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Adareed to ith Declan and Girlfriend fro to do with a nagging hunch Lately, Ada in on their search for the ley line He wasn’t quite sure how to put this feeling into concrete terht out of the corner of his eye, a set of scuffed footprints in the stairwell that didn’t see hiht after he had returned it He didn’t want to trouble Gansey with it until he was certain, though Things seeh on Gansey as it was

It wasn’t that Ada on the to do with Ronan and nothing to do with the ley line Still, it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of observation

Currently, Girlfriend was glancing around in the furtive way that was ry-looking brick factory, gutted and black-eyed, growing out of an overgrown lot that took up nearly all of a block A clue to the building’s original identity was painted on the eastern side of the building: MONMOUTH MANUFACTURING But for all their research, neither Gansey nor Adaure out precisely what Mon that had required twenty-five-foot ceilings and wide open spaces; soes in the brick walls Soer needed

At the top of the second-floor staircase, Declan whispered all this knowledge into Girlfriend’s ear, and she giggled nervously, as if it were a secret Adam watched the way Declan’s lip barely brushed the bottom of Girlfriend’s earlobe as he spoke to her; he looked away just as Declan glanced up

Ada watched Only Gansey ever seemed to catch him at it

Girlfriend pointed out the cracked ard the lot below; Declan followed her gaze to the black, angry curves Gansey and Ronan had left doing donuts Declan’s expression hardened; even if they were all Gansey’s doing, he’d assuain -- one long, two short, his signal "It will be ized

This was irlfriend than it was for Declan, who knew full hat state the apartment would be in Ada to outsiders; Declan was calculating, if anything His goal was Ashley’s virtue, and every step of tonight would have been planned with that in

There was still no answer

"Should I call?" Declan asked

Adam tried the knob, which was locked, and then jies a bit It swung open Girlfriend made a noise of approval, but the success of the break-in had ths

They stepped into the aparth ceiling soared above the up the roof Gansey’s invented apartment was a dreamer’s laboratory The entire second floor, thousands of square feet, spread out before them Two of the walls were made up of old s -- dozens of tiny, warped panes, except for a few clear ones Gansey had replaced -- and the other talls were covered with inia, of Wales, of Europe Marker lines arced across each of them Across the floor, a telescope peered at the western sky; at its feet lay piles of arcane electronics netic activity

And everywhere, everywhere, there were books Not the tidy stacks of an intellectual atte piles of a scholar obsessed Solish Soes that some of the other books were in Some of the books were actually Sports Illustrated Swi Not jealousy, just wanting One day, he’d have enough money to have a place like this A place that looked on the outside like Adam looked on the inside

A srand on the inside, or if it was so you had to be born into Gansey was the way he was because he had lived with money when he was small, like a virtuoso placed at a piano bench as soon as he could sit Adam, a latecomer, a usurper, still stue in a cereal box under his bed

Beside Declan, Girlfriend held her hands to her chest in an unconscious reaction to masculine nakedness In this case, the naked party was not a person, but a thing: Gansey’s bed, nothing but twobaldly in the middle of the room, barely made It was somehow intimate in its complete lack of privacy

Gansey hi out an east-facingand tapping a pen His fat journal lay open near hies and dark with notes Adaelessness: an oldman in an old man’s life

"It’s us," Adam said

When Gansey didn’t reply, Adam led the way to his oblivious friend Girlfriend an with the letter O With a variety of cereal boxes, packing containers, and house paint, Gansey had built a knee-high replica of the town of Henrietta in the center of the room, and so the three visitors were forced to walk down Main Street in order to reach the desk Adas were a syht awake

Adam stopped just beside Gansey The area around hily of mint from the leaf he chewed absently

Adaht ear and his friend startled

Gansey jumped to his feet "Why, hello"

As always, there was an all-American war hero look to him, coded in his tousled brown hair, his sulo-Saxons had graciously passed on to hiested valor and power and a fir hi when he first met him There were two Ganseys: the one who lived inside his skin, and the one Gansey put on in thewhen he slid his wallet into the back pocket of his chinos The former was troubled and passionate, with no discernible accent to Adareeted people with the slippery, handsoinia money It was a mystery to Adam how he could not seem to see both versions of Gansey at the same time