“What a coincidence,” the Gray Man said genially. “So do I.”
He watched with an attentiveness both polite and flattering as Maura scraped her cards up from the sofa cushions. He leaned to pick up one she had missed.
“This fellow looks unhappy,” he observed. The art depicted a man stuck with ten swords. The victim lay on his face, as most people did after being stuck with ten swords.
“That’s a fellow after Calla’s done with him,” Maura said. “Good news for him is that the tens represent the end of a cycle. This card represents the absolute worst it’ll get.”
“Does seem like there’s not much worse than ten points in your back and dust in your mouth,” the Gray Man agreed.
“Look,” Maura said, “his face looks a little like yours.”
The Gray Man studied the card. He placed his finger on the blade rammed through the victim’s back. “And that sword looks a little like you.”
He glanced at Maura. It was a glance. She glanced back. It was also a glance.
“Well,” said Calla.
“Would you do the honor, Mr. Gray?” Maura handed him the deck of cards. “You’ll have to ask ‘top or bottom.’”
Mr. Gray gravely accepted the responsibility. He asked Calla, “Top or bottom?”
“Three of cups. And top, of course,” Calla said, her smile plum and wicked. “The only place to be.”
Mr. Gray removed the card from the top and turned it over. Of course it was the three of cups.
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Maura grinned. She said, “Empress, bottom.”
The Gray Man removed the card from the bottom and showed it to the room. The Empress’s gown was suggested with a liberal swipe of charcoal, and her crown was studded with inky fruits or jewels.
The Gray Man clapped slowly.
“Four of wands, bottom,” Calla said.
“Ten of coins, top,” Maura shot back.
“Ace of cups, bottom,” Calla fired out.
Maura slapped the arm of the sofa. “The Sun, bottom.”
“Four of swords, top!” Calla returned, her mouth a deadly curl of purple. The Gray Man flipped the cards again and again, revealing the correct predictions.
Persephone’s quiet voice cut through Maura’s and Calla’s increasingly loud competition. “The king of swords.”
Everyone turned to look at Persephone, who sat with her knees together and her hands folded neatly in her lap. Occasionally, Persephone appeared both eight years old and eighty at once; now was one of those times.
The Gray Man’s hand hovered obediently over the deck. “Top or bottom?”
Persephone blinked. “Sixteen cards from the top, I believe.”
Maura and Calla both raised an eyebrow. Calla’s went up farther.
The Gray Man carefully counted the cards, double-checked his count, and then turned over the sixteenth card for the others to see. The king of swords, master of his own emotions, master of his own intellect, master of reason, gazed out at them, expression inscrutable.
“That’s Mr. Gray’s card,” Persephone said.
Maura asked, “Are you sure?” At a wordless agreement from Persephone, Maura turned to the Gray Man. “Do you think that’s your card?”
The Gray Man turned the card one way and another, as if it would reveal its secrets to him. “I don’t know much about tarot. Is it a terrible card?”
“No card is a terrible card,” Maura said. She eyed the Gray Man, fitting the king of swords into the man before her. “And the interpretation can be very different at each reading. But. . . the king of swords is a powerful card. He’s strong, but impartial— cold. He is very, very good about making decisions based upon facts instead of emotion. No, it’s not a terrible card. But I’m picking up something else off it. Something like . . .”
“Violence,” Calla finished.
It was a word that had an immediate effect on everyone in the room. For Maura, Persephone, and Calla, memories of Maura’s half sister came in first as they were the most recent, followed by the boy Gansey and his broken thumb. The Gray Man recalled Declan Lynch’s swimming gaze, blood streaming from his nose. Violence.
“Yes, violence,” Maura said. “Is that what you meant, Persephone? Yes.”
All three of them had leaned unconsciously toward one another. Sometimes Maura, Persephone, and Calla seemed more like three parts of the same entity instead of three separate women. The three of them turned as one to Mr. Gray.
He admitted, “My work is sometimes violent.”
“I thought you said you were researching a novel.” Maura’s tone was more than a little prickly.
“That was a lie,” the Gray Man said. “I’m sorry. I had to think quickly when you said I couldn’t have a reading.”
“So what’s the truth?”
“I’m a hit man.”
This confession ushered in several moments of silence. The Gray Man’s answer seemed very flippant but his voice suggested otherwise. It was the sort of answer that required an immediate clarification or qualification, but he offered nothing.
Maura said, “That’s not very funny.”
“No, it’s not,” the Gray Man agreed.
Everyone in the room was waiting for Maura’s response. She asked, “And does work bring you here tonight?”
“Just research.”
“For work?”
Unperturbed, Mr. Gray said, “Everything is research for work. In its way.”
He did absolutely nothing to make his words easier to accept. It was impossible to tell if he was asking them to believe him, or to humor him, or to fear him. He merely laid out this confession and waited.
Finally, Maura said, “Might be nice to have someone deadlier than Calla in the room for a change.”
She glanced at him. He glanced back. There was a wordless, tacit agreement in it.
They all had another drink. The Gray Man asked knowledgeable questions full of wry humor. Some time later, he stood, took everyone’s empty glasses to the kitchen, and excused himself with a glance at his watch. “Not that I wouldn’t like to stay.”
Then he asked if he could return later in the week.
And Maura said yes.
After he had gone, Calla looked through his wallet, which she had stolen as he left. “The ID is fake,” she remarked, closing the billfold and stuffing it into the couch cushions where he had been sitting. “But he’ll miss his credit cards. Why ever did you say yes?”