The Dream Thieves (32 page)

The door jumped again.

Again Matthew started. But the cedar chest didn’t budge. It was heavy, and the night horror was not. Its strength was in those claws and that beak.

Three more times the door jerked on its hinges. Then there was a long, long pause.

It was possible it had given up.

But Ronan hadn’t considered what their next step would be. They couldn’t risk opening the door if the night horror was on the other side. Perhaps he should go out by himself — the bird men never wanted anyone else. It was only Ronan they despised. Everything in him was loath to leave his brother and mother behind, but they would both be safer without him.

Long minutes stretched out in silence. And then, somewhere in the house, a door shut.

Matthew and Ronan stared at each other. Something about the sound had been very unhurried and human — not at all what Ronan would have expected from the night horror.

Sure enough, ordinary footsteps began to creak down the hall. Possibilities unwound in Ronan’s mind, none of them good. There was no time to move the cedar chest without drawing attention to it. No wisdom to warning this newcomer of the nightmare, either — Ronan’s presence would only make it more dangerous.

“Hide,” Ronan ordered Matthew. His younger brother was frozen, so he grabbed his sleeve and tugged him away from their mother. There was just room for them to tuck themselves behind the rolled-up rugs in the corner of the room. It wouldn’t withstand careful study, but in the dimness, there was no reason why they’d be discovered.

Many minutes later, after much creaking of floorboards elsewhere in the house, someone gave the door an experimental shove. This time, it was quite clearly a some
one
rather than a some
thing
. There was an audible, human-sounding sigh on the other side, and the shuffling of feet on the floorboards was clearly produced by shoes.

Ronan held a finger to his lips.

There was only one more shove, and then the door cracked an inch. Another grunt, another shove, and the door came open far enough to admit a person.

Ronan wasn’t sure who he had expected. The home nurse, probably. Maybe even Declan, visiting illegally.

But this was a handsome, wiry man all dressed in gray; Ronan had never seen him before. The way he flicked his gaze around the room was so keen Ronan was afraid he would see them behind the rugs after all. But the man’s interest was snagged by Aurora Lynch on her chair in the middle of the room.

Ronan tensed.

It would take nothing at all to spring him from his hiding place. If he so much as touched her —

But the Gray Man didn’t touch Aurora. Instead, he bent over to look into her face. It was a curious, piercing study, over in a few seconds. He toed the tubes and wires that led from machines to nowhere. He rubbed his jaw and puzzled.

Finally, the Gray Man asked, “Why are you walled up in here?”

Aurora Lynch didn’t answer.

The Gray Man turned to go, but paused. The language box, still sitting on the desk, had caught his eye. Retrieving the box, he turned it over and over in his hands, experimentally scrolling one of the wheels and watching the effect it had on the other sides.

And then he took it with him.

Ronan put a fist to his forehead. He wanted to go after him and recover it, but he couldn’t risk discovery. Where would he get another puzzle box? He had no way of knowing if he’d ever dream of it again. Ronan tensed, thought about emerging, thought about hiding, thought about emerging. Matthew put a hand on his arm.

They waited a long time. Finally, a car rumbled out front before receding down the driveway.

They unhid themselves. Matthew pressed up against Ronan’s side, reminding Ronan of Chainsaw when she was frightened. Ordinarily, Ronan would have protested, but this time, he allowed it.

“What was that?” Matthew whispered.

“There are,” Ronan replied, “bad things in the world. Let’s get out of here.”

Matthew kissed his mother’s cheek. Ronan made sure he had the will still tucked in his back pocket. The loss of the puzzle box still smarted, but at least he had this puzzle of his father’s with him. Two lines, two languages.
What are you trying to say, Dad?

“Bye, Mom,” he told Aurora. He felt in his pocket for his keys. There were two sets: the BMW’s and the false Camaro’s keys. “See you later.”

A
t that particular moment in time, Richard Campbell Gansey III was ninety-two miles away from his beloved car. He stood in the sun-soaked driveway of the Ganseys’ Washington, D.C., mansion, wearing a furiously red tie and a suit made of tasteful pinstripe and regal swagger. Beside him stood Adam, his strange and beautiful face pale above the slender dark of his own suit. Tailored by the same clever Italian man who did Gansey’s shirts, the suit was Adam’s silken armor for the night ahead. It was the most expensive thing he had ever owned, a month’s wages translated into worsted wool. The air was humid with teriyaki and Cabernet Sauvignon and premium-grade fuel. Somewhere, a violin sang with vicious victory. It was impossibly hot.

They were ninety-seven miles and several million dollars away from Adam’s childhood home.

The sweeping circular driveway was a puzzle game of vehicles: tuxedo-black sedans, cello-brown SUVs, silvery two-seaters that could fit in the palm of your hand, sweating white coupes with diplomatic plates. Two valets, having exhausted every parking solution, smoked cigarettes and blew smoke curls over the fenders of a Mercedes beached on the curb beside them. Rose blooms rotted on the bushes beside them, sweet and black.

Gansey snaked between cars. “Lucky thing we didn’t have to trouble ourselves with parking.”

The helicopter ride still rested uneasily in Adam’s stomach. He didn’t care for flying or for being seen arriving in a helicopter. He’d spent thirty minutes scrubbing grease from his fingertips before they’d left. Was this the dream, or was his life back in Henrietta?

He echoed, “Lucky thing.”

Two men and one woman stepped out of the front door of the house. Hands chopped at air; bits of the conversation exploded off the gutters overhead.
Already been passed — legislation — damn idiot — also his wife is a cow.
A murmur of guests passed through the open door behind them as if the threesome had pulled the sound out with them. The view through the doorway was a collage of pants suits and pearl necklaces, Vuitton and damask. So very many. So very, very many of them.

“Jesus Christ,” Gansey said tragically, his eyes on the gathering. “Oh well.” He flicked an invisible piece of lint off the shoulder of Adam’s suit and placed a mint leaf on his own tongue. “Good for them to see your face.”

Them.
Somewhere in there was Gansey’s mother, stretching her hands out to the hungry D.C. off-the-rack suit crowd, offering them treasure in heaven in return for votes. And Gansey was part of the sales package; there was nothing more Congressional than the entire Gansey family under one roof. Because those dripping necklaces and red ties were the captivated retinue who would fund Mrs. Richard Gansey II’s run for office. And those shiny oxfords and velvet pumps were the nobles Adam sought squireship from.

Good for them to see your face.

A laugh, high and confident, pierced the air. Conversation swelled to accept it.

Who are these people
, Adam thought,
to think they know anything about the rest of the world?

He must not let it show in his eyes. If he reminded himself that he needed them,
these people
, if he reminded himself it was only a means to an end, it was a little easier.

Besides, Adam was good at hiding things.

Gansey greeted the guests standing outside the door. Despite his previous complaint, he was completely at ease, a lion on the Serengeti.

“In we go,” he said grandly. And just like that, the Gansey who Adam had befriended — the Gansey he would do anything for — vanished, and in his place was the heir born with a silk umbilical cord wrapped round his blue-blooded neck.

The Gansey mansion spread out before them. There was Helen, now deliberately effete and decidedly unattainable in a black sheath, her legs longer than the driveway.
What shall we toast to? Toast to me, of course. Oh, yes, my mother, too.
There was ex-Congressman Bullock and there was the head of the Vann-Shoaling Committee and there were Mr. and Mrs. John Benderham, the largest single donors to the last Eighth District Republican campaign. Everywhere were faces Adam had seen in newspapers and on television. Everything smelled of puff pastry and ambition.

Seventeen years before, Adam had been born in a trailer. They could see it on him. He knew it.

“What are you two handsome devils up to?”

Gansey laughed:
ha ha ha
. Adam turned, but the speaker was already gone. Someone grabbed Gansey’s hand. “Dick! Good to see you.” The unseen violin wailed. The acoustics gave the impression the instrument was imprisoned in the chesterfield by the door. A man in a white shirt pressed champagne flutes into their hands. It was ginger ale, sweet and fraudulent.

A hand slapped the back of Adam’s neck; he flinched badly. In his head, he fell down his father’s stairs, fingers grabbing dirt. He could never seem to leave Henrietta behind. He could feel an image, an apparition, looming behind his eyes, but he pushed it away. Not here, not now.

“We always need young blood!” boomed the man. Adam was sweating, flipping between the memory of biting stars overhead, the fact of this present-day assault. Gansey took the man’s hand from Adam’s neck and shook it instead. Adam knew he was being rescued, but the room was too loud and too close for gratitude.

Gansey said, “We’re young as they come.”

“You’re pretty damn young,” the man said.

“This is Adam Parrish,” Gansey said. “Shake his hand. He’s more clever than I am. One day we’ll be throwing one of these shindigs for him.”

Somehow Adam had a business card pressed into his hand; someone else gave him more ginger ale. No, this one was actually champagne. Adam did not drink alcohol. Gansey smoothly took the champagne flute from him and placed it on an antique desk with ivory inlay. With a finger he slicked off a single drop of red wine that stained the surface. Voices wrestled with one another; the deepest voice won.
Eight months ago we were in the same place as this on that campaign
, a man with an enormous tie pin said to a man with an enormously shiny forehead.
Sometimes you just throw funds at it and hope it sticks.
Gansey shook hands and clasped shoulders. He talked women into confessing their names and then made them believe that he’d known them all along. He always called Adam
Adam Parrish.
Everyone always called him
Dick
. Adam gathered a bouquet of business cards. His hip smashed into a piece of lion-pawed furniture; Irish crystal jingled from the lamp sitting on it. A spirit touched his elbow. Not here, not now.

“Having fun?” Gansey asked. It did not sound as if he was, but his smile was bulletproof. His eyes roved the room as he knocked back his ginger ale or his champagne. He accepted another flute from a faceless serving tray.

They moved to the next person, and the next. Ten, fifteen, twenty people in and Gansey was an embroidered tapestry of a young man, the hoped-for youth of America, the educated princeling son of Mrs. Richard Gansey II. The room adored him.

Adam wondered if there was a true smile among this herd of wealthy animals.

“Dick, finally, do you have the keys to the Fiat?” Helen came close to them, eye to eye with Gansey in a pair of black pumps that were sensible on every other woman in the room and unreasonably sexy on her. She was, Adam thought, the sort of woman Declan was always trying to obtain, not realizing that Helen was not the obtainable sort. You could love the sleek, efficient beauty of a brand-new bullet train, but only a fool could imagine it would love you back.

“Why would I?” Gansey asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Every car is blocked in except that one. Those idiot valets.” She tipped her head back and looked at the tree-painted ceiling; to Adam, the intricate branches seemed to be moving. “Mom wants me to do a booze run. If you come with, I can use the HOV lanes and not spend the rest of my life getting wine.” She noticed Adam. “Oh, Parrish. You clean up well.”

She meant nothing by it, nothing at all, but Adam felt an ice chip pierce his heart.

“Helen,” Gansey said. “Shut up.”

“It’s a compliment,” Helen said. A server replaced their empty drinks with full ones.

Remember why you’re here. Get in, get what you need, get out. You’re not one of them.

Adam said evenly, flattening his accent, “It’s all right.”

“I meant that you two were always in your school uniforms,” Helen said. “Not, like —”

“Shut up, Helen,” Gansey said.

“Don’t PMS on me,” Helen replied, “just because you wish you were with your beloved Henrietta.”

A fleeting expression passed across Gansey’s face then; she’d guessed right. It was killing him to be here.