The Dream Thieves

Releasing the headrest, Gansey turned to Blue. “Why? Is it science, or is it magic?”

Adam made a dismissive sound.

“No,” Blue said, “I know what you mean. Did it go, or was it taken?”

“Maybe it’s invisible,” Gansey suggested.

Adam wasn’t sure he believed in true invisibility. He’d tried it and it never seemed to protect him. He asked Noah, “Are you still there when we can’t see you?”

Noah just blinked at him from the dimness of the backseat, his eyes liquid and faraway. He was, Adam noted, nearly disappeared already. He was more the feeling of Noah than actually Noah.

Ronan had been listening, because he spun and leaned in the window. “At the store, when he disappeared, he didn’t just become invisible. He went away. If you’re saying Cabeswater’s like Noah, it’s not invisible. It’s gone somewhere.”

There was a breath’s silence. This was where Gansey, if he were Ronan, would swear. Where if he were Adam, he’d close his eyes. If he were Blue, he’d snap in exasperation.

But Gansey merely rubbed a thumb over his lip and then drew himself up. He was instantly cool and elegant, all true emotions placed in an undisclosed location. He drew out his journal, jotted a note in the margin, and caged it with terse brackets. When he closed the pages, whatever anxiety he had over Cabeswater was closed in with the rest of his thoughts on Glendower.

Some time later, after Noah had discreetly disappeared, Declan’s Volvo glided up, as quiet as the Pig was loud. Ronan said, “Move up, move up” to Blue until she scooted the passenger seat far enough for him to clamber behind it into the backseat. He hurriedly sprawled back in the seat, throwing one jean-covered leg over the top of Adam’s and laying his head in a posture of thoughtless abandon. By the time Declan arrived at the driver’s side window, Ronan looked as if he had been asleep for days.

“Lucky I was able to get away,” Declan said. He peered into the car, eyes passing over Blue and snagging on Ronan in the backseat. His gaze followed his brother’s leg to where it rested on top of Adam’s, and his expression tightened.

“Thanks, D,” Gansey said easily. With no effort, he pushed open the door, forcing Declan back without seeming to. He moved the conversation to the region of the front fender. It became a battle of genial smiles and deliberate hand gestures.

Blue watched disdainfully from the passenger seat as Adam watched sharply from the backseat. And as he sat there, observing the set of Declan’s shoulders and the way his eyes looked, he realized something startling.

Declan was afraid.

Probably it wasn’t apparent to Gansey, who was fairly oblivious, nor to Blue, who didn’t know what Declan looked like ordinarily. And Ronan’s feelings about his older brother were like blood in the water; he wouldn’t be able to see through the bilious clouds.

But to Adam, who’d spent a fair amount of his life afraid — not only afraid, but trying to hide it — it was obvious.

The question was what Declan Lynch had to be afraid of.

“Who gave your brother that shiner, Ronan?” he asked.

Without opening his eyes, Ronan replied, “Same person who f**ked his nose over.”

“And who was that?”

Ronan laughed, just once, a ha! “Burglars.”

The problem with getting the facts about Declan from Ronan was that Ronan always assumed that his brother was lying.

Of course, usually he was.

Suddenly, the driver’s side door was ripped open. The sound and shock of it were so violent that Ronan forgot to look asleep and Adam and Blue both stared. Declan leaned in.

“I know you want to do the opposite of everything I say,” he snapped, “but you need to keep your head down. Do you remember when I told you to keep it down, months ago? Have you forgotten?”

Ronan’s voice was slow, petulant. His eyes, though, halfhidden in the dim, warm light of the Camaro’s interior — they were terrible. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Well, it feels like you have,” Declan said. “People are watching. And if you slip up, you screw things up for all of us. So don’t slip up. And I know you’ve been on the streets again. When you lose your license, I —”

“Declan.” Gansey’s voice cut through, deep and responsible. He placed a hand on Declan’s shoulder, gently tugging him back. “We’re cool here.” When this didn’t have the desired effect, Gansey added, “I know you don’t want to make a scene in front of . . .”

Both boys looked at Blue.

Blue’s lips parted with indignation, but Gansey’s words worked magic. Declan retreated instantly.

A moment later, Gansey returned to the Pig. “Sorry, Jane,” he said. Now his voice sounded weary, nothing like the broad persuasion he’d just exercised on Declan. He lifted the battery into view. “Adam, you want to do this thing?”

He said it like it was an ordinary day, like they’d come back from an ordinary trip, like nothing was wrong. The Lynch brothers had fought, but that was merely evidence that they were both still breathing. The Pig had died, but it was always either dying or rising again.

But in everything Gansey didn’t say, in every feeling he didn’t paint on his face, he was shouting:

It’s gone.

17

The mask was his father’s.

Even in his dreams, Ronan could not go back to the Barns, but here was something from the Barns coming to him. In reality, the mask hung on his parents’ dining room wall, well out of reach of curious hands. But in his dream, it hung at eye-level on the wall of Adam’s shabby apartment. It was carved of smooth, dark wood and looked like a cheap tourist souvenir. The eyeholes were round and surprised, the mouth parted in an easy smile big enough for lots of teeth.

“This is cheating,” Orphan Girl said in Latin.

She hadn’t been there before, but she was now. Her presence reminded Ronan all at once that he was dreaming. This moment, the one when he realized he’d already created everything here with his own mind, that was when he could take something back with him. It was his. He could do whatever he wanted to with it.

“Cheating,” she insisted again. “Dreaming a dream thing.” She meant the mask, of course. It was surely from his father’s mind.

“It’s my dream,” Ronan told her. “Here. I brought you some chicken.”

And he had. He handed her a box of fried chicken, which she fell on voraciously.