The Dream Thieves

“When?”

“Just a minute ago. We’re getting older all the time. Adam — Adam, is this what you want? This?” He made an elegant, dismissive gesture toward the lower floor, pushing it all away from himself.

Adam said, “I want to get out of Henrietta.”

He knew it was cruel to say, even if it was the truth. Because of course Gansey would say —

“I don’t.”

“I know you don’t. Look, it’s not like I’m trying to . . .” He was going to say leave you behind, but that was too much, even with the champagne lapping shores.

Gansey laughed terribly. “I’m a fish who’s forgotten how to breathe in water.”

But Adam was thinking about the suppressed truth: The two of them were on perpendicular paths, not parallel ones, and eventually, they’d have to go different ways. By college, probably. If not college, then after. A tension was building in him, like the one that sometimes haunted him late at night, where he wanted to save Gansey, or be Gansey.

Gansey turned to him; his breath was all mint leaves and champagne, him and them. He asked, “Why did you go to Cabeswater without me, Adam?”

Here it was, finally.

The truth was a complicated thing. Adam shrugged.

“No,” said Gansey. “Not that.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“How about the truth?”

“I don’t know what the truth is.”

“I just don’t believe that,” Gansey said. He was starting to use the voice. The Richard Gansey III voice. “You don’t do something without knowing why.”

“That whole deal might work on Ronan,” Adam replied. “But it doesn’t work on me.”

The Gansey in the mirror laughed humorlessly. “Ronan never took my car. He didn’t lie to me.”

“Oh, come on. I didn’t lie. Something had to be done, or Whelk would’ve had control of the line right now.” Adam cast a hand out in the direction of the stairs, back toward the party, toward the singing Latin. “He would be the one hearing that. I did the right thing.”

“That wasn’t the question. The question is: that night. You had to walk right by me to go. It’s like you’re so keen on being Adam Parrish, army of one.”

He was Adam Parrish, army of one. Gansey, raised by these adoring courtiers, would never be able to understand that.

Adam’s voice was heating. “What do you want me to say, Gansey?”

“Just tell me why. I’ve defended you to Blue and Ronan for weeks now.”

The idea of his behavior being a topic of conversation infuriated Adam. “If the others have a problem with me, they can take it up with me.”

“Damn it, Adam. That’s not the point, either. The point is — just tell me it’s not going to happen again.”

“What’s ‘it’? Someone doing something you didn’t ask for? If you wanted someone you could control, you picked the wrong person.”

There was a pause, full of the distant ringing of silverware and glasses. Someone laughed, high and delighted.

Gansey just sighed.

And that sigh was the final straw. Because it didn’t whisper of pity. It drowned in it.

“Oh, don’t even,” snapped Adam. “Don’t you dare.”

There was no switch this time. No flip from ordinary to angry. Because he’d already been angry. It was already dark, and now it was black.

“Look at you, Adam.” Gansey held up a hand, demonstrating. Exhibit A, Adam Parrish, impostor. “Just look.”

Adam felt stuffed full of the partygoers, their false civility, the glittering lights, the fakery of everything. He struggled for words. “That’s right. ‘There’s Adam, what a mess. What do you reckon he was trying to say when he woke the ley line by himself? I don’t know, Ronan. Let’s not ask him.’ How about this, Gansey? It wasn’t about you. I was doing what needed to be done.”

“Oh, don’t lie to me. There were so many other ways.”

“You weren’t doing them. Either you want to find this thing or you don’t.” There was something brutally freeing about being able to say it out loud, everything he’d been thinking. He shouted, “And you don’t need him. I do. I’m not going to sit back and let someone else take my shot out of this.”

Gansey’s eyes darted down the hall and back to Adam. That’s right, Gansey, don’t wake the baby. His voice was very low. “Glendower was not yours, Adam. This was mine first.”

“You asked us. Either you meant it or you didn’t. You did this.”

Gansey lightly pressed a finger into Adam’s chest. “This? I don’t think so.”

Adam seized Gansey’s wrist. He wasn’t nice about it. The suit was slippery as blood under his fingers. “I’m not going to be your minion, Gansey. Was that what you wanted? You want me to help you find him, you let me look my way.”

Gansey jerked his arm out of Adam’s grasp. Again his eyes darted down the hall and back. “You should look at yourself in the mirror.”

Adam didn’t.

“We do this, we do it as equals,” Adam said.

Gansey glanced over his shoulder, furtive. His mouth made the shh shape, but not the sound.

“Oh, what?” Adam demanded. “You’re afraid someone will hear? They’ll know everything isn’t perfect in the land of Dick Gansey? A dose of reality could only help those people!” With a sudden twist, he swept all of the figurines from the Queen Anne table. Foxes in breeches and terriers seized in midflight. They all plunged to the floor with a satisfying and diseased smash. He raised his voice. “World’s ending, folks!” “Ada m —”

“I don’t need your wisdom, Gansey,” he said. “I don’t need you to babysit me. I got into Aglionby without you. I got Blue without you. I woke the ley line without you. I won’t take your pity.” Now, finally, Gansey was silenced. There was something very remote about his eyes, or the set of his lips, or the lift of his chin. He didn’t say anything else. He just gave a tiny shake to the sleeve Adam had grabbed, letting the wrinkles fall out. His eyebrows were pulled together as if the action required most of his attention. Then he left Adam standing in the hall.

Next to Adam, the mirror reflected both him and the flickering form of a ghost no one but Adam could see. She was screaming, but there was no sound.