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It was a strange feeling to be studied after years of attempting to avoid it. He wasn’t sure it was good for him. It was like dabbling in his father’s criminal machinations; he could tell that there was a large part of him that secretly liked it.
“No one knew him,” Declan said. He was telling her something about himself.
Matthew had sent a text: please come home It was the plaintive text of a child to a parent, sent to Declan because Matthew had no parent, and because it was the middle of the night, and he’d woken, if he had slept at all, and remembered that he was a dream.
People, cops included, expected bad things to happen at Rider House. It didn’t make them less bad; it just seemed to make them less of an emergency.
He regarded her with unimpressed silence. He had a judgmental silence that said far more than words. This particular silence conveyed that he thought it was stupid that she was blustering when he was being earnest, don’t fucking waste his time. Hennessy raised an eyebrow and shot back her own silence, which was less nuanced. It said something along the lines of Sorry, man, bluster’s all I got because I’m scared shitless and dying. Sad violins, said Ronan’s silence. I don’t need your pity, said Hennessy’s.
“It tells me it killed my mum and it will kill me, too.” This made Ronan look quite sharp-eyed, hawkish, all of a sudden. He said, “Did it kill her?” “She shot herself in the face,” Hennessy said. “So it’s lying. Or rather, your subconscious is lying.”
Hennessy said, “So is your Bryde your subconscious, then?” “Bryde knows things I couldn’t know, like you drowning,” Ronan pointed out. “What does the Lace know?” Hennessy thought, and then she said, “Your boyfriend.” That arrow neatly landed in its target.
“This is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.” It was an interesting way to frame it, but it wasn’t wrong. It was a thing acted upon the creature that was Matthew Lynch. Ronan had imposed existence on him. Declan had decided for him how it would be easiest to bear it, knowing full well it would be disastrous if the truth came out. Yes, they had done it to him. Yes, Declan accepted blame for it.
Declan didn’t know what was worse—being caught in the lie, or not knowing if it was even worth the lie all along.
In a very small voice, Matthew said, “I’m the fake brother.” “What?” Declan, the true fake brother, asked. “You two are real Lynches. You and Ronan. Real brothers. I’m just pretend. I’m just—” This was awful.
“Slow to trust. That’s all right. I won’t ask you for trust. I might look like your dad, but I don’t offer things I can’t give.”
“Smart of you to be wary. This is nothing you want.” “What is it?” Jordan asked. “What is it we’re talking about?” “It’s a box you get into and don’t get out of. It’s a bigger box than you’re thinking. It’s a stronger one. You came here thinking it’s a racket, right? Maybe that it’s a cult. You’re thinking maybe it’s a bunch of lady thugs and you might want in on that because things have been getting rough out there for you. I promise you, it’s rougher in here for you.” To Declan, he said, “And you don’t want them finding out about Ronan, tomcat.”
“I’m sorry, boy-o. I know I’m not a father to you, but you have to know that you’re my kids to me. I remember you when you were this tall.”
But it’s been nearly two decades; I’ve got different stories than Niall Lynch. But this head still loves you like you were mine. It’s been watching when it can. And you can’t get tied up in this; it’ll be the end of you. They’ll use him till you don’t recognize him.”
“This is very cryptic,” Jordan said. “And it has to be. Please go. It’d break my heart and not much breaks it anymore.” Declan said, in his most dull tone, “I don’t owe you anything, though. I owe him nothing and you less. If I wanted to talk to her, what would I do next?” “Ask someone else, boy, because I won’t be the one to kill you.”
“You see, he knows,” the man said, clearly relieved. “There’s the one who knows how to stay alive. Can’t trust Ronan to save himself. He throws his heart and then runs in after it.”
Lindenmere is a dreamspace, Ronan had told her in the car. So control your thoughts in it. Control had never been Hennessy’s strong point.
“Wait,” Hennessy said. “I changed my mind.” Ronan turned to look at her. “Lindenmere won’t hurt you unless you want it to. Not when you’re with me. It only protects itself or manifests what you ask it to.” “But,” Hennessy said. I don’t trust myself.
“Dangerous things can protect themselves,” Ronan said. She could see he didn’t judge Lindenmere for it. Ronan Lynch could be dangerous, too.
There were creatures you didn’t want to meet in person if you weren’t with Ronan Lynch. There were places you might get trapped forever if you weren’t with Ronan Lynch. It was feral and confusing, but in the end, it followed one rule: Ronan Lynch. His safety, his desires, his thoughts. That was Lindenmere’s only true north. She could feel it: Lindenmere loved him.
“If they’re decades old,” Farooq-Lane said, “that must mean that we did it. That we stopped the end of the world. Isn’t that how it works? If you’re looking back at this from someone who becomes decades older than this memory? It means you are still alive after all this.” Liliana frowned, and for the first time, something like distress flitted across her face. “I think I am harder to kill than humans.”
“I wasn’t asking for this,” she said. “Your mind wasn’t,” Bryde said. “Your heart, though.” She couldn’t argue. She had been ignoring what her heart felt about things for too long to pretend to be an expert in it. “We fool ourselves better than anyone when we’re afraid,” Bryde said.
Hennessy knew she could manifest anything, if she really wanted to. It was limited only by her imagination—what an impossible, terrifying, brilliant truth. She’d been given this talent when born and not told how to use it. Given this talent and watched it kill her mother, or at least not save her.
It saw Hennessy. She could feel how awful that weight was. How it changed everything. Now that she had been noticed, she could never be unseen.
Declan didn’t ordinarily bring people home. It wasn’t that he hadn’t gone on dates or hooked up, that unlovely euphemism for what was sometimes a perfectly nice time. It was that he didn’t get too close. Intimacy was allowed as long as it revealed nothing truthful. Which wasn’t very intimate at all.
Jordan did as he asked, noting the town house as she stepped in. He saw it through her eyes: dull, predictable. Tastefully done, yes, expensively done, yes, but forgettably done. Gray sofa, white rugs, sleek contemporary paintings in dark frames. It wasn’t a home, it was a lookbook. Handsome, neutral Declan was simply another accessory in his own house.
He did not want to think about his father. He didn’t want to think about the new Fenian hugging him and telling him he was proud of him. It wasn’t real. How typical of his father that he’d give Declan a puzzle that just led to another dream.
“Where’s the real you?” Safely hidden. “How do you know it’s not the real me?”
Fuck, he told himself. Do not fall in love with this girl.
“Why isn’t all this downstairs?” she asked. “Why do you have a hotel down there and Declan locked in the attic like a madwoman?” He said, “Why do you paint other people and keep Jordan locked in your head like a madwoman?”
“You look so sad,” she whispered. “You’re a dream.” “If I had a puppy for every time a man said that to me,” Jordan said. He didn’t smile. “How long ago?” “Decade. Give or take.” “Where’s your dreamer?” He hated saying it. He hated everything. He couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t have it in him to love another dream. It hurt too bad. Loving anything did.
It was not Niall Lynch’s fault, but Declan wordlessly cursed him anyway, out of habit.
I grew up surrounded by them. You start to … feel them. Dreams.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “My feet keep bringing me back,” he said.
It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Her eyes were glazed. She had gone far away to someplace that was for either dreamers or dreams, not for someone like Declan.
If it was anyone else, she thought she might have gone in for a kiss. But something about the way his face had changed when he realized she was a dream had sort of cut the legs out from beneath her game. He’d known what she was, and it hadn’t surprised him. It had disappointed him. She had been Jordan Hennessy to him and now she was something else. Less.
So it really was true. The Lace really would kill her even without the copies. It felt true. It felt like she was almost dead now. It felt like if Opal touched her skin, it would just wipe away.
“Everything I dream turns to shit,” Hennessy said. Ronan looked at her, brows furrowed. His mouth was working like he very much disagreed but he couldn’t quite work out how to mount a counterargument. She didn’t think he could do it. He said, “Like Jordan?” He could. Because of course Jordan was good. Better than Hennessy. The best of all the girls. Hennessy’s best friend.
“Ronan,” Declan said. “Tell me you’re in the city.” “I’m in Lindenmere.” The breath Declan released was a more terrible sound than Ronan had ever heard his brother make. “Why?” “People are coming for you,” Declan said. “To the town house. To kill you. Matthew’s not picking up his phone.”
Greywaren, the trees said. We will give you what you need. “I don’t know what I need, Lindenmere,” he said. He struggled to imagine a solution. “I can’t get there in time. I need something that will get there. Something secret. I’m trusting you. Give me what I need.” Something dangerous, like you, he thought. And like you, the forest whispered back.
The ground rumbled, the dirt pulling loose from around the roots down below. That low booming growled through the earth, getting higher and louder until it was a pure and clarion note ringing through the air, a purposeful and clean version of Adam’s scream—a sound that meant it was alive, very alive, not the reverse.
Sundogs are as fast as sunbeams, the trees whispered. They’re hungry. Quench them with water.
The Lynch brothers, the brothers Lynch. In a way, the Lynch brothers had always been the most important and truest definition of the Lynch family. Niall was often gone, and Aurora was present but amorphous. Childhood was the three of them tearing through the woods and fields around the Barns, setting things on fire and digging holes and wrestling. Secrets bound them together far more tightly than any friendship ever could, and so even when they went to school, they remained the Lynch brothers, the brothers Lynch. Even after Niall died and Ronan and Declan had fought for a year, they’d remained
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Ronan was always the one to find his dead family members; it didn’t seem fair. It wasn’t that he wanted his brothers to be the ones to have to bear the emotional wound of discovering the bodies. He just didn’t want it to be him. He had been the one to find his father’s body in the driveway outside their farmhouse, skull, meet tire iron. He had been the one to find his mother’s body in the dying ruins of Cabeswater, a dream, extruded.
He still had that fuzzy noiselessness inside him, that lack of feeling, but he also sort of thought that if they were dead upstairs, this was the last minute he had before adding the memories of their bodies to his others.
Declan said, “Without your monsters we’d be dead. Are they—” Ronan shook the water bottle. “They’re in here.” He handed the bottle to Matthew, who pulled out of his embrace to sit on the bed and study it. “There you go, kid, don’t say I never gave you anything.” Declan snatched the bottle away from Matthew. “It’s like giving a gun to a toddler. Do you know what these things do? Did you see before you sent them?” Ronan shook his head.
It was uncanny to see her beside Jordan. They were the same girl, but they were also very much not. They had the same face and used it entirely differently. It was hard to believe Hennessy was the dreamer. Jordan seemed like she should’ve come first. Hennessy was … less. Don’t think about it, Declan thought to himself. Just stop.
Both of the older Lynch brothers took a moment to square their jaws. Their relationship with Mr. Gray was complicated: He was the man who had been ordered to kill Niall Lynch. Niall was just one of the many people he had killed for his employer, Colin Greenmantle, who was blackmailing him. Did that make him Niall’s killer? Yes. Did that make him his murderer? Possibly. Or possibly Mr. Gray was the weapon in Greenmantle’s hand.
Mr. Gray had spent much time since his freedom from Greenmantle trying to make it up to the Lynch brothers, although killing someone’s parent just wasn’t the kind of thing a relationship ever bounced back from. Regardless, it meant that he would always provide information if he could. But the Lynches would never talk to him.
The world was broken, Declan thought. It was broken and could not be fixed. He thought, And I never actually lived, either.
“Declan,” Ronan said, “don’t tell me not to.” “What am I telling you not to?” “Don’t tell me not to chase Bryde,” Ronan said. “Don’t tell me to keep my head down.” Everything in Declan wanted to, though. The world could always be broken more. As long as his brothers were alive, there was always worse that could happen.
