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"Sorry that I’m late," said the boy in front, with the square shoulders The scent of mint rolled in with him, just as it had in the churchyard "Will it be a proble of the stairs to keep her balance as President Cell Phone stepped into the hallway

Oh no Not hiht die and it turned out she was going to strangle him At Nino’s, the blare of the music had drowned out the finer points of his voice and the odor of garlic had overwhelether, it seehtly less presidential, but only because the heat had made him messily roll up the sleeves of his button-down shirt and remove his tie His dusty brown hair was ed But the watch was still there, large enough to knock out bank robbers, and he still had that handsolow that meant that not only had he never been poor, but his father hadn’t, nor his father’s father, nor his father’s father’s father She couldn’t tell if he was actually tre or

Gansey This was Gansey

And that ed to hied to him

"Well," Maura said It was clear her curiosity overruled all rules of scheduling "It’s not too late Coet soht y boy They filled the hallway to overflowing, somehow, the three of them, loud and male and so comfortable with one another that they allowed no one else to be comfortable with them They were a pack of sleek animals armored with their watches and their Top-Siders and the expensive cut of their unifor up the knobs of his spine above his collar, was a weapon, so at Blue

"Gansey," President Cell Phone said again, pointing to himself "Adam Ronan Where do you want us? There?"

He pointed a hand toward the reading roo traffic

"In there," Maura agreed "This is , if you don’tpolitely, but now his face froze in the ain," he said "This is aard"

"You’ve met?" Maura shot a poisonous look at Blue Blue felt unfairly persecuted

"Yes," Gansey replied, with dignity "We had a discussion about alternative professions for wohter Adam?"

He shot a nearly as poisonous look at Adae Adam was the only one not in uniforers would cover his faded Coca-Cola T-shirt

"I didn’t know, either!" Adaht not have worn her baby blue top with the feathers sewn into the collar He was staring at it To Blue, he said, again, "I didn’t know, I swear"

"What happened to your face?" Blue asked

Ada garage His voice was self-deprecating "Do you think it her?"

What it did was ile and dirty, somehow, like a teacup unearthed from the soil, but Blue didn’t say that

Ronan said, "It makes you look like a loser"

"Ronan," said Gansey

"I need everyone to sit down!" shouted Maura

It was such an alar to hear Maura shout that nearly everyone did, sinking or throwing the room Adam rubbed a hand over his cheekbone as if he could remove the bruise from it Gansey sat in an armchair at the head of the table, his hands stretched over either arm like chairman of the board, one eyebrow raised as he looked at Steve Martin’s fra, and they regarded each other warily

It still felt like there had never been this many people in the house, which was utterly untrue It was possibly true that there had never been this many men in the house before Certainly never this many raven boys

Blue felt as if their very presence robbed so here

"It is," Maura said, "too da one finger to her pulse, just under her jawbone, told Blue that it was not their voices that were too loud It was so inside her head Persephone, too, incing

"Do I need to leave?" Blue asked, though that was the last thing she wanted

Gansey, , immediately asked her, "Why would you have to leave?"

"Sheover all of the to make sense of it "And you three are … very loud already"

Blue’s skin was hot She could i like an electrical conduit, sparks froh her What could these raven boys have going on under their skins that could deafen her mother? Was it all of they screa out the count-down to his death?

"What do you ht, very clearly the ringleader of this little pack They all kept looking to him for their cues of how to interpret the situation