The Dream Thieves

He walked to the tiny stream that used to lead into Cabeswater and now led only to more field. Kneeling, he hovered his hands over the trickle of water. There was no one to see him, but he smiled anyway, bigger and bigger. Because the first time they’d been at this stream, Gansey had been holding an EMF reader over the water and watching the flashing red lights. He’d been so excited by those lights — they’d found something, the machine told them they’d found something!

And now Adam felt it in his hands. He felt it in his spine. He could see it mapped in his brain. The ley line traveled beneath him, waves of energy, but it detoured here, snagged and conducted through the water, traveling upward to the surface. It was only a small stream, only a small crack in the bedrock, so this was only a small leak.

Thunder rumbled, reminding Adam of time’s passage. He straightened and followed the stream upward through the rising field. The ley line strengthened inside him, tripping his heart, but he kept going. Cabeswater was not here now, but his memory of walking through it the first time was nearly as clear as experiencing it again. Here was where they’d had to climb between two rocks to follow the stream. Here was where the trees had begun to grow larger in diameter, big knuckles of roots bursting from the forest floor. Here the moss furred the trunks.

And here was the pool and the dreaming tree. The first place Cabeswater had changed itself for Gansey, and the first place magic had truly revealed itself to all of them.

He hesitated. His vision in the dreaming tree pressed into his mind. Gansey on the ground, dying. Ronan, furious with grief, spitting at Adam, “Are you happy now, Adam? This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

That wasn’t going to happen now. He’d changed his future. He’d chosen a different way.

Thunder guttered and popped distantly. With a deep breath to steel himself, Adam waded through the grass to where the dreaming tree had been— would be — was still? No vision overcame him, but he felt the surge of the ley line beneath his feet.

Yes, this was where he needed to be. Crouching, he parted the grass and pressed his palms to the soil. It was hot, like a living body. He closed his eyes.

He felt the course of the ley line stretching out on either side of him. Hundreds of miles one way, hundreds of miles the other. There were distant starbursts where the line intersected with other lines, and for a moment, he was dazzled by them. By the possibility of endless wonders. Glendower was miracle enough, but if there was a miracle on each line that he felt, it was enough miracles for a lifetime, if only you had the patience to look.

Oh, Gansey, he thought suddenly. Because Gansey had the patience to look. And because things wanted Gansey to find them. He should have been here, now.

No. It wouldn’t work like this if he was here. You have to be alone for this.

Adam pulled his mind away from Gansey and from those intersections, focusing instead on only the ley line beneath him. He raced along it, following the peaks and valleys of energy. Here it spurted up through an underground river. Escaped through an earthquake-shocked bedrock. Burst up through a well. Exploded through a transformer.

No wonder it was so drained by the dreaming. It was a frayed wire, energy leaking at a hundred different points.

“I feel it,” he whispered.

The wind hissed through the grass around him. He opened his eyes.

If he could repair those points, like electrician’s tape on a wire, he might be able to make it strong enough to bring Cabeswater back.

Adam stood up. It felt good to have identified the problem. That had always been the hardest part. With an engine, with school, with life. Solutions were easy, once you knew what was in your way.

Cabeswater murmured urgently. The voices tickled inside him and crackled in the corners of his eyes.

Wait, he thought. He wished he had the cards. Something to focus his thoughts on what Cabeswater was trying to say. I won’t be able to understand you. Wait until I can understand you.

As he looked back down the hill, he saw a woman approaching. He shielded his eyes with his hand. At first he thought she was one of Cabeswater’s manifestations. Certainly she seemed whimsical and imaginary from this distance — a great cumulonimbus of hair, a gray frock, boots up her entire leg.

But then he saw that she had a shadow and form and mass, and that she was a little out of breath.

Persephone climbed up to meet him and then stood with her hands on her hips. She turned in a slow circle, looking at the view, blowing out her breath.

“Why are you here?” he asked her. Was she here to bring him back? To tell him he was wrong to be so sure?

She grinned at him, a strangely impish, child-like expression. He thought of what a cruel mockery that mirror-version of her had been, the terrible child-creature from his ritual before. Nothing like this airy, whisper of a person in front of him now. Unzipping her butterfly handbag, she retrieved a black silk bag from inside. It was the sort of fabric that you wanted to touch, smooth and shimmery and floaty. It seemed to be the only thing inside the handbag.

“You left, Adam, before I could give you these,” she said, offering the smaller silk bag.

Adam accepted it, feeling its weight. Whatever was inside was vaguely warm, as if it, like the hill, were alive. “What is it?”

After he asked, he thought suddenly about how she had taken care to say his name just before. It could have been nothing. But it felt as if she were reminding him of what it was.

Adam. Adam Parrish.

He slid the contents of the bag into his other hand. A word leapt out at him.

Magician.

Persephone said, “My tarot cards.”

hey Lynch I didn’t leave that car for it to just sit while you blow III

The Gray Man checked out of Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast and placed his suitcase just inside the door of Maura’s bedroom. He didn’t unpack it. It was not that

long until the Fourth. There was no point.

Calla said, “Give me some poetry, and I’ll make you a drink.” The Gray Man said, “ ‘Our hearts must grow resolute, our

courage more valiant, our spirits must be great, though our strength grows less.’ ”

Then he did it in the original Old English.

Calla made him a drink.

Then Maura made something with butter and Calla made something with bacon and Blue steamed broccoli in self-defense. In the rest of the house, Jimi got ready for her night shift and Orla answered the ever-ringing psychic hotline. The Gray Man got underfoot trying to be helpful. He understood that this was an ordinary night at 300 Fox Way, all of this noise and commotion and disorder. It was a senseless sort of dance, artful and confused. Blue and Maura had their own orbit; Maura and Calla another. He watched Maura’s bare feet circle on the kitchen floor.