Page 31 of The Raven King(The Raven Cycle 4)
This phone hadn’t rung in weeks. He thought he’d finally gotten out of it.
It rang.
He debated for a long time if it was more dangerous to pick it up or to ignore it.
He readjusted. He was no longer Declan Lynch, ingratiating political whippersnapper. He was Declan Lynch, Niall Lynch’s steel-jawed son.
It rang.
He picked it up.
“Lynch.”
“Consider this a courtesy call,” said the person on the other end of the phone. Music was playing in the background; some wailing string instrument.
A thin, viscous string of nerves stretched and dribbled down Declan’s neck.
He said, “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that’s all this is.”
“I would not expect any such thing,” replied the voice on the other line. It was clipped, amused, accented, invariably accompanied by music of some kind. Declan knew her only as Seondeok. She didn’t buy many artifacts, but when she did, there was no drama. The understanding was clear: Declan presented a magical object, Seondeok made an offer, Declan handed it over to her, and they parted ways until next time. At no point did Declan feel he might be capriciously stuffed in the trunk of his father’s car while listening to his father being roughed up, or handcuffed and forced to watch his parents’ barn get tossed in front of him, or beaten senseless and left half dead in his Aglionby dorm room.
Declan appreciated the little things.
But none of them could be trusted.
Caution, not paranoia.
“The situation is very volatile back in Henrietta,” Seondeok said. “I have heard it is no longer Greenmantle’s store.”
Volatile, yes. That was a word. Once upon a time, Niall Lynch had sold his “artifacts” to dealers all over the world. Somehow that had gotten narrowed down to Colin Greenmantle, Laumonier, and Seondeok. Declan assumed it was for security, but maybe he was giving his father too much credit. Maybe he’d just alienated everyone else.
“What else have you heard?” Declan asked, neither confirming nor denying.
“I am glad to hear you do not trust me,” Seondeok replied. “Your father talked too much.”
“I don’t appreciate the tone,” Declan said. His father had talked too much. But that was for a Lynch to say, not some Korean dealer of illegal magical antiquities.
The music in the background wailed in apology. “Yes, that was rude of me. The word is that someone may be selling something special in Henrietta,” Seondeok said.
The nerves drooled down Declan’s collar. “Not me.”
“I did not think so. Like I said: courtesy call. I thought you might want to know if wolves were coming to your door.”
“How many wolves?”
The music tripped; restarted. “There may possibly be packs and packs.”
Maybe they had found out about Ronan. Declan’s fingers tightened on the phone. “Do you know what they are howling for, seonsaengnim?”
“Mm,” Seondeok said. It was an evocative noise that conveyed both that she knew he was sucking up and that she accepted it nonetheless. “This secret is still very young. I called in hope that I could give you enough time to act.”
“And how do you think that I should act?”
“It is hardly my place to tell you. I am not your parent.”
Declan said, “You know I have no parents.”
The music whispered and sighed behind her. Finally, she repeated, “I am not your parent. I am just another wolf. Don’t forget that.”
He pushed off the window. “I’m sorry. Now I was being rude. I appreciate the call. ”
His mind was already digging through worst-case scenarios. He needed to get Ronan and Matthew out of Henrietta — that was all that mattered.
Seondeok said, “I miss your father’s finds; they are most beautiful. He was a very troubled man, but he had a most beautiful mind, I think.”
She was imagining Niall Lynch going through closets and collections and basements, carefully curating the objects he found. Declan imagined something closer to the truth: his father dreaming at the Barns, in hotel rooms, on couches, in the backseat of the BMW that was now Ronan’s.
“Yeah,” Declan said. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
Sleep, snatched. Breakfast, skipped. School, attended.
Gansey could not tell how close it had to be to the end of the world — his world — before he could justify taking school off to chase Glendower, and so he kept going. Adam went, because Adam would cling to his Ivy League dreams even if they were being borne skyward in Godzilla’s jaws. And, to Gansey’s amazement, Ronan went as well, nearly making them both late as he scrounged for a complete uniform in the mess of his room. He suspected that Ronan was only attending to make up for the fight in the urgent care the night before, but Gansey didn’t care. He just wanted Ronan to log some time in a classroom.
Henry caught up to Gansey in the hallway of Borden House as he left class (French, to replace his defunct Latin studies — Gansey preferred Latin, but he was not terrible at French, so n’y a pas de quoi fouetter un chat). Henry skipped until he was in step with Gansey. “Hey, Junior. Is everything joy in your world after last night?”
“Two steps down from joy. We had a very good time last night, at Litchfield. It was rude of us to run out when we did.”
“We only watched music videos on our phones after you left. The mood sagged. I tucked in the children and read them stories but they kept asking after you.”
This made Gansey laugh. “We were having adventures.”
“I thought so. That’s what I told them.”
Carefully, Gansey added, “An old friend wasn’t feeling well.” It was not a lie. Just not an entire truth. It was the edge of a truth.
Henry raised an eyebrow to demonstrate that he clearly spotted this edge, but he didn’t tug at it. “They’ll be all right?”
Noah’s face went to inky black. Noah’s sister stood on the auditorium stage. Bones yellowed beneath an Aglionby sweater.
Gansey said, “We remain optimistic.”
He did not think there was anything off about the tone of his voice when he said it, but Henry’s gaze darted over to him, quickly. That eyebrow quirked again. “Optimistic. Yes, you are an optimistic person, Gansey Boy. Would you like to see something interesting before lunch?”
A glance at his watch told Gansey that Adam, at least, would be looking for him at the dining hall soon.
Henry swiftly interpreted this look. “It’s right here. In Borden. It’s cool. It’s Ganseylike.”
This struck Gansey as patently absurd. No one knew what Ganseylike was, even Gansey. Teachers and family friends were always collecting articles and stories that they thought might capture his attention, things they thought were Ganseylike. The well-meaning items always addressed the most obvious parts of him. Welsh kings or old Camaros or other young people who had traveled the world for bizarre reasons no one else understood. No one dug down past that, and he supposed he didn’t much encourage it. There was a lot of night in those days behind him, and he preferred to turn his face into the sun. Ganseylike. What was Ganseylike?
“Does that smile mean yes? Yes, good, follow me,” Henry said. He immediately pitched left through a narrow door labeled STAFF USE ONLY. Borden House had originally been a house, not an academic building, and the door opened into a narrow staircase. One fussy sconce lit the way; the light was swallowed by hideously busy wallpaper. They started down the stairs. “This is a very old building, Dick Three. Seventeen fifty-one. Imagine the things it has seen. Or heard, since houses don’t have eyes.”
“Currency Act,” Gansey said.
“What?”
“Was passed in 1751,” Gansey said. “Banning the issue of currency by New England. And George the Third became Prince of Wales in 1751, if I remember right.”
“Also” — Henry reached for a light switch. It barely illuminated a low-ceilinged basement with a dirt floor. A glorified crawl space, with n
othing but a few cardboard boxes shoved against one of the foundation walls — “the first performing monkey act in the United States.” He had to duck his head to keep from tangling his hair in the exposed wooden beams supporting the floor above them. The air smelled like a concentrated version of Borden House’s aboveground floors — which was to say, like mold and navy blue carpet — but with the additional damp, living scent peculiar to caves and very old basements.
“Really?” Gansey asked.
