The Dream Thieves

Greenmantle added, “So, I want it.”

(I am a beautiful thing, shaped for fighting)

“I don’t have it.”

“Sure, Dean, sure.”

“Don’t call me that.”

nelle ic unbunden ænigum hyran nymþe searosæled “Why not? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

(Unstrung I obey no man; only when skillfully tied —)

The Gray Man said nothing.

“So you’re not going to change your story, Dean?” Greenmantle asked. “And yet you’re going to keep taking my calls. So that means you know where it is, but you don’t have it yet.”

For so many years he’d buried that name. Dean Allen wasn’t supposed to exist. There was a reason he’d given it up.

“Tell you what,” Greenmantle said. “I tell you what. You get the Greywaren and call me by the Fourth of July with your flight confirmation number back here. Or I tell your brother where you are.”

Hold still, Dean.

Logic swam away from the Gray Man. Very quietly, he said, “I told you about him in confidence.”

“I paid you in confidence. Turns out he’s eager to know where you are,” Greenmantle said. “We had a chat, Dean. Says he lost touch with you in the middle of a conversation he’s been wanting to finish.”

The Gray Man turned off the television, but voices still hummed in the background.

“Dean,” Greenmantle said. “You there?”

No. Not really. Color was draining from the walls.

“Do we have an agreement?”

No. Not really. A weapon didn’t come to an agreement with the hand that held it.

“Two days is plenty of time, Dean,” Greenmantle said. “See you on the other side.”

For twenty-one hours, Adam Parrish and the Gray Man slept. While they slept without dreaming, Henrietta prepared for the Fourth of July. Flags climbed poles over car dealerships. Parade signs warned would-be parallel parkers to rethink their choices. In the suburbs, fireworks were bought and dreamt. Doors were locked and, later, busted open. At 300 Fox Way, Adam quietly turned eighteen. Calla was called into her office to make certain nothing important had been stolen during a break-in. At Monmouth Manufacturing, a white Mitsubishi with a set of keys in the ignition and a knife graphic on the side appeared in the parking lot overnight. It bore a note that read, This one’s for you. Just the way you like it: fast and anonymous.

Gansey frowned at the disordered handwriting. “I think he needs to come to terms with his sexuality.”

Ronan, chewing his leather bracelets, dropped them from his teeth and said, “There is no coming to terms with having three balls.”

It was the sort of joke he normally made for Noah. But Noah wasn’t there.

Back at the psychics’ house, Adam woke up. According to Maura, he swung his legs over the sofa, walked into the kitchen where he drank four glasses of pomegranate juice and three cups of one of the more noxious healing teas, thanked Maura for the use of her couch, and then got into his tri-colored car and drove away, all within the space of ten minutes.

Fifteen minutes after that, Maura reported, Persephone came downstairs with a butterfly-shaped handbag and a pair of sensible boots with three-inch heels and laces all the way up her thigh. A taxi arrived and she climbed into it. It drove away in the same direction as the tri-colored car.

Twelve minutes after that, Kavinsky texted Ronan: ballsack. Ronan replied: shitstack. Kavinsky: coming to 4th of July? Ronan: would you stop if you knew it was destroying the world? Kavinsky: god that would be awesome

“Well?” Gansey asked.

Ronan said, “Wouldn’t bet on the negotiations.”

Seven minutes after that, Maura, Calla, and Blue climbed into the fatigued Ford, drove to get Ronan and Gansey, and headed into the simmering day.

Gansey looked like a king, even sitting in the shabby backseat of the shared Fox Way vehicle. Perhaps especially when sitting in the backseat of a shabby vehicle. He asked, “What is it we’re doing?”

Maura replied, “Action.”

Why are we here, man?” Ronan asked. His eyes followed Chainsaw as she cantered anxiously across the counter. He’d brought her to enough places that new locations didn’t generally faze her for long, but she wouldn’t be truly happy until she’d done a perimeter search. She paused to tap her beak on an absolutely darling bird-themed cookie jar. “There are more goddamn roosters than a Hitchcock movie.”

“Are you referring to The Birds?” Gansey asked. “Because I don’t recall any chickens in it. It’s been a long time, though.”

They stood in a homey, belowground kitchen in the basement of the Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast. Calla searched the cupboards and drawers; her version of Chainsaw’s room check, possibly. She’d already discovered a waffle maker and a gun, and had placed both on the round breakfast table. Blue stood at the far doorway, peering around to where her mother had gone. Ronan assumed she and Gansey must have fought; she was as far away from him as she could get. Next to Ronan, Gansey reached up to brush one of the dark, exposed beams with his fingertips. He was clearly discomfited by what Maura had told him about Adam on the ride over. Ganseys were creatures of habit, and he wanted Adam here, and he wanted Noah here, and he wanted everyone to like him, and he wanted to be in charge.

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. He 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 body-builder. 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.