For a fleeting moment, Adam could imagine it: the brocade curtains in decaying flames, the decorated consorts screaming from beneath the harpsichord, Ronan standing among it all saying fuck Washington.
Gansey said, “Ready for the next round?”
The evening would never end.
But Adam kept watching.
He swallowed his ginger ale. He wasn’t sure it hadn’t actually been champagne, now, all along. The party had become a devil’s feast: will-o’-the-wisps caught in brass hunting lamps, impossibly bright meats presented on ivy-filagreed platters, men in black, women jeweled in green and red. The painted trees of the ceiling bent low overhead. Adam was wired and exhausted, here and somewhere else. Nothing was real but him and Gansey.
Before them was a woman who had just spoken with Gansey’s mother. Everyone who caught Gansey had either just conversed with his mother or just shook her hand or just glimpsed her moving between the dark-clad partygoers. It was an elaborate political play where his mother played a beloved but rare wraith; although everyone recalled seeing her, no one could actually locate her at the moment of recollection.
“You have,” the woman said to Gansey, “grown so much since the last time I’ve seen you. You must be nearly . . .” and at that, at the moment of guessing Gansey’s age, she hesitated. Adam knew that she had sensed that otherness to his friend: that sense that Gansey was both young and old, that he’d only just arrived, or he’d always been.
She was saved by a glance at Adam. Quickly assessing his age, she finished, “Seventeen? Eighteen?”
“Seventeen, ma’am,” Gansey said warmly. And he was, as soon as he’d said it. Of course he was seventeen, and nothing else. Something like relief passed over the woman’s face.
Adam felt the press of the candied tree branches overhead; to his right, he caught a half-image of himself in a gold-framed mirror and startled. For a moment, his reflection had seemed wrong.
It was happening. No, no, it’s not happening. Not here, not now.
A second glance revealed a clearer image. Nothing strange. Yet.
“Did I read in the paper that you’re still looking for those crown jewels?” the woman asked Gansey.
“Oh, I’m looking for an actual king,” Gansey said, speaking loudly to be heard over the violin (there were three of them, actually; the last man had informed him that they were students from Peabody). The strings wavered as if the sound came from underwater. “A Welsh king from the fifteenth century.”
The woman laughed delightedly. She’d misheard Gansey and thought he’d made a joke. Gansey laughed, too, as if he had, and any awkwardness that might have arisen was swiftly averted.
Adam made a note of that.
And now, finally, there was Mrs. Gansey, looming at the corner of his vision like a materialized dream. Like Gansey himself, she was intrinsically beautiful in the way that only someone who has always had money can be. It seemed right that an entire party should be thrown in her honor. She was a worthy queen for the evening.
“Gloria,” Mrs. Gansey said to the woman. “I love that necklace. You of course remember my son, Dick?”
“Of course,” Gloria said. “He is so very tall. You must be off to college soon?”
Both women turned for his answer. Violins shrilled up the scale.
“Well, it—” And then, all at once, Gansey faltered. It was not quite a full stop. Just a failure to slide smoothly from moment to moment. There was only time enough for Adam to see the gap, and then Gansey said, “I’m sorry, I thought I saw someone.”
Adam caught his eye. There was a question there, unspoken. Gansey’s return gaze was complicated; no, he was not all right, but no, there was nothing Adam could do about it. Adam had a brief, ferocious joy, that they could get to Gansey as well. How he hated them.
“Oh, I do see someone. I must leave you,” Gansey said, impeccably polite. “I’m sorry. But I’ll leave you with— Mrs. Elgin, this is my friend Adam Parrish. He has interesting thoughts about travelers’ rights. Have you thought about travelers’ rights lately?”
Adam tried to remember the last time he and Gansey had spoken about travelers’ rights. He was pretty sure the entire discussion had taken place over a lukewarm pizza and had had something to do with the body scanners microwaving the brain cells of frequent flyers. But now that he’d seen Gansey at work, he knew Gansey would spool that out into a political epidemic solvable by his mother.
“I haven’t,” Gloria Elgin replied, dazzled by Gansey’s Ganseyness. “We usually take Ben’s Cessna these days. But I would like to hear about it.”
When she turned to Adam, Gansey vanished into the crowd.
For a moment, Adam said nothing. He was not Gansey, he did not dazzle, he was a pretender with a flute of false champagne in his slender hand made from dust. He looked at Mrs. Elgin. She looked back at him through her eyelashes.
With a jolt, he realized that he intimidated her. Standing there in his impervious suit with its red-knotted tie, young and straight-shouldered and clean, he had pulled off whatever strange alchemy Gansey performed. For perhaps the first time in his life, someone was looking at him and seeing power.
He tried to conjure up the magic he’d already seen Gansey do this evening. His mind swam with the noise of this glittering company, the shimmer in the bottom of his champagne glass, the knowledge that this was the future, if he speared it.
he was in a forest, whispers pursued him
Not here
He said, “Can I refill your drink first?”
Mrs. Elgin’s face melted with pleasure as she offered up her glass.
Don’t you know? Adam wondered. He, at least, could still smell diesel fuel on his hands. Don’t you know what I am?
But this flock of peacocks was too busy fooling to notice they were being fooled.