Inside the farmhouse was much like the outside. Machines half-dissected, dead plants in dry pots, dusty bedspreads balled in corners, cats peering from inside sinks. It was gray and colorless and dark in the rain. There was something sort of sideways about it, like the hallways were a little too narrow, or a little slanted, or just slightly wrong in some way.

Jesse Dittley. The familiarity of it was driving her crazy.

In the living room, Malory sat on a brown recliner without blinking an eye. Gansey remained standing. He looked a bit faint.

Blue sat on an ottoman without a chair. Jesse Dittley stood next to a card table covered with empty glasses. He didn’t offer them a drink.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE CAVE?” Before they could answer, he added gloomily, “IT’S CURSED.”

“My,” said Malory.

“I don’t so much mind about curses,” Gansey said, his old-money Virginia accent sounding elegant and affected beside Jesse’s. “Is it near here?”

“RIGHT OVER THERE,” Jesse reported.

“Oh! Do you know how long it is?” Gansey asked, at the same time that Blue asked, in a friendly way, “What sort of curse?”

“MY DADDY DIED IN IT. AND MY DADDY’S DADDY. AND MY DADDY’S DADDY’S DADDY.” Jesse concluded, possibly erroneously, “IT PROBABLY HAS NO END. YOU ONE OF THEM AGLIONBY BOYS, THEN?”

“Yes,” Gansey replied precisely.

“DOES THAT DOG WANT WATER?”

They all looked at the Dog. The Dog looked a bit faint.

“Oh, if it’s not too much trouble,” Malory said.

Jesse went to get water. Gansey exchanged a look with Blue. “This has turned unexpectedly ominous.”

“Do you think there’s a curse?” she asked.

“Of course there is,” Malory replied. “It is on a ley line. Apparitions and lightning storms, black beasts and time slipping.”

“To us, just the ley line. To everyone else, a curse,” Gansey finished wonderingly. “Of course.”

Jesse returned with a chipped glass mixing bowl full of water. The Dog drank ravenously. The Camaro had an exhaust leak, which had a dehydrating effect upon its occupants.

“WHAT IS IT YOU WANT WITH THE CAVE? I RECKON THERE ARE PLENTY OF CAVES WITHOUT CURSES HERE.”

Gansey replied, “We’re exploring another cave system and we’ve reached a section that’s blocked. We’re trying to find another way into it, and we think your cave might do it.”

How neatly the truth worked.

Jesse took them out the back door, through another screen porch, and into the mist.

Outside, he was even bigger than Blue had thought he was. Or possibly, now it was easier to compare his size with the house and find the house wanting. As he led them across a vast cow pasture, he didn’t duck his head against the rain. This lack of concern struck Blue as noble, though she couldn’t quite convince her own head to follow his lead as rain dripped off her earlobes.

“This weather reminds me of this dreadful climb I went on with this fellow Pelham,” Malory muttered, producing an umbrella from his person and sharing it with Blue. “Fourteen kilometers each way, and all for a standing stone that looked like a dog in certain lights. The man went on and on about football and his girlfriend — a terrible time was had by all.”

With great, sloped strides, Jesse led them to a barbed-wire fence. On the other side, a ruined stone structure of indeterminate age grew out of the rocky hillside. It was roofless and about twenty feet square. Although it was only a single crumbled story, something about it gave the impression of height, as if it had once been taller. Blue struggled to imagine what its original purpose might have been. Something about the tiny aspect of the windows seemed wrong for a residence. If it had not been Virginia, if it had been someplace older, she would have thought it looked like the ruin of a stone tower.

“THIS IS IT.”

Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Gansey’s look said, We did tell him “cave,” right? Blue’s said, We definitely did.

Jesse used a stick to push down the top string of the barbed wire so they could step over — all except the Dog, who remained pissily behind. Then, feet slipping on damp leaves, they climbed up the hill. On the backside of the building, a considerably newer door had been set into the old door frame. A padlock held it closed. Jesse produced a key, which he handed to Blue.

“Me?” she asked.

“I’M NOT GOING INSIDE.”

“Gallant,” Blue observed. She wasn’t exactly nervous; it was just that she hadn’t set out that morning with the intention of broaching a curse.

“ONLY KILLS DITTLEYS,” Jesse reassured her. “UNLESS YOU HAVE DITTLEY BLOOD IN YOU?”

Blue said, “I don’t reckon so.”

She fit the key into the lock and let the door fall open.

Inside were saplings, crumbled stones, and then, amid the debris, a hole. It was nothing like the inviting cavern opening Cabeswater had provided for them. It was smaller, blacker, more uneven, steeper from the outset. It looked like a place for secrets.

“Look at that cave, Gansey,” Malory said. “I wonder who said there was a cave here.”

“Leave the smugness to Jane,” Gansey told him.

“Don’t come in here,” Blue warned him, picking her way through the rubble. “In case there are nests or something.”

“IT LOOKS BAD WHEN YOU LOOK IN,” Jesse said as she peered in the hole. It was utter black inside, blacker because there was no sun. “BUT IT’S NOT STEEP. JUST CURSED.”

“How do you know it’s not steep?” she asked.

“BEEN IN IT BEFORE FOR MY DADDY’S BONES. CURSE DOESN’T TAKE YOU UNTIL IT’S READY.”

It was difficult to argue with this brand of logic.

“Do you think we could go in?” Gansey asked. “Not now, but coming back with proper equipment?”

Jesse peered at him and then at Malory and finally at Blue. “I LIKE THE LOOKS OF YOU, SO —”

He shook his head.

“NO.”

“Beg your pardon, did you say no?” Gansey asked.

“COULDN’T IN ALL GOOD CONSCIENCE. GO ON NOW, COME OUT OF THERE. LET’S LOCK IT BACK UP.”

He accepted the key from Blue’s shocked fingers.

“Oh, but we’d be very careful,” she told him.

Jesse locked the door again as if she hadn’t spoken.

“We could pay for your expenses?” Gansey suggested carefully, and Blue kicked his leg hard enough to leave a muddy scuff on his pants. “Jesus, Jane!”

“DON’T TAKE THE LORD’S NAME IN VAIN,” Jesse said. “YOU KIDS HAVE A GOOD TIME EXPLORING SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW.”

“Oh, but —”

“SHORT WAY IS ACROSS THE FIELD. HAVE A GOOD ONE.”

They had been dismissed. Impossibly, they’d been dismissed.

“Just as well,” Malory said as they headed back across the damp field, shoulders hunched miserably. “Caves are terrible places to die.”

“What now?” Blue asked.

“We’re supposed to hurry, apparently. Hurry, hurry,” Gansey said. “So we find a way to persuade him, I guess. Or we trespass.”

After he got into the car, she realized he was wearing his Aglionby uniform, shoulders spattered with rain, just as his spirit had been when she saw it on the ley line. He could have died in that field and she would have been warned. But she hadn’t even thought about it until afterward.

It was so impossible to live life backward.

14

This one says ‘grass-fed organic cheddar from New Zealand,’ ” said Greenmantle, shutting the door behind him. The empty hall immediately fell dark without the evening light from outside. Holding his parcel close to his face in order to see the label, and speaking loudly to be heard through the house, he continued, “ ‘A mild cheddar cheese made from grass-fed, farm-fresh organic milk. Ingredients: cow’s milk, salt, starter cultures’ — so, like, Dave Brubeck, Warhol, things like that — ‘coagulating enzyme,’ oh, that is mainstream media.”

He dropped his coat on the chair by the front door, and then, after a moment’s consideration, his pants as well. Piper’s lust was like a single bear trap in the wilderness. It was nearly impossible to find if you were looking for it, but it was something you wanted to be prepared for if you stepped into it by accident.

“I hope that silence means you are getting the crackers out.” Greenmantle stepped into the kitchen. Cracker-fetching was not, in fact, the cause of Piper’s silence. She stood in the dining area with a pissy look on her face and pink yoga pants on her legs and a gun pointed to her head.

Greenmantle’s former employee, the Gray Man, was the holder of said gun. Both he and Piper were silhouetted against the window that looked into the cow pasture. The Gray Man looked good, healthy, tan, as if Henrietta and mutiny suited him. Piper looked angry, not at the Gray Man, but at Greenmantle.

It had taken the Gray Man longer to appear than Greenmantle had expected.

Well, at least he was here now.

“I guess I’ll just get the crackers myself, then,” Greenmantle said, dropping the block of cheese on the center island. “Sorry I’m not dressed for company.”

“Don’t move,” the Gray Man said, cocking his chin toward the gun in his hand. It was black and shocking-looking, although Greenmantle had no idea what kind it was. The silvery ones looked less dangerous to him, although he supposed that was a fallacy that could get him into trouble. “Do not move.”

“Oh, stop,” Greenmantle said with exasperation, turning to get the cutting board from the counter. “You’re not going to shoot Piper.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Greenmantle fetched the crackers and a plate and a knife from the knife block and assembled them in a reasonable way. Squinting one eye closed, he held up a piece of cheese. “Do you think this is the right size? Should I slice it thinner? These are the crackers we have to go with it.”

“That piece is the size of an entire udder,” Piper said.

“I’m sorry, this knife isn’t very sharp. Mr. Gray. Seriously. The gun? Don’t you think it’s a bit theatrical?”

The Gray Man didn’t lower the weapon. It continued looking dangerous, as did the Gray Man. He was very good at looking scary, but his job description was to be the most intimidating thing in the room at any given time.

Mr. Gray asked, “Why are you here?”

Ah, and the dance began.

“Why I’m here?” Greenmantle said. “I’m more bewildered about why you’re here, since you specifically told me you had stolen my things and run away to West Palm Springs.”

What a day that had been, with Laumonier being Laumonier and those damn Peruvian textiles getting stopped in customs before he ever even got to see them and then the Gray Man shitting the bed.

“I told you the truth first. And that wasn’t good enough.”

Greenmantle butchered a piece of cheese. “Oh right, the … ‘truth.’ Which one was that again? Of course. The truth was the one where you told me that the artifact that had been rumored to be in this area for over a decade and had in fact been traced pretty conclusively back to that loser Niall Lynch didn’t even exist. I rejected that truth, as I recall. I’m trying to remember why I’d do such a thing. Do you remember, treasure, why I decided that was a lie?”

Piper clucked her tongue. “Because you’re not a total idiot?”

Greenmantle shook the knife in the direction of his wife. Spouse. Partner. Lover. “Yes, it was that one. I remember now.”

The Gray Man said, “I told you it wasn’t an artifact, and I stand by that. It’s a phenomenon, not a thing.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Gray,” Greenmantle said pleasantly. He put a cheese cracker in his mouth and spoke around it. “How do you think I knew what it was called? Niall Lynch told me. Fucking braggart. He thought he was invincible. Can I pour you some wine? I’ve got this abusive red I brought with me. It’s a thing of beauty.”

The Gray Man gave him a cool look. His hit man look. Greenmantle had always liked the idea of being a mysterious hit man, but that career goal invariably paled in comparison with his enjoyment of going out on the town and having people admire his reputation and driving his Audi with its custom plate (GRNMNTL) and going on cheese holidays in countries that put little hats over their vowels like so: ê.

“What do you want from me?” Mr. Gray asked.

Greenmantle replied, “If we had a time machine, I’d say you could zip back and do what I asked the first time, but I guess that ship has sailed off into the sea of clusterfuck. Do you want to open the wine? I always cork it. No? All right, then. I guess you understand that you’re going to have to be an example.”

He crossed the kitchen and placed a cheese cracker on Piper’s tongue. He offered one to the Gray Man, who neither accepted it nor lowered the gun. He continued, “I mean, what would the others think if I let you get away with this? Would not be good. So, although I’ve enjoyed our time together, I guess that means you’re probably going to have to be destroyed.”

“Then shoot me,” the Gray Man said without fear.

He really was a work of art, the Gray Man. A hit man action figure. All his nobility did was prove what Greenmantle already knew: There were things in this town the Gray Man considered more important than his own life.

“Oh, Mr. Gray. Dean. You know better. No one remembers a corpse. I know you are aware of how this works.” Greenmantle cut another piece of cheese. “First I’m going to hang out here, just observing. Taking in the view. Figuring out the best breakfast places, seeing the tourist sights, watching you sleep, figuring out everything that’s important to you, finding that woman you fell in love with, planning the best way to make destroying all of the above publicly excruciating for you. Et cetera and so forth.”