The Dream Thieves (47 page)

Ronan had no idea what he wanted. He checked his phone. He wondered if Kavinsky really did have three balls. He wondered if Kavinsky was gay. He wondered if he should go to the Fourth of July party. He wondered where Adam had gone.

“Lynch,” Gansey said. “Are you even listening?”

He glanced up. “No.”

On the counter, Chainsaw tore shreds from a roll of paper towels. Ronan snapped his fingers at her and, with an insolent gurgle, she flapped from the counter to the table, claws making a substantial scratch-click as she landed. Ronan was abruptly satisfied with her as a dream creature. He hadn’t even asked for her. His subconscious had just, for once, sent him something nice instead of something homicidal.

Gansey asked Calla, “Why
are
we here?”

Calla echoed, “Yes, Maura, why are we here?”

Maura had entered from the other room; behind her Ronan glimpsed the corner of a bed, a gray suitcase. There was a sound like pipes clanging, a tap running. She dusted off her palms and joined them in the kitchen. “Because when Mr. Gray comes out here, I want
you
to look him in the eye and convince him not to kidnap you.”

Gansey elbowed Ronan.

Ronan looked up sharply. “What, me?”

“Yes, you,” Maura said. “Mr. Gray was sent here to retrieve an object that lets the owner take things from dreams. The Greywaren. As you know, that’s you.”

He felt a little thrill at the word
Greywaren
.

Yes, that’s me.

Calla added, “And, unbelievably, it falls to
your
charm to convince him to have mercy on you.”

He smiled nastily at her. She smiled nastily back. Both smiles said,
I’ve got your number.

There was no part of Ronan that was surprised by this news. Part of him, he realized, was surprised it had taken so long. He felt he must have prompted it: He had been told not to go back to the Barns, and he had. His father had told him not to tell anyone about his dreams, and he had. One by one, he was violating every rule in his life.

Of course someone was looking. Of course they had found him.

“He’s not the only one looking,” Blue said suddenly. “Is he? That’s what all of these break-ins are.” Quite impossibly, she produced a pink switchblade to punctuate this statement. That little knife was the most shocking thing about the conversation so far.

“I’m afraid so,” Maura replied.

Burglars
, Ronan thought, all at once.

Gansey said, “Are the —”

Ronan interrupted, “Is he the one who beat up my brother? I should buy him a card if he is.”

“Does it matter?” Maura asked, at about the same time that Calla asked, “Do you think your brother told anybody anything?”

“I’m sure he did,” Ronan said darkly. “But don’t worry — none of it was true.”

Gansey took control. In his voice, Ronan could hear the relief that he knew enough about the situation to actually do so. He asked whether Mr. Gray really wanted to kidnap Ronan, whether his employer knew that the Greywaren was definitely in Henrietta, whether the others wandering about knew. Finally, he asked, “What happens to Mr. Gray if he doesn’t come back with something?”

Maura pursed her lips. “Let’s just use
death
as a short version of the consequences.”

Calla added, “But for decision-making purposes, assume it’s worse than that.”

Blue muttered, “He can take Joseph Kavinsky.”

“If they take that other boy,” Calla said, “they’ll be back for the snake.” This was said with a jerk of her chin toward Ronan. Then her eyes flickered up to Maura.

The Gray Man stood in the doorway behind Maura, his gray suitcase in one hand and a gray jacket slung over the other. He set them both down and straightened.

There was that heavy silence that sometimes happens when a hit man enters a room.

It was against Ronan’s nature to appear overly interested in anything, but he couldn’t help staring at the Gray Man. It was the man from the Barns, the man who’d taken the puzzle box. He would have never put the words
hit man
to him. To him, a hit man was something else. A bouncer. A bodybuilder. An action hero. This wary predator was none of those things. His build was unassuming, all sly kinetics, but his eyes —

Ronan was suddenly afraid of him. He was afraid of him in the same way that he was afraid of the night horrors. Because they had killed him before, and they would kill him again, and he precisely remembered the pain of each death. He felt the fear in his chest, and in his face, and in the back of his head. Sharp and stinging, like a tire iron.

Chainsaw scrambled to Ronan’s shoulder and ducked low, eyes on the Gray Man. She cawed stridently, just once.

For his part, the Gray Man stared back, his expression guarded. The longer he looked at Ronan and Chainsaw, the more his eyebrows furrowed. And the longer he looked, the closer Gansey edged to Ronan, nearly imperceptible. At some point it became the Gray Man watching the space between the two of them instead of Ronan.

Finally, the Gray Man said, “If I don’t return with the Greywaren on the Fourth of July, they’re telling my brother where I am, and he will kill me. He will do it very slowly.”

Ronan believed him in a way that he didn’t believe most things in life. It was real like a memory: This strange man would be tormented in the bathroom of one of the Henrietta motels and then he would be discarded and no one would ever look for him.

The Gray Man didn’t have to tell any of them how much easier it would be to merely take Ronan to his employer. He also didn’t have to tell any of them how simple it would be to do it against Ronan’s will. Though Calla stood beside the gun of his that she’d retrieved from the cabinet — now Ronan saw why — Ronan didn’t believe in it. If it came down to them versus Mr. Gray, he thought Mr. Gray would win.

It was like hearing the night horrors coming in his dreams. The inevitability of it.

Gansey, very softly, said, “Please.”

Maura sighed.

“Brothers,” said the Gray Man. He did not mean Declan or Matthew. At once the power went out of him. “I don’t care for birds.”

Then, after a moment, “I’m not a kidnapper.”

Maura shot a rather meaningful look at Calla, who pretended not to see it.

“Are you sure your brother will be able to find you?” Gansey asked.

“I’m certain I won’t be able to go home again,” the Gray Man said. “I don’t have many things there, but my books…. I would have to stay on the move for quite a while. It took me years to lose him before. And even if I leave, it won’t stop the others. They’re tracking the energy abnormalities, above and beyond what runs through Henrietta, and right now, they point right at him.” He looked at Ronan.

Gansey, who had looked aghast at the idea of the Gray Man having to abandon his books, frowned even deeper.

“Could you dream a Greywaren?” Blue asked Ronan.

“I’m not giving this to anyone else,” Ronan growled. He knew he should be kinder; they were trying to help him, after all. “It’s killing the ley line as it is. You want to see Noah again?
I’m
stopping.”

But Kavinsky’s not.
It would be like standing next to a giant bull’s-eye.

“You could lie,” Calla suggested. “Give them something and tell them it’s the Greywaren and let them think they aren’t clever enough to figure out how to work it.”

“My employer,” said the Gray Man, “is not an understanding man. If he ever discovered or suspected a ruse, it would be very ugly for all of us.”

“What would they do to me?” Ronan asked.
To Kavinsky?
“If you turned me in?”

“No,” Gansey said, as if replying to an entirely different question.

“No,” the Gray Man agreed.

“Don’t say
no
,” Ronan insisted. “Fucking tell me. I didn’t say I’d do it. I just want to know.”

The Gray Man took his suitcase to the table, opened it, and laid the gun inside on top of the neatly folded slacks. He closed it. “He is not interested in people. He is interested in things. He will find the thing that makes you work, and he will remove it. He will put it in a glass box with a label and when his guests have had enough wine, he will take them down to where you are and show them that thing that was inside you. And then they will admire the other things in the other cases beside you.”

When Ronan didn’t flinch — the Gray Man couldn’t know that Ronan would rather do most anything than flinch — he continued, “It’s possible he would make an exception for you. But it would only be that he’d put all of you in the glass box. He is a curator. He will do what he needs to do for his collection.”

Ronan still didn’t flinch.

The Gray Man said, “He told me to kill your father as messily as I could and leave the body where your older brother would find it. So that he would confess to where the Greywaren was.”

For one moment, Ronan didn’t move. It took him that long to realize that the Gray Man was saying he had killed Niall Lynch. Ronan’s mind went perfectly blank. Then he did what had to be done: He hurled himself at the Gray Man. Chainsaw blasted into the air.

“Ronan!” howled approximately three voices at once.

The Gray Man let out a small
oof
with the ferocity of the hit. Three or four punches landed on his person. It was difficult to tell if it was through skill on Ronan’s part or permissiveness on the Gray Man’s. Then the Gray Man gently threw Ronan across the breakfast table.

“Mr. — Gray!”
shouted Maura, forgetting his fake name in the heat of the moment.

Chainsaw cannonballed toward the Gray Man’s face. As he ducked his eyes against her, Ronan slammed into the Gray Man’s stomach. He somehow managed to include several swear words in the blow. The Gray Man, searching for footing, smacked the back of his head against the doorjamb behind him.

“You
must
be joking!” This was Calla. “You!
Pretty one!
” She forgot Gansey’s real name in the heat of the moment. “Stop him!”

“I think this is justified,” Gansey replied.

The Gray Man had Ronan in an indifferent headlock. “I understand,” he told Ronan. “But it wasn’t personal.”

“It. Was. To. Me.”

Ronan slammed one fist into one of the Gray Man’s kneecaps and the other tidily into his crotch. The Gray Man dropped him. The floor rose up to tap Ronan’s temple quite abruptly.

There was a pause, filled only with the sound of two people gasping for air.

Voice muffled by the tile pressed against his cheek, Ronan said, “No matter how much you do for me, I’ll never forgive you.”

The Gray Man, buckled over, braced himself on the doorjamb. He panted, “They never do.”

Ronan heaved himself up. Blue handed him Chainsaw. The Gray Man stood up. Maura handed him his jacket.

The Gray Man wiped a palm on his slacks. He eyed Chainsaw, and then he said, “On the Fourth, unless I think of a better idea, I will call my employer and tell him that I have the Greywaren.”

They all looked at him.

“And then,” the Gray Man said, “I’ll tell him I’m keeping it for myself and he can’t have it.”

There was a long, long pause.

“And then what?” Maura asked.

The Gray Man looked at her. “I run.”

A
dam drove the tri-colored car as close as he could get to the field where Cabeswater used to be, and when he could drive it no farther, he parked it in the grass and began to walk. Before, when he’d been with the others, they’d used the GPS and the EMF reader to find Cabeswater. He didn’t need that now.
He
was the detector. If he focused, he could feel the line far below him. It sputtered and flickered, deprived and uneven. Holding his hands out, palms down, he walked slowly through the tall grass, following the trembling energy. Grasshoppers catapulted out of his way. He watched his feet for snakes. Overhead, the smoldering sky gave way to storm clouds on the western horizon. He wasn’t worried about the rain, but lightning —
lightning
.

Actually, lightning might be useful. He made a note to remember that, later.

He glanced up at the tree line to his right. They hadn’t yet begun to flip their leaves. He had hours before the storm, anyway. He ran his fingers through the stalks.

It had been so long since he had felt like this — like he could devote his thoughts to something other than when he might get to sleep. Like his mind was huge and whirring and hungry. Like anything was possible, if he only threw himself into it hard enough. This had been how he felt before he decided to go to Aglionby.

World, I’m coming.

He wished he had thought to bring a set of tarot cards from 300 Fox Way. Something that Cabeswater could use to more easily communicate with him. Maybe later he could return for them. Now — it seemed more urgent to return to this place where the ley line was the strongest.

I will be your hands. I will be your eyes.

This was the bargain he had made. And in return, he could feel Cabeswater in him. Cabeswater couldn’t offer him eyes or hands. But it was something else. Something he wanted to name
life
or
soul
or
knowledge
.