The Dream Thieves

She replied, “I expect that would be a very different world with very different priorities.”

“Bad?” he asked. “A bad world?”

She looked at him.

“Different isn’t bad, right?” he asked.

Persephone turned back to her cards. Swick. She turned over a second one.

I should call work, Adam thought. He was supposed to come in tonight. He hadn’t called off sick before. I should call Gansey.

But there was no time. They had so many more places to go before — before —

Hurry.

As they pulled onto the interstate, Adam’s attention was snagged by a white Mitsubishi screaming in the opposite direction on the other side of the median. Kavinsky.

But was that Kavinsky behind the wheel? Adam craned his head to look in the mirror, but the other car was already a diminishing speck on the horizon.

Persephone turned over a card. The Devil.

All of a sudden, Adam was quite certain of why they were hurrying. He’d known since the night before that he needed to hone the line’s energy in order for Cabeswater to reappear. An important task, certainly, but not life-or-death.

But now, he knew all at once what he was hurrying for. They were restoring the ley line for Cabeswater. They were restoring it now because Ronan was going to need it. Tonight.

Hurry.

59

The first thing Ronan noticed at church on the Fourth was that the priest had a black eye. The second thing he noticed was that Matthew wasn’t there. The third thing he noticed was that there was space for two people on the pew beside Declan. Everyone at St. Agnes knew the Lynch brothers didn’t come to church alone.

It was an oddly discomfiting image. For the first few weeks after Niall had died, the boys had always left room for their mother, as if she would magically arrive partway through the service.

I’m working on that , Ronan thought, and then pushed it out of his head..

He was quite late to the special Mass; it looked like insolence. By the time he slid into the pew beside Declan, a small crumpled woman had already begun to intone the first reading. It was a passage Ronan used to love as a child — of this one I am proud. Really, Ronan’s tardiness was because he had gone with Gansey to pick up the Gray Man from the car rental office. The boys had given him the Mitsubishi and, in return, Ronan had gotten the puzzle box back. It seemed a fair trade. A dream thing for a dream thing.

Declan looked sharply to Ronan. He hissed, “Where’s Matthew?”

“You tell me.”

The churchgoers in the pew behind them rustled meaningfully.

“You weren’t here on Sunday.” Declan’s voice held the weight of an accusation. “And Matthew says you didn’t ever explain.”

Ronan had to guiltily admit to himself that this was true. He’d been lying on the hood of an invented Camaro and he hadn’t given a second’s though to what day it was. Then he realized what Declan was hinting at — that possibly, Matthew was taking revenge on Ronan with an unannounced disappearance of his own. While it was true that tricking Ronan into a solo church visit with Declan would have been an excellent punishment, it didn’t feel like Matthew’s handiwork at all.

“Oh, please,” Ronan whispered. “He’s not that clever.”

Declan looked shocked and poisonous. He was always so alarmed by the truth.

“Have you called him?” Ronan asked.

“Not picking up.” Declan narrowed his eyes as if this failure to answer his phone was an infection his youngest brother had picked up from Ronan.

“You saw him this morning?”

“Yeah.”

Ronan shrugged.

“He doesn’t skip.” The inverse statement was implied: unlike you.

“Until he does.”

“This is all your fault,” Declan said, hushed. His eyes darted to the empty pew beside Ronan and then to the priest. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. I told you to keep your head down. Why can’t you just do what you’re told for once?”

Someone kicked the back of their pew. It struck Ronan as an extremely un-Catholic action. He looked over his shoulder, elegant and dangerous, and raised an eyebrow at the middle-aged man sitting behind him. He waited. The man dropped his eyes.

Declan flicked Ronan’s arm. “Ronan.”

“Stop acting like you know everything.”

“Oh, I know enough. I know exactly what you are.”

There was a time when this statement would’ve trickled through Ronan like venom. Now, he didn’t have time for it. In the relative scheme of things, his older brother’s opinion ranked very low. In fact, Ronan was only here because of Matthew, and without Matthew here, there was no reason to stay. He slid out of the pew.

“Ronan,” whispered Declan ferociously. “Where are you going?”

Ronan put a finger to his lips. A smile snaked out on either side of it.

Declan just shook his head, lifting a hand like he was simply done with Ronan. And that, of course, was another lie, because he was never done with Ronan. But at the moment, eighteen and freedom seemed a lot closer than it had before, and it didn’t matter.

As Ronan pushed through the great, heavy doors of the church — the same doors he’d walked through with the newly dreamt Chainsaw — he pulled out his phone and called Matthew.

It went to voicemail.

Ronan didn’t believe it. He got into the BMW to head back to Monmouth and called again.

Voicemail.

He couldn’t let it go. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t that Matthew never abandoned his phone. And it wasn’t quite that Matthew never abandoned church, especially not an additional holiday Mass.

It was the Gray Man’s face and the beaten-up priest and the world turned on its ear.

He put the car in gear and headed out of the smoldering downtown. He steered with his knee. Called again. Voicemail.

This didn’t feel right.

As he pulled into the lot outside of Monmouth, a text buzzed in from Matthew’s number.

Finally.

Ronan pulled up the parking brake, turned the car off, and looked at the screen.

what’s up mofo

This wasn’t what he generally expected from his younger brother. Before he had time to consider a reply, a text buzzed in from Kavinksy’s number as well.

what’s up mofo

Something ill turned over inside Ronan.

A moment later, Kavinsky texted again.

bring something fun to fourth of july or we’ll see which pill works the best on your brother Without pause, Ronan snatched up his phone and called Kavinsky.

Kavinsky picked up at once. “Lynch, fancy hearing from you.”

Ronan demanded, “Where is he?”

“You know, I asked nice the first few times. Are you coming to Fourth? Are you coming? Are you coming? Here, have a motherfucking car. Are you coming? You made it ugly. Bring something impressive tonight.”

“I’m not doing this,” Ronan said.

One thousand nightmares of Matthew dead. Blood in his curls, blood in his teeth, flies in his eyes, flies in his guts.

“Oh,” Kavinsky said, with that slow, despicable laugh in his voice. “I think you are. Or I’ll keep trying different things on him. He can be my finale tonight. Boom! You want to see something explode. . . .”

Ronan turned the key, threw down the parking brake. The door to Monmouth had opened and Gansey stood there, one hand up, asking a question.

“You won’t get away with this.”

“I got away with dear old dad,” Kavinsky observed. “And Prokopenko. And no offense to your brother, but they were a lot more complicated.”

“This was the wrong play. I will destroy you.”

“Don’t let me down, Lynch.”

60

Gansey blasted into 300 Fox Way well in advance of the thunderstorm. He didn’t knock. He just suddenly burst in as Blue was unlacing her shoes from her part-time dog-walking gig.

“Jane?” he called. Her stomach twisted. “Blue!”

This was how Blue knew something was really wrong. Ronan exploded in behind him, and if she hadn’t been able

to tell from Gansey, she would’ve known it from Ronan. He was wild-eyed as a trapped animal. When he stopped, he rested his hand on the doorjamb and his fingers crawled up it.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

They told her.

Immediately, she accompanied them to the Fourth of July

parade, where they searched unsuccessfully for Maura or Calla. They drove by Kavinsky’s house and found it empty. Then, as the afternoon wore on, Blue directed them to the Henrietta drag strip — the annual location of Kavinsky’s Fourth of July party. It seemed impossible that neither Gansey nor Ronan had ever been to it. Impossible that Blue, a student at ordinary old Mountain View High School should have special knowledge about Kavinsky that they didn’t. But maybe this part of Joseph Kavinsky wasn’t very Aglionby at all.

Kavinsky’s Fourth of July party was infamous.

Two years before, he had supposedly had an actual tank for his fireworks finale. As in a full-size, olive drab tank with Russian characters painted on the side. It was rumor, of course, and stayed rumor, because the end of the story was that he blew up the tank itself. Blue knew a senior who claimed to have a metal strip off it.

Three years before, a junior from a school three counties over had overdosed on something the hospital hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t the overdose that impressed people, though. It was that fifteen-year-old Kavinsky was already capable of pulling in kids from forty-five minutes away. Statistically, you probably weren’t going to die at Kavinsky’s party.

Every year, there were dozens of cars waiting to be flogged on the drag strip. No one knew who provided them or where they went afterward. It didn’t matter if you had a license. All you needed was to know how to hit a gas pedal.

Last year, Kavinsky had supposedly sent a firework so far into the air that the CIA had come to his house to question him. Blue found this story rather suspect. Surely it would’ve been the Department of Homeland Security instead.

This year, two ambulances and four cops parked half a mile from the drag strip. Close enough to be there in time. Not close enough to watch.

Kavinsky was untouchable.

The drag strip — a long, dusty field cut into the hills around it — was already packed when they got there. Music blared from somewhere, benevolent and upbeat. Barbecue grills scented the air with charcoal and neglected hot dogs. There was no sign of alcohol. Nor of the infamous cars that supposedly populated the drag strip later. There was an old Mustang and a Pontiac facing off down the strip, throwing up rubber and dust while onlookers cheered them on, but the matches seemed awfully playful and easygoing. There were adults here, and young kids. Ronan stared at a girl holding a balloon as if she were a bewildering creature.

This wasn’t really what any of them had expected.

Gansey stood in the dirt and glanced around himself, dubious. “Are you sure this is Kavinksy’s?”

“It’s early,” Blue said. She glanced about herself. She was torn between wanting to be recognized by someone from school and wanting to not be seen running with Aglionby boys.