The Dream Thieves

“Do you think we’re in league with the devil, Ronan?” Blue asked. The question would’ve had a better effect if she’d asked it with sickly sweetness— she could just imagine Calla pulling it off— but she was too irritated to manage it. “They’re evil soothsayers?”

He rolled his eyes luxuriously at her. It was like he merely absorbed her anger, saving it all up for when he needed it for himself.

“My mom first knew she was psychic because she saw the future in a dream,” Blue said. “A dream, Ronan. It wasn’t like she sacrificed a goat in the backyard to see it. She didn’t try to see the future. It’s not something she became, it’s something she is. I could just as easily say that you’re evil because you can take things from your dreams!”

Ronan said, “Yeah, you could.”

Gansey’s frown deepened. Again he opened his mouth and closed it.

Blue couldn’t drop it. She said, “So even if it could help you understand you and your dad, you won’t go talk to them.”

He shrugged, as dismissive as Kavinsky. “Nope.”

“Why, you close-minded —”

“Jane,” Gansey rumbled. Oblivious! He cut his eyes to her, looking as stately as one could look lying on their back in a salmon polo shirt. “Ronan.”

Ronan said, “I am being perfectly f**king civil.”

“You’re being medieval,” Gansey replied. “Multiple studies have suggested that clairvoyance lies in the realm of science, not magic.”

Oh. Enlightened.

“Come on, man,” Ronan said.

Gansey sat up. “Come on, man, yourself. We’re all aware here that Cabeswater bends time. You yourself somehow managed to write on that rock in Cabeswater before any of us ever got there. Time’s not a line. It’s a circle or a figure eight or a goddamn slinky. If you can believe that, I don’t know why you can’t believe that someone might be able to glimpse something further along the slinky.”

Ronan looked at him.

That look, Blue thought. Ronan Lynch would do anything for Gansey.

I probably would, too, she thought. It was impossible for her to understand how he managed to pull off such an effect in that polo shirt.

“Whatever,” Ronan said. Which meant he’d do it. Gansey looked at Blue. “Happy, Jane?”

Blue said, “Whatever.”

Which meant she was.

Maura and Persephone were working, but Blue managed to corner Calla in the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room. If she couldn’t have all three of them, Calla was the one she wanted anyway. Calla was as traditionally clairvoyant as the other two, but she had an additional, strange gift: psychometry. When she touched an object, she could often sense where it had come from, what the owner had been thinking when he or she used it, and where it might end up. As they seemed to be dealing with things that were both people and objects at the same time, Calla’s talent seemed apropos.

Standing in the doorway with Ronan and Gansey, Blue said, “We need your advice.”

“I’m sure you do,” replied Calla, in not the warmest of ways. She had one of those low, smoky voices that always seemed more appropriate to a black-and-white movie. “Ask your question.”

Politely, Gansey asked, “Are you sure you can think that way?”

“If you’re doubting me,” Calla snapped, “I don’t see why you’re here.”

In Gansey’s defense, Calla was upside down. She hung magnificently from the ceiling of the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room; the only thing preventing her from crashing to the floor was a deep purple swath of silk wrapped around one of her thighs.

Gansey averted his eyes. He whispered in Blue’s ear, “Is this a ritual?”

There was something a bit magical about it, Blue supposed. Although the green gingham-wallpapered room was full of a multitude of odds and ends to lure the attention, it was difficult to look away from Calla’s slowly spinning form. It seemed impossible the length of silk would hold her weight. Currently, she was rotated toward the corner, her back to them. Her tunic hung down, revealing a lot of dark brown skin, a pink bra strap, and four tiny tattooed coyotes running along her spine.

Blue, holding the puzzle box in her hands, whispered back: “It’s aerial yoga.” Louder, she said, “Calla, it’s about Ronan.”

Calla readjusted, wrapping the silk around her other thigh instead. “Which one’s he again? The pretty one?”

Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Blue’s look said, I’m so, so sorry. Gansey’s said, Am I the pretty one?

Calla continued turning, almost imperceptibly. It was becoming more obvious as she swiveled that she was not the thinnest woman on the planet, but that she had stomach muscles like whoa. “The Coca-Cola shirt?”

She meant Adam. He’d worn a red Coca-Cola shirt to the first reading and was now and forevermore identified by it.

Ronan said, his voice a low growl, “The snake.”

Calla’s rotation finished just as he said it. They looked at each other for a long moment, him right side up, her upside down. Chainsaw, on Ronan’s shoulder, twisted her head to get a better look. There was nothing particularly sympathetic about Ronan just then, handsome mouth drawing a cruel line, eerie tattoo creeping out the collar of his black T-shirt, raven pressed against the side of his shaved head. It was hard to remember the Ronan who’d pressed that tiny mouse to his cheek back at the Barns.

Upside down, Calla was trying to look dismissive but it was clear that one of her arched eyebrows was terribly interested.

“I see,” she replied finally. “What sort of advice do you need, snake?”

“My dreams,” Ronan replied.

Now Calla’s eyebrows matched her dismissive mouth. She allowed herself to circle away from them again. “Persephone’s the one you’ll want for dream interpretation. Have a nice life.”

“They’ll interest you,” Ronan said.

Calla just cackled and stretched one of her legs out.

Blue made an irritated noise. Taking two strides across the room, she pressed the puzzle box to Calla’s bare cheek.

Calla stopped spinning.

Slowly, she righted herself. The gesture was as elegant as a ballet move, a swan dancer unfolding. She said, “Why didn’t you say so?”

Ronan said, “I did.”

Her plum lips pursed. “Something you should know about me, snake. I don’t believe anyone.”

Chainsaw hissed. Ronan said, “Something you should know about me. I never lie.”