The Dream Thieves (49 page)

Now, Adam knelt beside a diseased rose in another backyard. His already grubby hands pressed against the dirt, digging to find the stone he knew was hidden somewhere beneath. Persephone, standing watch, glanced at the rambler on the other side of the yard.

“Hurry,” she said once more. Fourth of July was already hot and unforgiving. A bank of clouds moved slowly behind the mountains, and already Adam knew how the day would go: The heat would build and build, until it snapped in another cacophonous summer thunderstorm.

Lightning.

Adam’s fingers found the stone. It was the same at every fray in the line: a stone or a body of water that confused and diffused the ley line’s direction. Sometimes Adam had only to turn a stone to feel the ley line immediately snap into place, clean as a light switch. Other times, though, he had to experiment by moving more stones into the area, or removing a stone entirely, or digging a trench to redirect a stream. Sometimes neither he nor Persephone could understand what they needed to do, and then they would draw out one or two of the tarot cards. Persephone helped him see what the cards were trying to say.
Three of wands:
build a bridge across the stream with these three stones.
Seven of swords:
Just dig out the biggest of the stones and put it in the tri-colored car.

Using the tarot cards was like when he had begun learning Latin. He danced ever closer to that moment when he would understand the sentences without having to translate each word.

He was exhausted and awake, euphoric and anxious.

Hurry.

What was it that made these stones special? He didn’t know. Not yet. Somehow, they were like the rocks at Stonehenge and Castlerigg. Something about them conducted the ley line’s force and dragged the energy out of line.

“Adam,” Persephone said again. There was no sign of a car, but she frowned at the road. Her fingers were as dirty as his; her delicate gray frock was stained. She looked like a doll dug from a landfill. “Hurry.”

This stone was larger than he expected. Twelve inches across, maybe, and who knew how deep. There was no way to get to it without digging up the rose. Hurriedly, he snatched a spade lying beside him. He spiked the dirt, twisted out the deformed rose, tossed it aside. His palms sweated.

“Sorry,” Persephone suggested.

“Pardon?”

She murmured, “You should say sorry when you kill something.”

It took him a moment to realize she meant the rose. “It was dying anyway.”

“
Dying
and
dead
are different words.”

Shamed, Adam muttered an apology before sticking the tip of the spade beneath the stone. It came free. Persephone turned a questioning look to him.

“We take this one,” he said immediately. She nodded. It went in the backseat with the others.

They had only just headed back down the street when another car pulled into the driveway they’d just abandoned.

Close.

Multiple stones were stacked in the tri-colored car now, but this latest one pressed into Adam’s consciousness more than the others. It would be useful, with the lightning, he thought. For … something. For concentrating the ley line into Cabeswater. For … making a gate.

Hurry.

“Why now?” he asked her. “Why are all these parts frayed?”

She didn’t look up from her task, which was laying cards on the dashboard. The smudgy, inked art looked like thoughts instead of images. “It’s not just fraying now. It’s only that it’s more obvious with the greater current running through it. Like a wire. In the past, priestesses would’ve taken care of the line. Maintained it. Just like we’re doing now.”

“Like Stonehenge,” he said.

“That’s a very large and cliché example, yes,” she answered softly. She glanced up at the sky. The clouds at the horizon had gotten just a little closer since he’d last looked; they were still white, but they were beginning to pile on top of one another.

“I wonder,” he said, more to himself than to her, “what it would be like if all the ley lines were repaired.”

She replied, “I expect that would be a very different world with very different priorities.”

“Bad?” he asked. “A bad world?”

She looked at him.

“Different isn’t bad, right?” he asked.

Persephone turned back to her cards.
Swick.
She turned over a second one.

I should call work
, Adam thought. He was supposed to come in tonight. He hadn’t called in sick before.
I should call Gansey.

But there was no time. They had so many more places to go before — before —

Hurry.

As they pulled onto the interstate, Adam’s attention was snagged by a white Mitsubishi screaming in the opposite direction on the other side of the median. Kavinsky.

But was that Kavinsky behind the wheel? Adam craned his head to look in the mirror, but the other car was already a diminishing speck on the horizon.

Persephone turned over a card.
The Devil.

All of a sudden, Adam was quite certain of why they were hurrying. He’d known since the night before that he needed to hone the line’s energy in order for Cabeswater to reappear. An important task, certainly, but not life-or-death.

But now, he knew all at once what he was hurrying for. They were restoring the ley line for Cabeswater. They were restoring it
now
because Ronan was going to need it. Tonight.

Hurry.

T
he first thing Ronan noticed at church on the Fourth was that the priest had a black eye. The second thing he noticed was that Matthew wasn’t there. The third thing he noticed was that there was space for two people on the pew beside Declan. Everyone at St. Agnes knew the Lynch brothers didn’t come to church alone.

It was an oddly discomfiting image. For the first few weeks after Niall had died, the boys had always left room for their mother, as if she would magically arrive partway through the service.

I’m working on that
, Ronan thought, and then pushed it out of his head.

He was quite late to the special Mass; it looked like insolence. By the time he slid into the pew beside Declan, a small crumpled woman had already begun to intone the first reading. It was a passage Ronan used to love as a child —
of this one I am proud
. Really, Ronan’s tardiness was because he had gone with Gansey to pick up the Gray Man from the car rental office. The boys had given him the Mitsubishi and, in return, Ronan had gotten the puzzle box back. It seemed a fair trade. A dream thing for a dream thing.

Declan looked sharply to Ronan. He hissed, “Where’s Matthew?”

“You tell me.”

The churchgoers in the pew behind them rustled meaningfully.

“You weren’t here on Sunday.” Declan’s voice held the weight of an accusation. “And Matthew says you didn’t ever explain.”

Ronan had to guiltily admit to himself that this was true. He’d been lying on the hood of an invented Camaro and he hadn’t given a second’s thought to what day it was. Then he realized what Declan was hinting at — that possibly, Matthew was taking revenge on Ronan with an unannounced disappearance of his own. While it was true that tricking Ronan into a solo church visit with Declan would have been an excellent punishment, it didn’t feel like Matthew’s handiwork at all.

“Oh, please,” Ronan whispered. “He’s not that clever.”

Declan looked shocked and poisonous. He was always so alarmed by the truth.

“Have you called him?” Ronan asked.

“Not picking up.” Declan narrowed his eyes as if this failure to answer his phone was an infection his youngest brother had picked up from Ronan.

“You saw him this morning?”

“Yeah.”

Ronan shrugged.

“He doesn’t skip.” The inverse statement was implied:
unlike you
.

“Until he does.”

“This is all your fault,” Declan said, hushed. His eyes darted to the empty pew beside Ronan and then to the priest. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. I told you to keep your head down. Why can’t you just do what you’re told for once?”

Someone kicked the back of their pew. It struck Ronan as an extremely un-Catholic action. He looked over his shoulder, elegant and dangerous, and raised an eyebrow at the middle-aged man sitting behind him. He waited. The man dropped his eyes.

Declan flicked Ronan’s arm. “Ronan.”

“Stop acting like you know everything.”

“Oh, I know enough. I know exactly what you are.”

There was a time when this statement would’ve trickled through Ronan like venom. Now, he didn’t have time for it. In the relative scheme of things, his older brother’s opinion ranked very low. In fact, Ronan was only here because of Matthew, and without Matthew here, there was no reason to stay. He slid out of the pew.

“Ronan,” whispered Declan ferociously. “Where are you going?”

Ronan put a finger to his lips. A smile snaked out on either side of it.

Declan just shook his head, lifting a hand like he was simply
done
with Ronan. And that, of course, was another lie, because he was never done with Ronan. But at the moment, eighteen and freedom seemed a lot closer than it had before, and it didn’t matter.

As Ronan pushed through the great, heavy doors of the church — the same doors he’d walked through with the newly dreamt Chainsaw — he pulled out his phone and called Matthew.

It went to voicemail.

Ronan didn’t believe it. He got into the BMW to head back to Monmouth and called again.

Voicemail.

He couldn’t let it go. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t that Matthew never abandoned his phone. And it wasn’t quite that Matthew never abandoned church, especially not an additional holiday Mass.

It was the Gray Man’s face and the beaten-up priest and the world turned on its ear.

He put the car in gear and headed out of the smoldering downtown. He steered with his knee. Called again. Voicemail.

This didn’t feel right.

As he pulled into the lot outside of Monmouth, a text buzzed in from Matthew’s number.

Finally.

Ronan pulled up the parking brake, turned the car off, and looked at the screen.

what’s up mofo

This wasn’t what he generally expected from his younger brother. Before he had time to consider a reply, a text buzzed in from Kavinksy’s number as well.

what’s up mofo

Something ill turned over inside Ronan.

A moment later, Kavinsky texted again.

bring something fun to fourth of july or we’ll see which pill works the best on your brother

Without pause, Ronan snatched up his phone and called Kavinsky.

Kavinsky picked up at once. “Lynch, fancy hearing from you.”

Ronan demanded, “Where is he?”

“You know, I asked nice the first few times. Are you coming to Fourth? Are you coming? Are you coming? Here, have a motherfucking car. Are you coming?
You
made it ugly. Bring something impressive tonight.”

“I’m not doing this,” Ronan said.

One thousand nightmares of Matthew dead. Blood in his curls, blood in his teeth, flies in his eyes, flies in his guts.

“Oh,” Kavinsky said, with that slow, despicable laugh in his voice. “I think you are. Or I’ll keep trying different things on him. He can be my finale tonight.
Boom!
You want to see something explode….”

Ronan turned the key, threw down the parking brake. The door to Monmouth had opened and Gansey stood there, one hand up, asking a question.

“You won’t get away with this.”

“I got away with dear old dad,” Kavinsky observed. “And Prokopenko. And no offense to your brother, but they were a lot more complicated.”

“This was the wrong play. I will destroy you.”

“Don’t let me down, Lynch.”

G
ansey blasted into 300 Fox Way well in advance of the thunderstorm. He didn’t knock. He just suddenly burst in as Blue was unlacing her shoes from her part-time dog-walking gig.

“Jane?” he called. Her stomach twisted.
“Blue!”