The Dream Thieves

He had spent forty-eight hours more or less awake and restless and then, on the third day, he had bought a side-scan sonar device, two window air conditioners, a leather sofa, and a pool table.

“Now do you feel better?” Adam had asked drily.

Gansey had replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Hey, man,” Ronan said, “I like the pool table.”

The entire situation made Blue apoplectic.

“There are children starving in the streets of Chicago,” she said, her hair bristling with indignation. “Three species go extinct every hour because there’s no funding to protect them. You are still wearing those incredibly stupid boat shoes, and of all the things that you have bought, you still haven’t replaced them!”

Gansey, bewildered, observed his feet. The movement of his toes was barely visible through the tops of his Top-Siders. Really, in light of recent events, these shoes were the only things that were right in the world. “I like these shoes.”

“Sometimes, I hate you,” Blue said. “And Orla, of all people!”

This was because Gansey had also rented a boat, a trailer, and a truck to pull it with, and then asked Blue’s older cousin Orla to accompany them on their latest trip. The rental truck required a driver over twenty-one, and the mission, according to Gansey, required a psychic. Orla fit both purposes and was more than willing. She had arrived at Monmouth dressed for work: bell-bottoms, platform sandals, and an orange bikini top. There were acres of bare skin between the bell-bottoms and the bikini top. Her bare stomach was so clearly an invitation for admiration that Gansey could hear the dismissive voice of his father in his ear. Girls these days. But Gansey had seen photos of girls in his father’s days, and they didn’t look that different to him.

He exchanged a glance with Adam, because it had to be done, and of course Blue intercepted it. Her eyes narrowed. She wore two shredded tank tops and a pair of bleached cargo pants. In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job.

He was in a terrible mood.

Somewhere across Henrietta, something crackled explosively. It was either a transistor falling prey to the electric whims of the ley line or Joseph Kavinsky having premature fun with one of his infamous Fourth of July explosives. Either way, it was a good day to get out of town.

“We should get moving,” Gansey ordered. “It’s only going to get hotter.”

Just a few dozen yards away, the Gray Man sat in the Champagne Monster on Monmouth Avenue, paging through a history book and listening to Muswell Hillbillies while the air-conditioning played across his skin. Really, he should’ve been reading up on Welsh history— his cursory research on the Lynch brothers revealed that one of the boys they ran with was obsessed with it — but instead he indulged himself by trying his hand at a new translation of “Bede’s Death Song.” It was like an archaic crossword puzzle. When the text said Fore ðæm nedfere nænig wiorðe, would it be truer to the original intent of the writer to translate it as “Before the fated journey there” or “Facing the path to Death”? Pleasurable trials!

The Gray Man looked up as a boy emerged from Monmouth Manufacturing. The overgrown lot was already a mess of teens and rental vehicles and boats; they were clearly getting ready to go somewhere. The boy who had just exited was the square, showy one who looked like he was about to fall into Senate — Richard Gansey. The third. That meant that somewhere there were at least two more Richard Ganseys. He didn’t notice the Gray Man’s rental car parallel parked in the shadows. Nor did he notice the white Mitsubishi parked just down the road. The Gray Man wasn’t the only one waiting for the Monmouth Manufacturing building to be vacated.

A fellow academic had once asked the Gray Man: “Why Anglo-Saxon history?” At the time it had struck the Gray Man as a foolish and unanswerable question. The things that drew him to that time period were surely unconscious and manyheaded, diffused through his blood from a lifetime of influences. One might as easily ask him why he preferred to wear gray, why he disliked gravy of all sorts, why he loved the seventies, why he was so fascinated by brothers when he couldn’t seem to succeed at being one himself. He’d told the academic that guns had made history boring, which he knew was a lie even as he said it, and then he’d extricated himself from the conversation. Of course he thought of the true answer later, but it was too late then.

It was this: Alfred the Great. Alfred became king during one of armpits of English history. There was no England, really, not back then. Just small kingdoms with bad teeth and abbreviated tempers. Life was, as the old saying went, nasty, brutish, short. When the Vikings came tearing onto the island, the kingdoms didn’t stand a chance. But Alfred stepped in to unite them. He made them a brotherhood, pushed out the Vikings. He’d promoted literacy and the translation of important books. Encouraged the poets and the artists and writers. He’d ushered in a renaissance before the Italians had ever considered the concept.

He was one man, but he’d changed Anglo-Saxon England forever. He imposed order and honor, and under that crusheddown grass of principle, the flower of poetry and civility had burst through.

What a hero , the Gray Man thought. Another Arthur.

His attention snapped up as Ronan Lynch stepped out of the old factory. He was clearly related to Declan: same nose, same dark eyebrows, same phenomenal teeth. But there was a carefully cultivated sense of danger to this Lynch brother. This was not a rattlesnake hidden in the grass, but a deadly coral snake striped with warning colors. Everything about him was a warning: If this snake bit you, you had no one to blame but yourself.

Ronan opened the driver’s side door of the charcoal BMW hard enough that the car shook, then he threw himself in hard enough that the car kept shaking, and then he slammed the door hard enough that the car shook yet more. And then he left with enough speed to make the tires squeal.

“Hm,” said the Gray Man, already preferring this Lynch brother to the last.

The rental truck pulled out with rather more care than the BMW had and headed down the street in the same direction. Then, although the lot was empty, the Gray Man waited. Sure enough, the white Mitsubishi he’d spotted before pulled in, the bass from its stereo slowly liquefying the pavement beneath it. A kid climbed out, carrying a plastic baggie full of something like business cards. He was the sort the Gray Man preferred to steer clear of; he hummed with a restless, unpredictable energy. The Gray Man didn’t mind dangerous people, but he preferred sober dangerous people. He watched the kid enter the factory and return with only an empty bag. The Mitsubishi tore off, tires squalling.