The Dream Thieves (36 page)

“Goldfish,” Kavinsky said.

It wouldn’t be the same.

But these were the same. Dozens upon dozens — now Ronan saw that the Mitsubishis were parked at least two deep — of identical cars. Only they were not quite identical. The longer Ronan looked, the more differences he saw. A bigger wing here. A splattered dragon graphic there. Some had strange headlights that spread across their entire fronts. Some had no lights at all, just blank sheet metal where they should’ve been. Some were slightly taller, some were slightly longer. Some of the cars had only two doors. Some had none.

Kavinsky got to the end of the first uneven row and turned to the next. There had to be more than one hundred of them.

It wasn’t possible.

Ronan’s hands fisted. He said, “I guess I’m not the only one with recurring dreams.”

Because of course these were from Kavinsky’s head. Like the fake licenses, like the leather bands he’d given Ronan, like the incredible substances his friends would travel hours for, like every impossible firework he sent up each year on the Fourth, like every forgery he was known for in Henrietta.

He was a Greywaren.

Kavinsky hauled up the parking brake. They were a white Mitsubishi in a world of white Mitsubishis. Every thought in Ronan’s head was a shard of light, gone before he could hold it.

“I told you, man,” Kavinsky said. “Simple solution.”

Ronan’s voice was low. “Cars. An entire
car
.”

He hadn’t even imagined it was possible. He had never even thought to try for more than the Camaro’s keys. He’d never thought there was anyone outside of himself and his father.

“No — world,” Kavinsky said. “An entire
world
.”

A
fter the party had dwindled to nothing, Gansey crept down the back staircase, avoiding his family. He didn’t know where Adam was — he was supposed to stay in Gansey’s old room as guests of his mother occupied all of the other spare bedrooms — and he didn’t go looking for him. Gansey was meant to sleep on the couch, but there would be no sleep for him tonight. So he quietly went outside to the back garden.

With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the concrete fountain. The nuances and wonders of the English garden were many, but most of them were lost after dark. The air was thick with the scent of boxwood, gardenias, and Chinese food. The only flowers he could see were white and drowsy.

His soul felt raw and battered inside him.

What he needed was to sleep, so this day would be over and he could start a new one. What he needed was to be able to turn off his memories, so that he could stop replaying the fight with Adam.

He hates me.

What he wanted was to be home, and home wasn’t here.

He was stretched too thin to consider what was wise or what was not. He called Blue.

“Hello?”

He pressed his eyes closed. Just the sound of her voice, the Henrietta lull to it, made him feel uneven and shattered.

“Hel
lo
?” she echoed.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Oh, Gansey! No, you didn’t. I had Nino’s tonight. Is your thing done with?”

Gansey lay down, his cheek against the still sun-hot concrete of the fountain bench, and looked out of the midnight garden at the sodium-vapor paradise that was Washington, D.C. He held his phone to his other ear. His homesickness devoured him. “For now.”

“Sorry for the noise,” Blue said. “It’s a zoo here, like always. And I’m just getting some — uh — yogurt and I’m — there we go. So what
do
you need?”

He took a deep breath.

What do I need?

He saw Adam’s face again. He replayed his own answers. He didn’t know which of them was wrong.

“Do you think …” he began, “you could tell me what is happening at your house right now?”

“What? Like, what Mom’s doing?”

A large insect buzzed by his ear, coming in like a passenger jet. It kept going, though the flyby was close enough to tickle his skin. “Or Persephone. Or Calla. Or anyone. Just describe it to me.”

“Oh,” she said. Her voice had changed a little. He heard a chair scraping on her side of the phone. “Well, okay.”

And she did. Sometimes she spoke with her mouth full, and sometimes she had to pause to answer someone else, but she took her time with the story and gave each of the women in the house full measure. Gansey blinked, slower. The take-out dinner smell had gone away and all that remained was the heavy, pleasant smell of growing things. That, and Blue’s voice on the other end of the phone.

“Like that?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” said Gansey. “Thanks.”

S
omething strange and chemical was happening to the Gray Man. Once, he’d been stabbed with a screwdriver — Phillips head, bright blue handle — and falling in love with Maura Sargent was exactly the same. He hadn’t felt a thing when the screwdriver had pierced his side. It hadn’t been unbearable when he’d stitched it up as he watched
The Last Knight
on the television by the bed (Arbor Palace Inn and Lodging, local color!). No, it had gotten terrible only when the wound had begun to close. When he’d begun to regrow skin where it had been chewed away.

Now the ragged hole in his heart was regrowing out of the scar tissue, and he couldn’t stop feeling it.

He felt it as he installed a new bank of meters in the Champagne Pogrom. They grinned and winked and chirruped at him.

He felt it as he sliced open the soles of his second pair of shoes and retrieved his spending cash from within. The bills ruffled fondly against his hand.

He felt it as he tried the doorknob of the Kavinskys’ vinyl mansion. The front door swung wide open without resistance. He found a house full of wonders, none of them the Greywaren. Mrs. Kavinsky lifted her cheek slowly from the toilet, lashes fluttering blearily, nostrils snotty.

“I am a figment of your imagination,” he told her.

She nodded.

He felt it as he leaned over Ronan Lynch’s BMW in the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing and checked the VIN number. Ordinary VIN numbers were seventeen digits long and indicated what sort of car it was and where the car was made. This BMW’s VIN number was only eight numbers long and corresponded to the date of Niall Lynch’s birth. The Gray Man was senselessly delighted by this.

He felt it when Greenmantle called and railed angrily and anxiously about the length of time that had passed.

“Are you listening to me?” Greenmantle demanded. “Do I need to come there myself?”

The Gray Man replied, “Henrietta
is
a nice little town.”

He felt it as he let himself into the rectory of St. Agnes and asked the priest inside if the Lynch brothers had ever confessed anything of note. The priest made a variety of shocked noises as the Gray Man dragged him across the small laminate counter of the kitchenette and the round breakfast table and through the automatic cat feeder provided for the use of the two rectory cats, Joan and Dymphna.

“You’re a very sick man,” the priest told the Gray Man. “I can find you help.”

“I think,” the Gray Man said, lowering the priest onto a case of new missals, “I’ve found some.”

He felt it when every single machine in the Champagne Blight illuminated like a Christmas tree, flashing and wailing and surging for all that they were worth. When it first began, his first thought was:
Yes. Yes, that is exactly what it feels like.

And then he remembered why he was there.

The lights flared, the meters surged, the alerts screamed.

This was not a test.

Slowly, inexorably, the readings drew him out of town, rewarding him with ever stronger results. The Gray Man felt it even now, in the inevitability of this treasure hunt. Every so often the machines would sag, the readings flickering. And then, just as he began to suspect the abnormality had vanished for good, leaving him adrift, the meters would explode in light and sound again, even stronger than before.

This was not a test.

He was finding the Greywaren today.

He could feel it.

A
t eleven the next morning, Gansey received a series of texts from Ronan. The first was merely a photograph. It was a close-up of a part of Ronan’s anatomy that he hadn’t seen before. An Irish flag was twist-tied to it. It was not the most grotesque display of nationalism Gansey had ever seen, but it was close.

Gansey received the text while in the middle of his mother’s tea party. Drugged by the poor sleep on the sofa, numbed by the demure socialization occurring all around him, and haunted by the fight with Adam, he didn’t immediately process the possible implications of such a photograph. Understanding was only beginning to prickle when a second text came in.

before you hear it from anyone else, i wrecked the pig

Gansey was suddenly very awake.

but don’t worry man i got it under control say hi to your mom for me

In most ways, the timing was lucky. Because Gansey had inherited from his mother an extreme distaste of showing the uglier emotions in public (“Everyone’s face is a mirror, Dick — endeavor to make them reflect a smile”), receiving the news while surrounded by an audience of fine china and laughing ladies in their fifties bought him time to figure out how to react.

“Is everything all right?” asked the woman across from him.

Gansey blinked at her. “Oh, yes, thank you.”

There were no circumstances under which he would’ve answered that question in any other way. Possibly if he’d discovered a family member had died. Possibly if one of his limbs had been separated from his body.

Possibly.

As he accepted a tray of cucumber sandwiches from the woman on his right to pass to the woman on his left, he wondered if Adam had woken up yet. He suspected Adam wouldn’t come down, even if he were awake.

His mind replayed the image of Adam casting the figurines to the floor.

“These sandwiches are delightful,” said the woman on his right to the woman on his left. Or possibly to him.

“They’re from Clarissa’s,” Gansey said automatically. “The cucumbers are local.”

Ronan took my car.

At that moment, Gansey’s memory of Ronan and his filthy smile didn’t look very different from Joseph Kavinsky and his matching dirty grin. Gansey had to remind himself that they had very important differences. Ronan was broken; Ronan was fixable; Ronan had a soul.

“I’m so pleased with the movement to keep food local,” said the woman on his right, possibly to the woman on his left. Or maybe to him.

Ronan had charm. It was just buried deep.

Very deep.

“It tastes fresher,” said the woman on his left.

The thing was, Gansey had known what happened on Friday nights when Ronan’s BMW had come back smelling of burning brakes and a clutch under duress. And he’d taken the Camaro keys with him when he left for a reason. So this wasn’t a surprise.

“Really, the advantages are in the reduced fuel and transportation costs,” Gansey said, “that are passed on to the consumer. And to the environment.”

But what did he mean
wrecked
?