Read Blue Lily, Lily Blue for Free Online Page B

on the bed beside her. “Do you think Mom went looking for Butternut?”
“Your father. Artemus,” Persephone corrected. Or clarified. Butternut was not really Blue’s father’s name— it was a pet name Maura had apparently given him in Ye Olde Days. “I think that’s oversimplifying it. But yes, that is one of the reasons why she went.”
“I thought she had the hots for Mr. Gray.”
Persephone considered. “The problem with your mother, Blue, is she likes to touch things. We told her that Artemus was in the past. He made his choices long before you, I said. But no, she had to keep touching it! How can you expect something to heal if you keep poking ?”
“Sooooo she’s . . . gone . . . to . . . get . . . him?”
“Oh, no!” Persephone said with a little laugh. “I don’t think that would — no. As you said, she has the hots for Mr. Gray. Do young people really say that anymore?”
“I just said it. I’m young.”
“Ish.”
“Are you asking me or not? Either you accept my authority on this point or we move on.”
“We move on. But it is up to her, you know, if she wants to go looking for him. She never gets to be all on her own, and this is her chance to have some time to herself.”
Maura did not strike Blue as a time to herself person, but maybe that had been the problem. “So you’re saying we shouldn’t keep looking for her.”
“How should I know?”
“You’re a psychic! You charge people to tell their future! Look into the future!”
Persephone gazed at Blue with her all-black eyes until she felt a little bad about her outburst, and then Persephone added, “Maura went into Cabeswater. That’s not the future. Besides, if she had wanted help, she would have asked. Probably.”
“If I had paid you,” Blue said dangerously, “I would be asking for my money back right now.”
“Fortunate that you didn’t pay me, then. Does this look even to you?” Persephone held up the sweater. The two sleeves were nothing alike.
With a rather blasted pshaw! Blue leapt off the bed and stormed out of the room. She heard Persephone call, “Sleep is brain food!” as she headed down the hall.
Blue was not comforted. She did not feel in any way as if she had just had a meaningful exchange with a human.
Instead of going to her bedroom, she crept into the dim Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and sat beside the psychic hotline, folding her bare legs beneath her. The window, ajar, let in the chilly air. The streetlight through the leaves cast familiar, living shadows over the bins of sewing materials. Snatching a pillow from the chair, Blue rested it on top of her goose-bumped legs before picking up the handset. She listened to make sure there was a dial tone and not psychic activity on the other end.
Then she called Gansey.
It rang twice, three times, and then: “Hello?”
He sounded boyish and ordinary. Blue asked, “Did I wake you up?”
She heard Gansey fumble for and scrape up his wireframes.
“No,” he lied, “I was awake.”
“I called you by accident anyway. I meant to call Congress, but your number is one off.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, because yours has 6-6-5 in it.” She paused. “Get it?”
“Oh, you.”
“6-6-5. One number different. Get it? ”
“Yeah, I got it.” He was quiet for a minute then, though she heard him breathing. “I didn’t know you could call hell, actually.”
“You can call in,” Blue said. “The thing is that you can’t call out .”
“I imagine you could send letters, though.”
“Never with enough postage.”
“No, faxes,” Gansey corrected himself. “Pretend I didn’t say letters. Faxes is funnier.”
Blue laughed into the pillow. “Okay, that was all.”
“All what?”
“All I had to say.”
“I’ve learned a lot. I’m glad you misdialed.”
“Well. Easy mistake to make,” she said. “Might do it again.”
A very, very long pause. She opened her mouth to fill it, then changed her mind and didn’t. She was shivering again, even though she wasn’t cold with