“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.”
15
Adam was alone in the shop.
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.
He wouldn’t let it.
Don’t fight with Gansey. Don’t fight with Blue. Don’t fight with Gansey. 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.