A man in a purple slicker on his way out asked Declan, “Do you have the time?”
“Not today,” Declan replied, as if answering an entirely different question. The purple slicker turned toward Ronan, and Declan put a hand on his chest firmly. “He doesn’t, either.”
The man sighed and moved on.
Declan stopped before a pairing of two abstract pieces, one of them violent or passionate, depending on your point of view, and one of them complexly black. On either side of the paintings hung antique violins, their bodies spindly and fragile with age. Ronan didn’t care for the first painting, but the second was alluring in the way it could be so many different things at once while still being entirely black. He could feel it as well as see it.
“Dreamed?” Ronan asked.
Declan said, “That one’s a Soulages. The other’s de Kooning. Several million dollars between the two of them. You like them?”
Ronan jerked his chin toward the Soulages. “That one’s all right.”
“‘All right.’ Figures. Everything in black, right?” Declan said ruefully. “There’s a thing Soulages said. ‘A window looks outside, but a painting should do the opposite—it should look inside of us.’” He recited it carefully, perfectly. Like their father, he had an ear and a desire for a cunning turn of phrase, but unlike Niall, he rarely demonstrated it.
“Do you like them?” Ronan asked.
Declan said, “They make me want to goddamn cry.”
Ronan had never seen his older brother goddamn cry and could not remotely begin to picture it. Declan had already moved on to rummage through a pile of canvases leaned against each other in a temporary booth. They were dull so Ronan left him there to prowl in ever-widening circles. Canvases, pastels behind glass, paper rolled into uneven scrolls, sculpture reaching toward the lights, boards leaned akimbo like someone starting a house of cards. He wanted to take a photo of all this to show Adam, but he had an idea this was the kind of place that wouldn’t take kindly to photos.
Then Ronan saw it.
It. It. Her.
“Declan,” Ronan said.
Declan kept digging through paintings.
“Declan.”
His brother turned at the tone in his voice. Ronan didn’t point. He just looked, and let his brother look with him.
It was fifty feet away and it was through cluttered booths and the light was dim, but it didn’t matter. Ronan would recognize his dead mother anywhere.
Bryde, they said.
Everyone was saying it, all over the hotel. Farooq-Lane felt as if she heard the end of the word the moment she walked into a room and heard the beginning of it the moment she walked out.
Bryde. Bryde. Bryde.
Maybe a Zed. Definitely someone of note. Whoever he was, he had everyone in this strange place under his spell. Who was he? Someone to keep your eye on.
And if he had the attention of people at a place like this, he had to be something strange indeed.
Unfortunately, she could tell at once that she was in over her head. This wasn’t Carmen Farooq-Lane standing in a group of armed Moderators facing down a Zed or two. This was Carmen Farooq-Lane, a previously quiet citizen hurriedly turned specialized operative, in a building full of people who existed outside the bounds of most of the world. She felt like they could see it on her the moment she walked into a room. Glancing at her and away, their attention spotted just out of the corner of her eye. Just like that name. Bryde. Bryde. Bryde. She hadn’t thought her usual linen suit and long coat would be an inappropriate choice, but it was. She appeared too clean, too straight-edge, too at home in the world as it was currently constructed.
“They don’t like law there,” Lock had told her on the phone. “They’ve got an understanding.”
“An understanding?” she’d echoed. “Like a no-fly zone? A no-go zone? A …”
She had heard about places like this on the news but couldn’t remember the name for them in the moment. Places where cops didn’t go, places with their own local law. She supposed she hadn’t really believed in them.
“Outside our pay grade, Carmen. Save the world,” Lock said, “and then you can go back into the Fairy Markets and clean up.”
She was supposed to be looking for signs of Zeds, which generally meant anything unusual. But everything here was unusual. Uncomfortable. Weapons. Stolen art. A room of demure young men and women displayed as wares. Dogs clipped to look like lions. Electronics with product numbers rubbed off them. Boxes of driver’s licenses, passports. These masks? Were they dreamt? This ivory?
She didn’t know how to tell.
As the stares increased, Farooq-Lane found herself losing her temper at Parsifal once more. Unbelievable, considering he hadn’t even come in with her. Nonetheless, he managed. If his vision had been more specific, she would have known what she was looking for.
Her cover, if anyone asked, was that she was a buyer. She had thirty thousand dollars in cash to go along with her linen handkerchief invite. PADMA MARK. She didn’t think she looked like a Padma. Parsifal had an invite, too, not that he was using it; it was in his own name. When she’d asked Lock why he got to be PARSIFAL BAUER when she had to be Padma, he said it was because Parsifal had a properly disruptive history if anyone bothered to look it up. Parsifal looked like someone who would come to one of these things.
Parsifal Bauer? Disruptive?
Bryde. Bryde. Bryde.
They were all looking at her. She thought: Buy something. They would all stop looking at her if she bought something.
But she didn’t want to buy anything illegal; it would make her feel complicit. Her world operated on a system she mostly believed in, a system of laws designed to promote ethics and fairness and sustainability of resources.
There were only so many of her principles she was willing to let slip, even to save the world.
There. A fortune-teller. Fortune-telling was dubious in value but not in legality. Farooq-Lane waited until a knot of men who seemed to be priests moved out of her way, and then drew close. The woman behind the table had a third eye tattooed between her eyebrows and odd silvery curls all over her head, so tightly formed that they seemed to be metal. Maybe she was dreamt, Farooq-Lane thought, and nearly laughed.
She realized she was very frightened.
“How much?” she asked the woman. She didn’t sound frightened. She sounded like Carmen Farooq-Lane, young professional who you could trust with your future.
The curls didn’t bob as the woman looked up. Maybe they were a wig. “Two thousand.”
“Dollars?” This was the wrong question, somehow. Farooq-Lane felt it draw attention. Four women in garb that looked as if it was formal attire somewhere that wasn’t corporate America glanced over their shoulders at her. The priests seemed to move in slow motion. A tall man put his hand inside his bomber jacket in a worrisome way. Hurriedly, she dug out the bills and sat at the chair the woman indicated.
She felt quite woozy once she was off her feet. The air was richly scented; maybe she was high. Maybe it was just her racing heart, her too-fast breaths. Were they still looking? She didn’t want to check.
Bryde, Bryde. They were still whispering it even now. Maybe she was imagining it now.
“Give me your hand,” the fortune-teller instructed.
Reluctantly, Farooq-Lane slid her palm over; the fortune-teller gathered all her fingers together as if collecting a bundle of sticks. She would feel Farooq-Lane’s flapping pulse, she thought.
But the fortune-teller just said in an old New Jersey accent, “Smooth. What do you use?”
Farooq-Lane blinked. “Oh. Uh. Oatmeal and argan oil?”
“Very beautiful,” the fortune-teller said. “Like you. Beautiful woman on the outside. Let us see the inside.”
Farooq-Lane risked a glance around as the fortune-teller closed her eyes. The gazes had turned away from her, but she nonetheless felt watched. She wondered how upset Lock would be if she emerged from this experience with only
a name: Bryde.
Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with the smells of mist, of damp, of warm blood freshly spilled. She was back in Ireland, and Nathan’s body was accepting bullets from Lock’s gun without protest. Farooq-Lane’s mind reeled, and the fortune-teller’s eyes opened again. Her pupils were enormous, her eyes all black. Her mouth was somehow arranged differently than it had been before. Her grip was tight on Farooq-Lane’s fingers.
She smiled cannily.
“Bryde …” the fortune-teller started, and the hair on the back of Farooq-Lane’s head tingled. “Beautiful lady, Bryde says if you want to kill someone and keep it a secret, don’t do it where the trees can see you.”
Farooq-Lane felt the words before she heard them.
Her lips parted in shock.
She jerked her hand out of the fortune-teller’s fingers.
The fortune-teller blinked. She looked at Farooq-Lane with her ordinary eyes, her face arranged as it had been before. Just a woman. Just a woman with silver curls, looking at Farooq-Lane as she had when she’d first stopped in front of her table.
But then the fortune-teller’s expression hardened. She said, loudly and clearly, “Who wants a piece of the law?”
Every single head nearby turned to look at Farooq-Lane.
Farooq-Lane didn’t wait.
She ran.
Declan hadn’t told anyone that he knew Aurora Lynch was dreamt.
It was a secret, after all, and he knew how to handle secrets. It was a lie, too, because Niall expected them to believe that she was as real as the rest of them, but Declan knew how to handle lies.
It was a little heavier to carry than Declan’s other secrets and lies.
Not heavier.
Lonelier.
Aurora didn’t fall asleep right away after Niall died. She should have. On the day of his murder, the cows fell asleep. The cat. The family of finches that nested outside the farmhouse. The coffee machine that had always felt warm must have been technically alive, because even as other dreamt contraptions continued working, it stopped. Every other dreamt creature of his was fast asleep within seconds of his death, but not Aurora.
It was a Wednesday. Declan remembered that, because for years he’d considered Wednesdays days of bad news. Maybe he still did. He wouldn’t schedule something on a Wednesday if he could help it. Magical thinking, probably, but it felt like midweek still soured things.
On Thursday, Aurora was still awake. Awake? Sleepless. She stayed awake all night, pacing, restless, like those animals sensing an impending natural disaster. Declan knew she was awake, because he was, too. On Thursday, the Lynch brothers were not yet orphans.
Friday, a dead-eyed Ronan took Matthew out for a walk in the hayfield, leaving Declan alone in the still house with the dreamt thing called Aurora Lynch. Declan was relieved. He couldn’t bear looking at Ronan right now. Something foul and dark had nested inside Ronan the moment he’d found their father’s body; it was as if it woke up as everything else fell asleep. It was the most terrifying aspect of the situation so far—proof, it felt like, that things would never be the same.
Aurora was slow by Friday. Bewildered. She kept starting in one direction and then being distracted by things that ordinarily wouldn’t have drawn her attention. Mirrors. Sinks. Glass. She shied away from metal, coming suddenly alert when she nearly touched a doorknob or a faucet, before falling dazed once more.
Declan found her fumbling in the hall closet. She was moving the same three coats back and forth and gasping a little, as if the space was airless. Her eyes were glazed, half-lidded. He watched her for several long minutes, dread icing his heart. Dread and anticipation.
By then, he felt sure he was the only one in this house who knew the truth about her. The only one who knew what was coming.
Ah, Ronan, ah, Matthew. The brothers Lynch. They didn’t think their hearts would break more.
Aurora noticed him, finally, and wafted away from the coats to him.
“Declan,” she said. “I was going to walk. I was going to find …”
He stood motionless and stiff as she hugged him, thoroughly, messily, her face pressed against his hair. He felt her swaying. He felt her heartbeat. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was swaying. Maybe it was his heart. She might not even have a heart. Dreams didn’t have rules like men did.
He was going to be alone, he thought, he was going to be alone and it was going to be just him and that new terrifying Ronan, and Matthew whose life depended on him, and somewhere out there was something that killed Lynches.
“The will is in the cedar box in our bedroom closet,” she said into his hair.
Declan closed his eyes. He whispered, “I hate him.”
“My dauntless Declan,” Aurora said, and then she slid softly to the floor.
The orphans Lynch.
Now Declan watched Ronan stare at a painting that looked very, very much like Aurora Lynch. It was called The Dark Lady, and it was the reason Declan had come to the Fairy Market.
The subject of the painting was a woman with golden hair pinned to bob around her chin and a particular, puerile way of standing, head and neck jutted forward, hands defiant on hips. She wore a diaphanous periwinkle-blue dress and had a man’s suit jacket across her shoulders, as if it had been offered against a chill. Her head was turned to stare at the viewer, but the meaning of her expression was difficult to discern because the hollows of her eyes were cast in deep, almost skull-like shadow. Every color in the painting was black or blue or brown or gray. The entire image was subtly imbued with desire in a way observers probably thought was good art but Declan understood was part of the dream object’s magic. It was signed in familiar handwriting.
Niall Lynch.
“It’s one of Dad’s,” Declan said.
“I can fucking see that.” Ronan sounded furious, which told Declan little about what he was really feeling. Every emotion that wasn’t happiness in Ronan usually presented itself as anger. “This is what you came for? I didn’t think you were sentimental about Dad’s stuff.”
Declan wasn’t, but he wanted this painting.
He needed it.
For years it had been in a collection in Boston, having been sold to Colin Greenmantle, the crooked collector who’d eventually had their father killed. Several months ago, Greenmantle had died himself—through equally shady circumstances—and one of the dealers who’d known both him and Niall had gotten in touch with Declan. He’d offered him the key to Greenmantle’s odd collection.
Take anything you want of your father’s before I sell it, he’d said. You earned it with blood.
A generous offer. Very generous. Generosity on a scale of tens of thousands of dollars.
I don’t want it, Declan had said.
He was going to keep his head down. Be invisible. Pretend that part of his life had never happened.
I don’t want any of it, and even as he said it, he knew it was a lie.
But what was Declan Lynch but a liar?
“She has a legend,” Declan told Ronan, who eyed it where it sat, one of several paintings leaned against a temporary booth’s walls. “Whoever sleeps in the same room as her will dream of the ocean.”
Apparently it drove people crazy. While Ronan was destroying a Harvard dorm room, Declan had been looking through what was left of Greenmantle’s collection in Boston. He’d discovered that The Dark Lady had been sold shortly after Greenmantle’s death and then changed hands dozens of times, no one keeping her for longer than a few weeks. And she was to be sold again, this time at the Fairy Market in Washington, DC.
It was like it was meant to be.
“I’m going to buy it, if I can afford it,” Declan said. The Lynch brothers were rich, but conditionally so. Niall had left each of them a piece of property—the Barns to his favorite son, an empty field in Armagh, Northern Ireland, to Aurora’a favorite son, and a sterile town house in Alexandria to the son left over—and a sum of money that would keep them in middle-class comfort for most of
their lives as long as they didn’t make many splashy spends like car purchases, hospital stays, or deals for supernatural paintings. “Play it cool.”
“Play it cool,” mocked Ronan softly, but he arranged his face into indifference as they headed over to the booth.
The man who ran this booth didn’t look like he should be selling art. He looked like he should be running a gym, smiling on a billboard for the weight-lifting program he’d developed, promoting protein shakes, losing it all when he was busted for steroid use. His hair was greased into spikes nearly as strong as the rest of him.
“How much for that one?” Declan asked. “Of the blond woman?”
“Twenty thousand for that little lady,” said the man standing among the canvases. “Look at her spirit. What a gal. You can tell she’s got a giggle in her somewhere.”
Declan assessed his tone and posture and the placement of the painting in the booth, analyzing how invested the man was and how valuable he felt it was. And part of him tucked away the way the man spoke, too. Declan’s private collection of words and phrases was free and forever secret, a perfect hobby.
He said, “For a painting by a nobody?”
Ronan’s gaze bored holes in the side of his head. It wouldn’t have hurt Ronan a bit if he made his peace with lying for good cause, Declan thought.
“She’ll make you dream of the shore,” the man said. “My little daughter said it made her dream of the seaside. I had to try it out myself. Shuck and darn if it didn’t. There was the seaside, every night she was under my roof. Like a free vacation! That’s a guar-an-tee.”
“I don’t need a parlor trick,” Declan said. “I just need something to hang over my dining room table. Three-five.”
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