couch. The Dog lay on top of him. It didn’t seem as if it would be very comfortable; the Dog draped over the professor like a slip cloth over a chair. But Malory merely closed his eyes and stroked him in an uncharacteristic show of affection. “Gansey, I perish for a cup of tea. Can such a thing be had in this place? I cannot possibly hope to survive this jet lag without a cup of tea.”
“I got tea just for you,” Gansey said. “I’ll make some.”
“Please not with loo water,” Malory called after him, not opening his eyes. The Dog kept lying on him.
For an overwhelming moment, Blue was afraid she was going to be unable to prevent herself from asking what the Dog was for. Instead, she followed Gansey back to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry.
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.