The Dream Thieves

Nothing.

Damn Kavinsky.

Ronan shouted, “I’m not him, all right? I’m not like him. Damn it, you know me. Haven’t you always? Didn’t you know my father? We’re both Greywarens.”

There was Orphan Girl, finally. Yes. She peered out from behind one of the trunks. If she would help him, he could bring out something, anything. He stretched out his hand to her, but she shook her head. “Vos estis unum tantum.”

(You are the only one.)

In English, she added, “Many thieves. One Greywaren.”

In the way of a dream, knowledge flooded through him. How many could make their dreams real, but how few could speak to the dream. How he was meant to be Cabeswater’s right hand. Didn’t he know? asked Cabeswater — but not with words. Hadn’t he known it all along?

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I had to figure everything out myself, and it took a f**king long time, okay? Please. I can’t do it without you.”

In his hands, suddenly, was the puzzle box. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt weighty and cool and real. He flipped the dials and wheels until it read please on the English side. He turned it to the side with the mysterious language on it. This, he knew now, was not a language of men. This was a language of trees. He read, “T’implora?”

The effect was instantaneous. He could hear leaves moving and shifting in a wind he didn’t feel, and only now did he realize how many trees hadn’t been speaking before. Muttering and whispering and hissing in three different languages, they all agreed: They would help him.

He closed his eyes in relief.

It would be all right. They would give him a weapon, and he would wake and destroy this dragon of Kavinsky’s before anything else happened.

In the blackness of his closed lids, he heard: tck-tck-tck-tck.

No, thought Ronan. Not night horrors.

But there was the rattle of their claws. The chatter of their beaks.

Dream to nightmare, just like that.

There was no real fear, just dread. Anticipation. It took so long to kill him in a dream.

“This won’t help,” he told the trees. He knelt down, bracing his fingers into the soft soil. Even though he knew he couldn’t save himself, he couldn’t ever seem to convince himself to stop fighting. “This won’t save anyone.”

The trees whispered, Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit; occidentis telum est.

(A sword is never a killer; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.)

But the night horrors were not a weapon Ronan could wield.

“I can’t control them!” he shouted. “They only want to hurt me!”

A night horror appeared. It surged over the trees, blocking out the sky. It was like nothing he had dreamt before. Three times the size of the others. Reeking of ammonia. Glacially white. The claws were yellowed and translucent, darkening to red tips. Pink veins stood out on the tattered rag wings. Its red albino eyes were tiny and furious in its wrinkled head. And instead of one ferocious beak, there were two, side by side, screaming in unison.

On the other side of the lake, Adam held up his hands, pointing at the sky. He was an alien version of himself. A dream version of himself. Lightning struck the stone beside him.

Like a heart, the ley line jerked and spasmed to life.

Cabeswater was alive.

“Now!” Adam shouted. “Ronan, now!”

The night horror hissed a scream.

“It’s only you,” whispered Orphan Girl. She was holding his hand, crouched down next to him. “Why do you hate you?”

Ronan thought about it.

The albino night horror swept in, talons opening.

Ronan stood up, stretching out his arm like he would to Chainsaw.

“I don’t,” he said.

And he woke up.

62

Apart from ruining the Gray Man’s life, the Gray Man’s plan to lead the others out of Henrietta had been going exceptionally well. Greenmantle must not have ever

really trusted him, because he had immediately accepted the Gray Man’s confession of theft. He’d sworn and threatened, but really, Greenmantle had already done the worst thing he could manage, so his words lacked force.

And news had spread fast, apparently. Those headlights there were the two men who had, he’d discovered, trashed the Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast. And those headlights behind that, calculating and inexorable, were his brother’s.

Follow me, follow me.

For a mile, two miles, three miles, fifteen miles, the Gray Man played crack the whip with the other two cars. The car containing the other treasure seekers tried to be discreet, but the car in back didn’t. That was how he knew it was his brother. His brother always wanted Dean to know. That was part of the game.

My brother. My brother. My brother.

It had been paralyzing, at first, knowing that his brother was so close. At first, the only way the Gray Man could focus on driving was by thinking of everything he had become as the Gray Man instead of everything he had been as Dean Allen. Because Dean Allen kept telling him to just pull over and get it over with. It will only be worse, whispered Dean Allen in a small voice, if you make him come looking for you.

The Gray Man, on the other hand, said: He is a thirty-nineyear-old investment manager, and for efficiency, he should probably just be shot twice in the head and returned to his office with an ambiguous note.

And there was a third part of him, now, that was neither the Gray Man nor Dean Allen, that wasn’t thinking about his brother at all. This part — perhaps it was Mr. Gray — couldn’t stop thinking about everything he was leaving behind. The faded and beautiful crevices of the little town, the unapologetic spread of Maura’s smile, the new thunder of his suddenly operating heart. This part of him even missed the Champagne Killjoy.

The Gray Man’s eyes drifted down to the note still stuck to the steering wheel:

This one’s for you. Just the way you like it: fast and anonymous.

It was such a brilliant little plan, slick and simple. All he’d had to do was give up everything. And it was working so very well.

But then something happened.

There was nothing around them but trees and highway and blackness, but suddenly the lights on the dormant machines in the passenger seat exploded.

Not a flicker. Not a hint.

A blasted shout into the night. The headlights behind him dipped as the cars slammed on their brakes, their meters undoubtedly howling the same as his.

No, the Gray Man thought. One of those stupid boys had dreamt back in Henrietta and ruined everything.