The Dream Thieves

Holding the phone away from his mouth, Gansey told them, “Adam thinks he saw an apparition at his place.”

Ronan eyed Noah. “I’m seeing an apparition right now.”

Noah made a rude gesture, a hilariously unthreatening act coming from him, like a growl from a kitten. The clerk clucked audibly.

Chainsaw took the clucking as a personal affront. She plucked irritably at the leather bands on Ronan’s wrist, reminding him of Kavinsky’s strange gift earlier. It was not an entirely comfortable feeling to think of the other boy studying him that closely. Kavinsky had gotten the five bands precisely right, down to the tone of the leather. Ronan wondered what he was hoping to achieve.

“For how long?” Gansey asked the phone.

Ronan rested his forehead on the topmost shelf. The metal edge snarled against his skull, but he didn’t move. At night, the longing for home was ceaseless and omniscient, an airborne contaminant. He saw it in Dollar City’s cheap oven mitts — that was his mother at dinnertime. He heard it in the slam of the cash register drawer — that was his father coming home at midnight. He smelled it in the sudden whiff of air freshener — that was the family trips to New York.

Home was so close at night. He could be there in twenty minutes. He wanted to smash everything off these shelves.

Noah had wandered down the aisle, but now he gleefully returned with a snow globe. He stood behind Ronan until he pushed off the shelf to admire the atrocity. A seasonally decorated palm tree and two faceless sunbathers were trapped inside, along with a painted, erroneous statement: IT’S ALWAYS CHRISTMAS SOMEWHERE.

“Glitter,” whispered Noah reverentially, giving it a shake. Sure enough, it was not fake snow but glitter that precipitated on the eternal holiday sands. Both Ronan and Chainsaw watched, transfixed, as the colorful bits caught in the palm tree.

Farther down the aisle, Gansey suggested to the phone, “You could come stay at Monmouth. For the night.”

Ronan laughed sharply, loud enough for Gansey to hear. Adam was militant about staying at his place, even though it was horrible. Even if the room had been a five-star accommodation, it would have been hateful. Because it wasn’t the bruised home Adam desperately and shamefully missed, nor was it Monmouth Manufacturing, the new home Adam’s pride wouldn’t allow. Sometimes, Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony.

Gansey’s back was turned to them. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Ramirez? I didn’t talk to anyone at the church. Yes, twenty-four hundred dollars. I know that part. I —”

This meant they were talking about the Aglionby letter; both Ronan and Gansey had gotten matching ones.

Now Gansey’s voice was low and furious. “At some point it’s not cheati — no, you right. You’re right, I absolutely don’t understand. I don’t know and I won’t ever.”

Probably, Adam had made the connection between his rent change and the tuition raise. It wasn’t a complicated assumption, and he was clever. It was easy, too, to hang it on Gansey. If Adam had been thinking straight, though, he would’ve considered how it was Ronan who had infinite connections to St. Agnes. And how whomever was behind the rent change would have had to enter a church office with both a wad of cash and a burning intention to persuade a church lady to lie about a fake tax assessment. Taken apart that way, it seemed to have Ronan written all over it. But one of the marvelous things about being Ronan Lynch was that no one ever expected him to do anything nice for anyone.

“It wasn’t me,” Gansey said, “but I’m glad it happened that way. Fine. Take from that what you will.”

The thing was, Ronan knew what a face looked like, just before it was about to break. He’d seen it in the mirror often enough. Adam had fracture lines all over him.

Next to Ronan, Noah said, “Oh!” in a very surprised way.

Then he flickered out.

The snow globe crashed onto the ground where Noah’s feet used to be. It left a damp, wobbly ellipse as it rolled away. Chainsaw, shocked, bit Ronan. He’d squeezed her as he leapt back from the sound.

The clerk said, “Come on.”

She hadn’t seen the travesty. But she clearly knew one had occurred.

“Don’t get excited,” Ronan said loudly. “I’ll pay for it.”

He would have never admitted how his heart pounded in his chest.

Gansey turned sharply, his face puzzled. The scene — Noah absent, ugly snow globe rolled half-under a shelf — offered no immediate explanation. To Adam, he said, “Hold on.”

Abruptly, Ronan’s entire body went cold. Not a little chilly, but utterly cold. The sort of cold that dries the mouth and slows the blood. His toes went numb, and then his fingers. Chainsaw let out a terrified creaking sound.

She cried, “Kerah! ”

He laid a frozen hand over her head, comforting her, though he was not comforted.

Then Noah reappeared in a violent sputter, like the power crackling back on. His fingers clutched Ronan’s arm. Cold seeped from the point of contact as Noah dragged heat to become visible. An absolutely perfect breath of Henrietta summer air dissipated around them, the scent of the forest when Noah had died.

They all knew that Noah could drop the temperature in the room when he first manifested, but this scale was something new.

“Whoa! Way to ask first, ass**le!” Ronan said. But he didn’t push him off. “What was that?”

Noah’s eyes were wide.

Gansey told Adam, “I’ll call you back.”

The clerk said, “Are you boys done yet?”

“Nearly!” Gansey called back in his reassuringly honeyed voice, shoving his phone in his back pocket. “I’ll be up for paper towels in a minute! What’s happening here?” This last bit was hissed to Ronan and Noah.

“Noah took a personal day.”

“I lost . . .” Noah struggled for words. “There wasn’t air. It went away. The — the line!”

“The ley line?” Gansey asked.

Noah nodded once, a sloppy thing that was sort of a shrug at the same time. “There was nothing. . . left for me.” Releasing Ronan, he shook out his hands.

“You’re welcome, man,” Ronan snarled. He still couldn’t feel his toes.

“Thanks. I didn’t mean to . . . you were there. Oh, the glitter.”

“Yes,” Ronan replied crossly. “The glitter.”