Now she sat beside the Dog, looking out the backseat window as they passed Mole Hill on the way to Coopers Mountain, feeling her bad mood leach into the gray. This was a very different part of the world than Henrietta. Rural, but less wild. More cows, fewer woods. And very poor. The houses that lined the highway were smaller than single-wide trailers.
“I’m not hopeful about this,” Gansey was saying to Malory. He plucked at his left shoulder; rain was coming in through his window, though it was rolled up. Water also dripped onto the dash beneath the rearview mirror. Malory shook water off the map in his hands. “I crawled all over this mountain a year ago and saw no cave. If there is one, it’s someone else’s secret.”
Blue leaned forward; so did the Dog. She said, “There’s this super clever way that folks in the country find out someone else’s secrets. We ask them.”
Gansey met her eyes, and then the Dog’s, in the rearview mirror. “Adam keeps his secrets pretty close.”
“Oh, not Adam’s sort of country people.”
Blue had discovered that there were two distinct stereotypes for the rural population of her part of Virginia: the neighbors who loaned one another cups of sugar and knew everything about everyone, and the rednecks who stood on their porches with shotguns and shouted racist things when they got drunk. Because she grew up so thoroughly entrenched in the first group, she hadn’t believed in the second group until well into her teens. School had taught her that the two kinds were almost never born into the same litter.
“Look,” she said. “When we get there, I’ll show you the houses to stop at.”
Coopers Mountain turned out to be more of a mountainette than a proper mountain, impressive mostly because of its sudden appearance in the middle of sparsely populated fields. A small neighborhood lay on one side. Widely flung farmhouses dotted the rest of the surrounding area. Blue directed Gansey past the former and toward the latter.
“People in neighborhoods only know about people in neighborhoods,” she said. “No caves in neighborhoods. Here, here, this one’s good! You better wait in the car with your fancy face.”
Gansey was too aware of his face’s fanciness to protest. He minced the Camaro down a long gravel drive that ended at a white farmhouse. A shaggy dog of no breed or all breeds burst out to bark at her as she climbed out into the rain.
“Hey, you,” Blue greeted it, and the dog retreated immediately under the porch. At the door, an older woman holding a magazine answered her knock. She looked friendly. In Blue’s experience, everyone who lived in remote tired farmhouses generally looked friendly, until they didn’t.
“What can I do for you?”
Blue slathered on her accent as slow and local as possible. “I’m not selling anything, I promise. My name’s Blue Sargent and I live in Henrietta and I’m doing a geology project. I heard there was a cave round here. Could you possibly point me in the right way?”
Then she smiled as if the woman had already helped her. If there was one thing Blue had learned while being a waitress and dog walker and Maura Sargent’s daughter, it was that people generally became the kind of person you expected them to be.
The woman considered. “Well, that does sound familiar, but I don’t reckon I … Have you asked Wayne? Bauer? He’s good with this area.”
“Which one’s he, now?”
The woman pointed kitty-corner across the highway.
Blue gave her a thumbs-up. The woman wished her luck.
It turned out Wayne Bauer wasn’t home, but his wife was, and she didn’t know anything about a cave, but had they asked Jimmy down the road, because he was always digging ditches and you knew you found all kinds of things in ditches. And Jimmy didn’t know, but he thought Gloria Mitchell had said something about it last year. They discovered that Gloria wasn’t home, but her elderly sister was, and she asked, “What, you mean Jesse Dittley’s cave?”
“You don’t have to look so smug,” Gansey said to Blue as she buckled her seat belt.
“Sure I do,” Blue replied.
The Dittley farm was directly at the base of Coopers Mountain. The swaybacked wood-frame house was surrounded by partial cars and entire sofas, all overgrown. The abandoned tires and broken window air conditioners inspired the same feeling in Blue as the cluttered kitchen-bathroom-laundry in Monmouth had: the urge to tidy and impart order.
As she climbed out, she turned the name Jesse Dittley over and over in her mind. Something about it poked the back of her mind, but she couldn’t think what. Old family friend? Sex offender from a newspaper story? Character from a picture book?
Just in case he was the middle one, she made certain that she had her pink switchblade knife in her pocket. She didn’t really think she would have to stab anyone, but she liked being prepared.
She stood on the slanted porch with fourteen empty milk jugs and ten cats and knocked. It took a long time for the door to open, and when it did, a puff of cigarette smoke came out with it.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?”
She peered up at the man. He peered down at her. He must have been close to seven feet tall and was wearing the largest white wife-beater that she’d ever seen (and she’d seen a lot). His face was mild, if surprised; the booming, Blue decided, was from chest capacity and not from malice. He stared at her shirt, which she had made from ribbons and soda can tabs, and then at her face.
“Excited to meet you, is what I am.” She peered past him into the house. She saw more recliners than she’d ever seen in her life (and she’d seen a lot). Nothing hinted where she might have heard his name before. “Are you Jesse Dittley?”
“I AM JESSE DITTLEY. DID YOU NEVER EAT YOUR GREENS?”
It was true that Blue was just shy of five feet and it was also true that she hadn’t eaten her greens, but she’d done the research and she didn’t think the two were related. She said, “I lost the genetic roll of the dice.”
“DAMN STRAIGHT.”
“I’m here because folks are saying you have a cave.”
He considered this. He scratched his chest. Finally, he looked to where the Camaro sat sodden in the pitted driveway. “WHO’S THAT?”
“My friends,” Blue replied, “who are also interested in the cave. If it exists.”
“OH, IT EXISTS.” He let out a hurricane-sized sigh. “MIGHT AS WELL TELL THEM TO COME IN OUT OF THE RAIN.”
The Camaro was theoretically already out of the rain — well, perhaps not Gansey’s left shoulder — but Blue didn’t argue the point. She gestured for the others to join her.
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.
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.”