The Dream Thieves (46 page)

“Is that a lie?” Ronan asked.

Because Niall Lynch was the biggest liar of them all, and he’d stuffed all of that into his eldest son. There was not much difference between a lie and a secret.

“I never lie to
you
.”

His father started the BMW and flashed his slow smile at Ronan. What a grin he had, what ferocious eyes, what a creature he was. He had dreamt himself an entire life and death.

Ronan said, “I want to go back.”

“Then take it,” said his father. “You know how now.”

And Ronan did. Because Niall Lynch was a forest fire, a rising sea, a car crash, a closing curtain, a blistering symphony, a catalyst with planets inside him.

And he had given all of that to his middle son.

Niall Lynch reached his hand out. He clasped Ronan’s in his own. The engine was revving; even while holding Ronan’s hand, his foot was already on the gas pedal, on the way to the next place.

“Ronan,” he said.

And it sounded like he meant to say

Wake up

After the house had gone quiet, Blue got into bed and pulled the blanket over her face. Sleep was nowhere. Her mind was full of Adam’s dull expression, Ronan’s invented Camaro, and Gansey’s breath on her cheek.

Her mind took the memory of mint and spun it into a related memory of him, one that Gansey didn’t have yet: the first time she had ever seen him. Not at Nino’s when he asked her out on Adam’s behalf. But that night in the churchyard when all of the spirits of the future dead walked past. One year — that was the longest that any of those spirits had. They would all be dead before the next St. Mark’s Eve.

She had seen her first spirit: a boy in an Aglionby sweater, the shoulders of it spattered darkly with rain.

“What’s your name?”

“Gansey.”

She couldn’t make it untrue.

Downstairs, Calla’s voice suddenly swelled angrily. “Well, I will break the damn thing myself if I find you using it again.”

“Tyrant!” Maura shot back.

Persephone’s voice murmured amiably, too low for eavesdropping.

Blue closed her eyes, tight. She saw Gansey’s spirit. One hand braced in the dirt. She felt his breath. His hands pressed into her back.

Sleep didn’t come.

A few amorphous minutes later, Maura knocked the pads of her fingers on Blue’s open door. “Sleeping?”

“Always,” Blue replied.

Her mother climbed into Blue’s narrow bed. She jerked at the pillow until Blue allowed her a few inches of it. Then she lay down behind Blue, mother and daughter like spoons in a drawer. Blue closed her eyes again, inhaling the soft clove scent of her mother and the fading mint of Gansey.

After a moment, Maura asked, “Are you crying?”

“Only a little.”

“Why?”

“Generalized sadness.”

“Are you
sad
? Did something bad happen?”

“Not yet.”

“Ah, Blue.” Her mother wrapped her arms around her and breathed into the hair at the base of Blue’s neck. Blue thought about what Gansey had said, about being wealthy in love. And she thought about Adam, still collapsed on their sofa downstairs. If he had no one to wrap their arms around him when he was sad, could he be forgiven for letting his anger lead him?

Blue asked, “Are
you
crying?”

“Only a little,” her mother said, and inhaled snottily and unbecomingly.

“Why?”

“Generalized sadness.”

“Are you
sad
? Did something bad happen?”

“Not yet. A long time ago.”

“Those are the opposite,” Blue said.

Maura sniffed again. “Not really.”

Blue wiped her eyes with her pillowcase. “Tears don’t become us.”

Her mother wiped her eyes on the shoulder of Blue’s T-shirt. “You’re right. What becomes us?”

“Action.”

Maura laughed softly under her breath.

How terrible it would be
, Blue thought, her mind on Adam again,
to not have a mother who loved you?

“Yes,” she agreed. “How wise you are, Blue.”

On the other side of Henrietta, the Gray Man answered his phone. It was Greenmantle.

Without any particular preamble, he said, “Dean Allen.”

The Gray Man, phone in one hand, book in the other, didn’t immediately respond. He set his tattered edition of Anglo-Saxon riddles facedown on the side table. The television prattled in the background; one spy met another on a bridge. They were exchanging hostages. They’d been told to come alone. They hadn’t come alone.

It was taking an unexpectedly long period of time for the Gray Man to register the meaning of Greenmantle’s words. Then, once that had sunk in, it took him even longer to understand why Greenmantle was saying them.

“That’s right,” Greenmantle said. “The mystery’s gone. It wasn’t that hard to figure out who you were. Turns out Anglo-Saxon poetry is a very small field. Even at the undergrad level. And you know how well I do with undergrads.”

The Gray Man hadn’t been Dean Allen for a very long time. It was harder than one might expect to abandon an identity, but the Gray Man was more patient and devoted than most. Usually, one traded one identity for another, but the Gray Man wanted to be no one. Nowhere.

He touched the weathered spine of the riddle book.

ic eom wrætlic wiht on gewin sceapen

Greenmantle added, “So, I want it.”

(I am a beautiful thing, shaped for fighting)

“I don’t have it.”

“Sure, Dean, sure.”

“Don’t call me that.”

nelle ic unbunden ænigum hyran

nymþe searosæled

“Why not? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

(Unstrung I obey no man; only when skillfully tied —)

The Gray Man said nothing.

“So you’re not going to change your story, Dean?” Greenmantle asked. “And yet you’re going to keep taking my calls. So that means you know where it is, but you don’t have it yet.”

For so many years he’d buried that name. Dean Allen wasn’t supposed to exist. There was a
reason
he’d given it up.

“Tell you what,” Greenmantle said. “I
tell you what.
You get the Greywaren and call me by the Fourth of July with your flight confirmation number back here. Or I tell your brother where you are.”

Hold still, Dean.

Logic swam away from the Gray Man. Very quietly, he said, “I told you about him in confidence.”

“I paid you in confidence. Turns out he’s eager to know where you are,” Greenmantle said. “We had a chat, Dean. Says he lost touch with you in the middle of a conversation he’s been wanting to finish.”

The Gray Man turned off the television, but voices still hummed in the background.

“Dean,” Greenmantle said. “You there?”

No. Not really. Color was draining from the walls.

“Do we have an agreement?”

No. Not really. A weapon didn’t come to an agreement with the hand that held it.

“Two days is plenty of time, Dean,” Greenmantle said. “See you on the other side.”

F
or twenty-one hours, Adam Parrish and the Gray Man slept. While they slept without dreaming, Henrietta prepared for the Fourth of July. Flags climbed poles over car dealerships. Parade signs warned would-be parallel parkers to rethink their choices. In the suburbs, fireworks were bought and dreamt. Doors were locked and, later, busted open. At 300 Fox Way, Adam quietly turned eighteen. Calla was called into her office to make certain nothing important had been stolen during a break-in. At Monmouth Manufacturing, a white Mitsubishi with a set of keys in the ignition and a knife graphic on the side appeared in the parking lot overnight. It bore a note that read,
This one’s for you. Just the way you like it: fast and anonymous.

Gansey frowned at the disordered handwriting. “I think he needs to come to terms with his sexuality.”

Ronan, chewing his leather bracelets, dropped them from his teeth and said, “There is no coming to terms with having three balls.”

It was the sort of joke he normally made for Noah. But Noah wasn’t there.

Back at the psychics’ house, Adam woke up. According to Maura, he swung his legs over the sofa, walked into the kitchen where he drank four glasses of pomegranate juice and three cups of one of the more noxious healing teas, thanked Maura for the use of her couch, and then got into his tri-colored car and drove away, all within the space of ten minutes.

Fifteen minutes after that, Maura reported, Persephone came downstairs with a butterfly-shaped handbag and a pair of sensible boots with three-inch heels and laces all the way up her thighs. A taxi arrived and she climbed into it. It drove away in the same direction as the tri-colored car.

Twelve minutes after that, Kavinsky texted Ronan:
ballsack.
Ronan replied:
shitstack.
Kavinsky:
coming to 4th of July?
Ronan:
would you stop if you knew it was destroying the world?
Kavinsky:
god that would be awesome

“Well?” Gansey asked.

Ronan said, “Wouldn’t bet on the negotiations.”

Seven minutes after that, Maura, Calla, and Blue climbed into the fatigued Ford, drove to get Ronan and Gansey, and headed into the simmering day.

Gansey looked like a king, even sitting in the shabby backseat of the shared Fox Way vehicle. Perhaps especially when sitting in the backseat of a shabby vehicle. He asked, “What is it we’re doing?”

Maura replied, “Action.”

W
hy are we here, man?” Ronan asked. His eyes followed Chainsaw as she cantered anxiously across the counter. He’d brought her to enough places that new locations didn’t generally faze her for long, but she wouldn’t be truly happy until she’d done a perimeter search. She paused to tap her beak on an absolutely darling bird-themed cookie jar. “There are more goddamn roosters than a Hitchcock movie.”

“Are you referring to
The Birds
?” Gansey asked. “Because I don’t recall any chickens in it. It’s been a long time, though.”

They stood in a homey, belowground kitchen in the basement of the Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast. Calla searched the cupboards and drawers; her version of Chainsaw’s room check, possibly. She’d already discovered a waffle maker and a gun, and had placed both on the round breakfast table. Blue stood at the far doorway, peering around to where her mother had gone. Ronan assumed she and Gansey must have fought; she was as far away from him as she could get. Next to Ronan, Gansey reached up to brush one of the dark, exposed beams with his fingertips. He was clearly discomfited by what Maura had told him about Adam on the ride over. Ganseys were creatures of habit, and he wanted Adam here, and he wanted Noah here, and he wanted everyone to like him, and he wanted to be in charge.