The Dream Thieves

“Do you think. . .” he began, “you could tell me what is happening at your house right now?”

“What? Like, what Mom’s doing?”

A large insect buzzed by his ear, coming in like a passenger jet. It kept going, though the flyby was close enough to tickle his skin. “Or Persephone. Or Calla. Or anyone. Just describe it to me.”

“Oh,” she said. Her voice had changed a little. He heard a chair scraping on her side of the phone. “Well, okay.”

And she did. Sometimes she spoke with her mouth full, and sometimes she had to pause to answer someone else, but she took her time with the story and gave each of the women in the house full measure. Gansey blinked, slower. The take-out dinner smell had gone away and all that remained was the heavy, pleasant smell of growing things. That, and Blue’s voice on the other end of the phone.

“Like that?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” said Gansey. “Thanks.”

S

omething strange and chemical was happening to the Gray Man. Once, he’d been stabbed with a screwdriver— Phillips head, bright blue handle — and falling in love

with Maura Sargent was exactly the same. He hadn’t felt a thing when the screwdriver had pierced his side. It hadn’t been unbearable when he’d stitched it up as he watched The Last Knight on the television by the bed (Arbor Palace Inn and Lodging, local color!). No, it had gotten terrible only when the wound had begun to close. When he’d begun to regrow skin where it had been chewed away.

Now the ragged hole in his heart was regrowing out of the scar tissue, and he couldn’t stop feeling it.

He felt it as he installed a new bank of meters in the Champagne Pogrom. They grinned and winked and chirruped at him.

He felt it as he sliced open the soles of his second pair of shoes and retrieved his spending cash from within. The bills ruffled fondly against his hand.

He felt it as he tried the doorknob of the Kavinskys’ vinyl mansion. The front door swung wide open without resistance. He found a house full of wonders, none of them the Greywaren. Mrs. Kavinsky lifted her cheek slowly from the toilet, lashes fluttering blearily, nostrils snotty.

“I am a figment of your imagination,” he told her.

She nodded.

He felt it as he leaned over Ronan Lynch’s BMW in the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing and checked the VIN number. Ordinary VIN numbers were seventeen digits long and indicated what sort of car it was and where the car was made. This BMW’s VIN number was only eight numbers long and corresponded to the date of Niall Lynch’s birth. The Gray Man was senselessly delighted by this.

He felt it when Greenmantle called and railed angrily and anxiously about the length of time that had passed.

“Are you listening to me?” Greenmantle demanded. “Do I need to come there myself?”

The Gray Man replied, “Henrietta is a nice little town.”

He felt it as he let himself into the rectory of St. Agnes and asked the priest inside if the Lynch brothers had ever confessed anything of note. The priest made a variety of shocked noises as the Gray Man dragged him across the small laminate counter of the kitchenette and the round breakfast table and through the automatic cat feeder provided for the use of the two rectory cats, Joan and Dymphna.

“You’re a very sick man,” the priest told the Gray Man. “I can find you help.”

“I think,” the Gray Man said, lowering the priest onto a case of new missals, “I’ve found some.”

He felt it when every single machine in the Champagne Blight illuminated like a Christmas tree, flashing and wailing and surging for all that they were worth. When it first began, his first thought was: Yes. Yes, that is exactly what it feels like.

And then he remembered why he was there.

The lights flared, the meters surged, the alerts screamed.

This was not a test.

Slowly, inexorably, the readings drew him out of town, rewarding him with ever stronger results. The Gray Man felt it even now, in the inevitability of this treasure hunt. Every so often the machines would sag, the readings flickering. And then, just as he began to suspect the abnormality had vanished for good, leaving him adrift, the meters would explode in light and sound again, even stronger than before.

This was not a test.

He was finding the Greywaren today.

He could feel it.

40

At eleven the next morning, Gansey received a series of texts from Ronan. The first was merely a photograph. It was a close-up of a part of Ronan’s anatomy that he hadn’t seen before. An Irish flag was twist-tied to it. It was not the most grotesque display of nationalism Gansey had ever seen, but it was close.

Gansey received the text while in the middle of his mother’s tea party. Drugged by the poor sleep on the sofa, numbed by the demure socialization occurring all around him, and haunted by the fight with Adam, he didn’t immediately process the possible implications of such a photograph. Understanding was only beginning to prickle when a second text came in.

before you hear it from anyone else, i wrecked the pig

Gansey was suddenly very awake.

but don’t worry man i got it under control say hi to your mom for me In most ways, the timing was lucky. Because Gansey had

inherited from his mother an extreme distaste of showing the uglier emotions in public (“Everyone’s face is a mirror, Dick — endeavor to make them reflect a smile”), receiving the news while surrounded by an audience of fine china and laughing ladies in their fifties bought him time to figure out how to react.

“Is everything all right?” asked the woman across from him. Gansey blinked at her. “Oh, yes, thank you.”

There were no circumstances under which he would’ve

answered that question in any other way. Possibly if he’d discovered a family member had died. Possibly if one of his limbs had been separated from his body.

Possibly.

As he accepted a tray of cucumber sandwiches from the woman on his right to pass to the woman on his left, he wondered if Adam had woken up yet. He suspected Adam wouldn’t come down, even if he was awake.

His mind replayed the image of Adam casting the figurines to the floor.

“These sandwiches are delightful,” said the woman on his right to the woman on his left. Or possibly to him.

“They’re from Clarissa’s,” Gansey said automatically. “The cucumbers are local.”

Ronan took my car.

At that moment, Gansey’s memory of Ronan and his filthy smile didn’t look very different from Joseph Kavinsky and his matching dirty grin. Gansey had to remind himself that they had very important differences. Ronan was broken, Ronan was fixable, Ronan had a soul.