Page 61 of The Raven King(The Raven Cycle 4)
When she found herself next to the Gray Man, Greenmantle’s old hired muscle, in an off-campus Aglionby Academy lot, and discovered that the blood on his shoes was Laumonier’s, she was instantly interested in what he had to say.
“A brave new way of doing business,” the Gray Man said in a low voice, as the parking lot was quickly beginning to fill up with a small but potent number of forbidding-looking people. It was not that they looked dangerous, necessarily. Just odd in a way that suggested they didn’t look at the world at all like you did. They were a very different group than the people who had come to the school the night before. Technically both gatherings had a lot to do with politics. “An ethical way. There are no armed guards outside of furniture stores to prevent people from bludgeoning employees and carrying out sofas. That is the business I want.”
“That will not be an easy goal,” Seondeok said, her voice also low. She kept her eyes on the cars pulling up, and also on her phone. She knew that Henry had been told to stay away, and she trusted him to keep his head down, but she also didn’t trust Laumonier in the slightest. There was no point tempting them by showing that Henry — and by extension, his bee — were within close proximity. “The people have gotten used to carrying sofas, and one does not like to stop stealing sofas when others haven’t yet agreed to.”
“Persuasion might be required at the beginning,” the Gray Man admitted.
“You are talking years.”
“I am committed,” he replied. “So long as I can get a decent number of people who are interested in that vision. People I like.”
Here was Laumonier, finally, one of them on the phone. His face suggested he was trying to contact the third one, but the third one was not in a condition to answer. The Gray Man would discuss this with them after the sale had happened. In a persuasive way aided with some truly fantastic weapons that he had found on the Lynch farm.
Seondeok said, “I am not people you like.”
“You are people I respect, which is nearly the same.”
Her smile said she knew he was sucking up to her and she accepted it nonetheless. “Perhaps, Mr. Gray. This is according to my interest.”
This was when Piper Greenmantle arrived.
Well, it was not her, at first. It was dread first, then Piper. The feeling struck them like a wave of nausea, rocking from feet to head, sending hands to throats and knees to pavement. It was early afternoon, but the sky suddenly seemed darker. This was the first sign that this sale was going to be something remarkable.
So, first dread, then Piper. She arrived flying, which was the second sign that things were going to be somewhat unusual.
When she landed, it became obvious that she had arrived on a rug of tiny black wasps, which dissolved when they touched the asphalt.
She looked good.
This was striking for a several reasons, first because rumor had it that she had died before her smarmy husband had been killed by wasps in his apartment, and she was clearly not dead. And secondly because she was holding a black wasp that was nearly a foot long, and most people didn’t look as serene and put together as she did when holding a stinging insect of any size.
She strode over to Laumonier, clearly intending to cheek-kiss, but they both bowed back from the insect. This was the third sign that things were going to be somewhat unusual, because Laumonier ordinarily made a point to never look alarmed.
“This is not good,” the Gray Man said under his breath.
Because it was obvious now that the dread was coming from either Piper or the wasp. The sensation kept hitting Seondeok in ill waves, reminding her painfully of her year of being mad. It took a moment for her to realize that it was verbally reminding her of her year of being mad — she could hear the words being said directly into her head. In Korean.
“Thank you all for coming,” Piper said grandly. She cocked her head, eyes narrowed, and Seondeok knew that she was being whispered to also. “Now that I am single, I intend to move independently into the business of luxury magical items, curating only the most extraordinary and otherworldly of crazy shit. I hope you all start to trust me to be a quality source. And our kickoff piece — the thing you’ve come all this way for — is this.” She lifted her arm, and the wasp stepped a little farther toward her hand. The crowd shuddered as one; there was something quite wrong about it. The dread, plus the size, the real weight of it moving the fabric of her sleeve. “This is a demon.”
Yes. Seondeok believed this.
“It’s favored me, as you can probably tell by my fabulous hair and skin, but I’m ready to pass it along to the next user so I can find the next great thing! It’s all about the journey, right? Right!”
“Is it —” started one of the men in the group. Rodney, Seondeok believed his name was. He didn’t seem to know how to finish his question.
“How does it work?” Seondeok asked.
“Mostly I just ask it to do stuff,” Piper said, “and it goes for it. I’m not really religious, but I feel like somebody with some religious background could really make it do some cool tricks. It made me a house, and these pumps. What could it do for you? Stuff. Shall we start the bidding, Dad?”
Laumonier was still not quite recovered. The thing about being in the demon’s presence was that it got worse instead of better. The opposite of getting used to it — that was the sensation. It was a wound that increased from ache to stab. The whispers were hard to bear, because they were not really whispers. They were thoughts, mingling helplessly with one’s own, difficult to prioritize. Seondeok had survived a year of madness, though, and she could bear this. It was not impossible to tell which thoughts were the demon’s: They were the ugliest, the most backward, the ones that would unmake the thinker.
A few of the folks in the back were leaving, retreating wordlessly toward their cars before things got ugly. Uglier. Ugliest.
“Hey!” Piper said. “Don’t just walk away from me. Demon!”
The wasp twitched its antennae and the people twitched in rhythm. They twirled, eyes wide.
“You see,” Piper said through gritted teeth, “it’s really quite handy.”
“I think,” Laumonier said cautiously, looking at the frozen buyers, and then at the faces of their peers, and then at his daughter, “this might not be the best method of displaying this particular good.”
What he meant was, the demon was creeping everyone out and it was hard to shake the idea that they might all die at any time, which was bad for business both present and future.
“Don’t use that passive-aggressive stuff on me,” Piper said. “I read an article on how you have basically been undercutting my personhood for my entire life and that is totally an example.”
“This is totally an example of you overstepping your knowledge,” Laumonier said. “Your ambition is constantly outstripping your education! You don’t even know how to transfer a demon.”
“I’ll wish it, don’t you get it?” Piper asked. “It has to favor me! It has to do what I say.”
But Seondeok wasn’t sure that was the same thing.
“Do you think?” Laumonier asked. “Do you control it, or does it control you?”
“Oh, please,” Piper said. “Demon, unfreeze those people! Demon, make it sunny! Demon, change my clothing to all white! Demon, do as I say, do as I say!”
The people unfroze; the sky turned white-hot bright for just a second; her clothing bleached; the demon buzzed up into the air. The whispering in Seondeok’s head had become something fierce.
Laumonier shot his daughter.
It made a little oonph sound because of the silencer. Laumonier looked shocked. Both said nothing, just stared at her body, then up at the demon who had whispered it to them.
Now everyone fled. If Laumonier would shoot his daughter, anything could happen.
The demon had landed upon the wound in Piper’s neck, its legs sinking into the blood, its head lowered to the hole.
It was changing. She was changing. Everything wa
s unmaking and violence and perversion.
“Call me,” Seondeok told the Gray Man, “and get out of here.”
Piper’s scream played backward. Seondeok had not realized she was still alive.
The blood around her neck was black.
Ambition greed hatred violence contempt ambition greed hatred violence contempt
She was dead.
The demon began to rise.
Unmaker, unmaker, I wake, I wake, I wake
Adam could not decide if this was the worst thing that had happened to him, or if it felt that way because he had been so recently and senselessly happy that the comparison was making it so.
He was in the backseat of the BMW, his hands still bound, his eyes still covered, one ear deaf. He didn’t even feel real. He felt tired but not sleepy, worn by the effort of being unable to participate in his senses. And still the demon occasionally worked against the ribbon — how his skin sang with pain — and rolled his eyes against his will. Blue sat beside him, and the Orphan Girl on the other side of her, by his request. He didn’t know if he could escape from the ribbon, but he knew that the demon would only hurt Blue in an effort to get to Ronan or the Orphan Girl. So at least they would have a warning if it happened again.
God, God. He’d nearly killed Ronan. He would have killed him. He had only just been making out with Ronan, and his hands would have nonetheless murdered him while Adam watched.
How would he go to school? How would he do anything —
His breath betrayed him, because Blue leaned against his shoulder.
“Don’t —” he warned.
She lifted her head, but then he felt her fingers in his hair instead, stroking it gently, and then touching the skin on his cheek where he had gouged himself. She didn’t say anything.
He closed his eyes behind the blindfold, listening to the slow patter of the rain on the windshield, the shoosh of the wipers. He had no idea how close they were to Cabeswater.
Why couldn’t he think of another way around the sacrifice? Gansey was only hurrying to do this because of him, because of how his bargain had turned this into an emergency. In the end, Adam was killing him anyway, just like in his vision. A backward, sideways version of the blame, but Adam at its helm just the same. But it was undeniable that Adam was the one who’d made it an emergency.
Bad feeling hissed inside Adam, but he couldn’t tell if it was guilt or a warning from Cabeswater.
“What’s that?” Gansey’s voice came from the passenger seat. “On the road?”
