The Dream Thieves

It was very light, Blue thought. It had five tiny white buttons: four arranged in a cross shape, and one off by itself. To Blue, that fifth button was like Adam. Still working toward the same purpose as the other four. But no longer quite as close as the others.

“It will work,” Ronan said, taking the controller and handing the plane to Noah. “It worked in the dream, so it’ll work now. Hold it up.”

Still slouching, Noah lifted the tiny plane between thumb and forefinger, as if he were getting ready to launch a pencil. Something in Blue’s chest thrummed with excitement. It was impossible that Ronan had dreamt that little plane. But so many impossible things had happened already.

“Kerah,” Chainsaw said. This was her name for Ronan.

“Yes,” agreed Ronan. Then, to the others, he said imperiously, “Count it down.”

Adam made a face, but Gansey, Noah, and Blue obligingly chanted, “Five-four-three —”

On blast-off, Ronan pressed one of the buttons.

Soundlessly, the tiny plane darted from Noah’s hand and into the air.

It worked. It really worked.

Gansey laughed out loud as they all tipped their heads back to watch its ascent. Blue shielded her eyes to keep sight of the tiny white figure in the haze. It was so small and nimble that it looked like a real plane thousands of feet above the slope. With a frenzied cry, Chainsaw launched herself from Ronan’s shoulder to chase it. Ronan pitched the plane left and right, looping it around the crest, Chainsaw close behind. When the plane passed back overhead, he hit that fifth button. Seed heads cascaded from the open hatch, rolling off their shoulders. Blue clapped and reached her palm out to catch one.

“You incredible creature,” Gansey said. His delight was infectious and unconditional, broad as his grin. Adam tipped his head back to watch, something still and faraway around his eyes. Noah breathed whoa, his palm still lifted as if waiting for the plane to return to it. And Ronan stood there with his hands on the controller and his gaze on the sky, not smiling, but not frowning, either. His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn’t seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams.

In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

Gansey punched Ronan’s shoulder. “Glendower traveled with magi, did you know? Magicians, I mean. Wizards. They helped him control the weather — maybe you could dream us a cold snap.”

“Har.”

“They also told the future,” added Gansey, turning to Blue.

“Don’t look at me,” she said shortly. Her lack of psychic talents was legendary.

“Or helped him tell the future,” Gansey went on, which did not particularly make sense, but indicated that he was trying to un-irritate her. Blue’s short temper and her ability to make other people’s psychic talents stronger were also legendary. “Shall we go?”

Blue hurried to pick up the telescope before he could get to it — he shot her a look — and the other boys fetched the maps and cameras and electro-magnetic-frequency readers. They set off on the perfectly straight ley line, Ronan’s gaze still directed up to his plane and to Chainsaw, a white bird and a black bird against the azure ceiling of the world. As they walked, a sudden rush of wind hurled low across the grass, bringing with it the scent of moving water and rocks hidden in shadows, and Blue thrilled again and again with the knowledge that magic was real, magic was real, magic was real.

2

Declan Lynch, the oldest of the Lynch brothers, was never alone. He was never with his brothers, but he was never alone. He was a perpetual-motion machine run by the energy of others: here leaning over a friend’s table at a pizza joint, here drawn into an alcove with a girl’s palm to his mouth, here laughing over the hood of an older man’s Mercedes. The congregation was so natural that it was impossible to tell if Declan was the magnet attracting or the filings attracted.

It was giving the Gray Man a not inconsiderable difficulty in finding an opportunity to speak with him. He had to loiter around the Aglionby Academy campus for the better part of a day.

The waiting wasn’t entirely disagreeable. The Gray Man found himself quite charmed by the oak-shaded school. The campus possessed a shabby gravitas that was only possible with age and affluence. The dorms were emptier than they would’ve been during school term, but they were not empty. There were still the sons of CEOs traveling to third-world countries for photo ops and the sons of touring punk musicians with heavier things to bring along than seventeen-year-old accidental progeny and the sons of men who were dead and never coming to retrieve them.

These summer sons, few as they were, were not entirely noiseless.

Declan Lynch’s dorm was not quite as pretty as the other buildings, but it was still handsome with money. It was a remnant from the seventies, a technicolor decade the Gray Man had enormous fondness for. The front door was meant to be accessible only with key code, but someone had propped it open with a rubber door stopper. The Gray Man clucked in disapproval. A locked door wouldn’t have kept him out, of course, but it was the thought that counted.

Actually, the Gray Man wasn’t certain he believed that. It was the deed that counted.

Inside, the dorm offered the neutral-toned welcome of a decent hotel. From behind one of the closed doors, a Columbian hip-hop track raged, something seductive and violent. It wasn’t the Gray Man’s sort of music, but he could hear the appeal. He glanced at the door. The dorm rooms at Aglionby were not numbered. Instead, each door bore an attribute the administration hoped its students would walk away with. This door was labeled Mercy. It was not the one the Gray Man was looking for.

The Gray Man headed in the opposite direction, reading doors (Diligence, Generosity, Piety) until he got to Declan Lynch’s. Effervescence.

The Gray Man had been called effervescent, once, in an article. He was fairly certain it was because he had very straight teeth. Even teeth seemed to be a prerequisite for effervescence.

He wondered if Declan Lynch had good teeth.

There was no sound coming from behind the door. He tried the doorknob, softly. Locked. Good boy, he thought.

Down the hall, the music pounded like the apocalypse. The Gray Man checked his watch. The rental car place closed in an hour and if he despised anything, it was public transportation. This would have to be brief.

He kicked in the door.

Declan Lynch sat on one of the two beds inside. He was very handsome, with a lot of dark hair and a rather distinguished roman nose.