The Dream Thieves (50 page)

This was how Blue knew something was really wrong.

Ronan exploded in behind him, and if she hadn’t been able to tell from Gansey, she would’ve known it from Ronan. He was wild-eyed as a trapped animal. When he stopped, he rested his hand on the doorjamb and his fingers crawled up it.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

They told her.

Immediately, she accompanied them to the Fourth of July parade, where they searched unsuccessfully for Maura or Calla. They drove by Kavinsky’s house and found it empty. Then, as the afternoon wore on, Blue directed them to the Henrietta drag strip — the annual location of Kavinsky’s Fourth of July party. It seemed impossible that neither Gansey nor Ronan had ever been to it. Impossible that Blue, a student at ordinary old Mountain View High School, should have special knowledge about Kavinsky that they didn’t. But maybe this part of Joseph Kavinsky wasn’t very Aglionby at all.

Kavinsky’s Fourth of July party was infamous.

Two years before, he had supposedly had an actual tank for his fireworks finale. As in a full-size, olive drab tank with Russian characters painted on the side. It was rumor, of course, and stayed rumor, because the end of the story was that he blew up the tank itself. Blue knew a senior who claimed to have a metal strip off it.

Three years before, a junior from a school three counties over had overdosed on something the hospital hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t the overdose that impressed people, though. It was that fifteen-year-old Kavinsky was already capable of pulling in kids from forty-five minutes away. Statistically, you probably weren’t going to die at Kavinsky’s party.

Every year, there were dozens of cars waiting to be flogged on the drag strip. No one knew who provided them or where they went afterward. It didn’t matter if you had a license. All you needed was to know how to hit a gas pedal.

Last year, Kavinsky had supposedly sent a firework so far into the air that the CIA had come to his house to question him. Blue found this story rather suspect. Surely it would’ve been the Department of Homeland Security instead.

This year, two ambulances and four cops parked half a mile from the drag strip. Close enough to be there in time. Not close enough to watch.

Kavinsky was untouchable.

The drag strip — a long, dusty field cut into the hills around it — was already packed when they got there. Music blared from somewhere, benevolent and upbeat. Barbecue grills scented the air with charcoal and neglected hot dogs. There was no sign of alcohol. Nor of the infamous cars that supposedly populated the drag strip later. There was an old Mustang and a Pontiac facing off down the strip, throwing up rubber and dust while onlookers cheered them on, but the matches seemed awfully playful and easygoing. There were adults here, and young kids. Ronan stared at a girl holding a balloon as if she were a bewildering creature.

This wasn’t really what any of them had expected.

Gansey stood in the dirt and glanced around, dubious. “Are you sure this is Kavinksy’s?”

“It’s early,” Blue said. She glanced around herself. She was torn between wanting to be recognized by someone from school and wanting to not be seen running with Aglionby boys.

“He can’t be here,” Ronan said. “You have to be wrong.”

“I don’t know if he’s here yet,” Blue snapped, “but this is the place. This is always the place.”

Ronan glared at one of the speakers. It was playing something Blue thought was called “yacht rock.” He was more wound up by the moment. People were dragging their younger kids out of his way.

“Jane says this is the place,” Gansey insisted. “So it’s the place. Let’s do a study.”

They did a study. As the afternoon shadows grew longer, they pushed through the crowd and asked after Kavinsky and looked behind the buildings at the edge of the strip. They didn’t find him, but as the evening graded into night, the character of the party subtly changed. The young kids were the first to disappear. Then the adults started to go, replaced by either seniors or college kids. Red plastic cups started to appear. The yacht rock got darker, deeper, filthier.

The Mustang and the Pontiac were gone. A girl offered Blue a pill.

“I’ve got extras,” she told Blue.

Nerves, sudden and searing, burned along Blue’s skin. She shook her head. “No thanks.”

When the girl asked Gansey, he just gazed at her for a minute too long, not realizing he was being rude until too late. This was so far from Richard Gansey’s scene that he had no words at all.

And then Ronan flicked the pill out of the girl’s hand onto the ground. She spit in his face and stalked off.

Ronan turned in a slow circle. “Where are you, you bastard?”

The floodlights came on.

The crowd whooped.

Overhead, the speakers spat in Spanish. The bass thundered through Blue’s boots. Real thunder groaned overhead.

Engines revved high, and the crowd pressed back to admit the cars. Every hand was up in the air, jumping, dancing, celebrating. Someone shouted:

“God bless
AMERICA
!”

Ten white Mitsubishis drove onto the drag strip. They were identical: black yawning mouths, shredded knife graphic carved down the sides, giant spoilers. But one tore down the strip in front of the others, and then jerked sideways to skid before a massive boom of dust. It was hidden in the cloud, nothing visible but the headlights cutting through the dirt.

The crowd went wild.

“That’s him,” Ronan said, already shoving his way through the teens.

“Lynch,” Gansey said. “
Ronan!
Hold up!”

But Ronan was already several feet away, heading straight for the lone car. The dust had cleared and Kavinsky was visible, standing on its roof.

“Let’s burn something!”
Kavinsky howled. He snapped his fingers, pointing. There was a hiss and a whine, and suddenly the first firework of the night spiraled up into the chaotic blue, high above the floodlights. He laughed, loud and wild. “Fuck you all!” He said something else, but it was lost in the ascending music. The bass buffeted them.

“I don’t like this,” Gansey shouted in Blue’s ear.

But there was no other way.

They caught up to Ronan just as he reached Kavinsky, who now stood next to the open door of the car. Whatever the opening volley had been, it had been unpleasant.

“Oh, hey,” Kavinsky sneered. His eyes had found Blue and Gansey. “It’s Daddy. Dick, that’s a strangely hetero partner you have there tonight. Lynch having performance issues?”

Ronan grabbed Kavinsky’s throat, and for once, Blue wasn’t displeased. Another firework screamed into the black overhead. Lightning arced past it.

“Where is he?” Ronan snarled. It was barely words.

Kavinsky seemed fairly unconcerned. He gestured toward the car behind him, and then toward one of the others, and then another. In a slightly strangled tone, he said, “In that car. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. You know these things. They all look alike.”

He kneed Ronan in the stomach. With a gasp, Ronan dropped him.

“Here’s the thing, Lynch,” Kavinsky said. “When I said
with me
or
against me
, I didn’t really think you’d pick against me.”

Blue leapt forward as one of the Mitsubishis tore by behind her, the engine wailing high, smoke swirling. Already she was thinking about what they’d have to do to search them all. To keep track of the ones they’d already stopped and checked. All of the cars were identical, with the same Virginia license plate: THIEF.

“But in a way,” Kavinsky added, “it’s better this way. You know how I like things to explode.”

Ronan said, “I want my brother.”

“First,” Kavinsky said, opening his palm, revealing a green pill, “save your life. I’ll be right back, sweetie.”

He dropped it on his tongue.

He was down in a second, on his knees, then slumped against the car. Blue and Gansey just stared at Kavinsky’s prone form, uncomprehending. His veins were raised roads up his arms, the pulse in his jaw pounding out the bass.

“Shit,” said Ronan, diving into the car, throwing open the center console and digging in the contents. He found what he was looking for — another one of the green pills. “Shit, shit.”

“What’s happening?” Blue demanded.

“He’s dreaming,” Ronan said. “Who knows what he’s gone to get. Nothing good.
Shit
, Kavinsky!”

“Can we stop him?” Gansey asked.

“Only if you kill him,” Ronan replied. He stuffed the pill in his mouth. “Get Matthew. And get the hell out of here.”

R
onan hurtled into the dream. When he landed, elbows scuffing blood on the dirt, Kavinsky was already there, sunk down in the briars, covering his face. The trees Ronan knew so well were attacking him, claws of branches. Something about Kavinsky was the wrong color, or something, in comparison to the woods around him. It was as if the dream painted him a usurper.

“Guess our secret place is the same,” Kavinsky said. He grinned. His face was striated with fine scratches from the thorns.

Ronan replied, “Not such a thief tonight.”

“Some nights,” Kavinsky said, all teeth, “you just take it. Consent is overrated.”

The branches shook over them both. Thunder grumbled and smashed, close and real, real, real.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ronan said.

“There isn’t anything else, man.”

“There’s reality.”

Kavinsky laughed the word. “Reality! Reality’s what other people dream for you.”

“Reality’s where other people are,” Ronan replied. He stretched out his arms. “What’s here, K? Nothing! No one!”

“Just us.”

There was a heavy understanding in that statement, amplified by the dream.
I know what you are
, Kavinsky had said.

“That’s not enough,” Ronan replied.

“Don’t say Dick Gansey, man. Do not say it. He is never going to be with you. And don’t tell me you don’t swing that way, man. I’m in your head.”

“That’s not what Gansey is to me,” Ronan said.

“You didn’t say you don’t swing that way.”

Ronan was silent. Thunder growled under his feet. “No, I didn’t.”

“That makes it worse, man. You really are just his lapdog.”

There wasn’t even a tiny part of Ronan that was stung by this statement. When Ronan thought of Gansey, he thought of moving into Monmouth Manufacturing, of nights spent in companionable insomnia, of a summer searching for a king, of Gansey asking the Gray Man for his life.
Brothers.

Ronan said, “Life isn’t just sex and drugs and cars.”

Kavinsky stood up. The thorns whipped at his legs, sinking into his cargo pants. His heavy-lidded eyes held Ronan’s, and Ronan thought of all of the times he had looked through the window of his BMW and seen Kavinsky looking back. The illicit thrill of it. The certainty that Kavinsky didn’t let anyone tell him who he was.

Kavinsky said, “Mine is.”

He looked to the woods. Holding out his hand, he snapped his fingers, just as he had to queue the first firework.

The forest screamed.

Or whatever Kavinsky had manifested had screamed. The sound tore Ronan to his spine. There was a sound like someone clapping their hand over your ear. A beat of air. Whatever was coming was huge.

The trees shimmered and wept, sagged and flickered. The already sapped ley line guttered and blackened. There was nothing left. Kavinsky was taking it all to create his dream beast.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ronan said again.

It was a ball of fire. An explosion in flight. It was a dragon and a bonfire and an inferno and teeth. It was the destruction of the Mitsubishi made into a living creature.

As it descended, it opened its maw wide and screamed at Ronan. It wasn’t the sound Ronan had heard before. It was the roaring hiss of a fire dampened with water. Sparks rained onto Ronan’s shoulders.

He could feel how it hated him. How it hated Kavinsky, too. How it hated the world.

It was so hungry.

Kavinsky looked at Ronan, his eyes dead. “Try to keep up, Lynch.”

Then both he and the dragon vanished.

He’d woken up, and taken it with him.

Hurry.