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afraid most people didn’t know how to handle Ronan. What he meant by this was that he was worried that one day someone would fall on Ronan and cut themselves.
    Sometimes Adam wondered if Ronan had been like Ronan before the Lynch brothers’ father had died, but only Gansey had known him then. Well, Gansey and Declan, but Declan seemed incapable of handling his brother now — which was why he’d been careful to schedule his visit while Ronan was in class.
    Outside of 1136 Monmouth, Adam waited on the second-story landing with Declan and his girlfriend. Girlfriend, in fluttering white silk, looked a lot like Brianna, or Kayleigh, or whoever Declan’s last girlfriend had been. They all had blond, shoulder-length hair and eyebrows that matched Declan’s dark leather shoes. Declan, wearing the suit that his senior-year political internship required, looked thirty. Adam wondered if he would look that official in a suit, or if his childhood would betray him and render him ridiculous.
    “Thanks for meeting us,” Declan said.
    Adam replied, “No problem.”
    Really, the reason he had agreed to walk with Declan and Girlfriend from Aglionby had nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with a nagging hunch. Lately, Adam had felt as if someone had been … looking in on their search for the ley line. He wasn’t quite sure how to put this feeling into concrete terms. It was a stare caught out of the corner of his eye, a set of scuffed footprints in the stairwell that didn’t seem to belong to any of the boys, a library clerk telling him an arcane text had been checked out by someone else right after he had returned it. He didn’t want to trouble Gansey with it until he was certain, though. Things seemed to weigh heavily enough on Gansey as it was.
    It wasn’t that Adam wondered if Declan was spying on them. Adam knew he was, but he believed that had everything 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 more noticeable for its furtiveness. 1136 Monmouth was a hungry-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 Adam had been able to figure out precisely what Monmouth had manufactured. Something that had required twenty-five-foot ceilings and wide open spaces; something that had left moisture stains on the floor and gouges in the brick walls. Something that the world no longer 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.
    Adam was very good at watching without being watched. Only Gansey ever seemed to catch him at it.
    Girlfriend pointed out the cracked window toward 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 assume it was Ronan.
    Adam had knocked already, but he knocked again — one long, two short, his signal. “It will be messy,” he apologized.
    This was more for the benefit of Declan’s girlfriend than it was for Declan, who knew full well what state the apartment would be in. Adam suspected Declan somehow found the mess charming 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 mind, even this brief stop at Monmouth Manufacturing.
    There was still no answer.
    “Should I call?” Declan asked.
    Adam tried the knob, which was locked, and then jimmied