“Oh, the man with a mask,” said one of them.
The other asked, “Where’s your pretty lady?”
He put it together. “The lady, the lady you saw before. Was she blond—was she wearing a jacket—did she—did she have blue eyes?” He pointed at his own.
They both looked at him, lips pursed, schoolmarmish.
“Look, she was dead. I know she was dead. I saw—I need to know what’s going on,” Ronan said. Please help. Please help me understand. “Please. Did you talk to her?”
The sisters scrutinized him. One of them, the older one, reached out to trace Ronan’s eye socket lightly, as if she were sizing him for a mask. Her finger was icy cold. He turned his face away.
“She gave us this card,” one of the sisters said. “You can have it; we don’t want it.” She handed over a square tile. There was a block-printed image of a woman on it, with a cross painted on her face.
It didn’t mean anything to him, but he took it anyway. “What did she want?”
“What everyone else wanted. To know more about …”
He knew what they were about to say, because it was the word that had been concluding nearly every sentence that night. He finished it for them. “Him.”
“Yes,” said the older sister. “Bryde.”
Farooq-Lane had never put her physicality to the test. Not a real test. Not a lion-gazelle situation. Not a hurtling down hallways and vaulting through doorways and knee-up-careful-now spiral down a dozen flights of stairs. She had only ever run on the treadmill of her local gym, earbuds spitting beats at her, and sometimes beside the lake on good days, shoes matching shorts matching sports bra matching Fitbit counting up toward health on her wrist, and occasionally in the fitness centers in hotels, bottled water reflecting the up-down of her smoothly toned legs. She had only ever run to look good.
She hadn’t ever run for her life.
But that was how she exited the Carter Hotel, trailing an increasing number of antagonists on every floor. She heard things hit the walls behind her, but she didn’t look to see what they were. At one point, she felt a hand encircle her ankle, and she slid free of it and poured on more speed.
As she bolted through the lobby, a woman in a drawstring top smiled at her, not in a pleasant way, and said, “Run, cop.”
Farooq-Lane skidded out the front doors. She hurtled down the front stairs so quickly that she almost ran into the car parked at the base of them.
It was her car. Her rental.
Parsifal Bauer sat behind the wheel of it, sitting perfectly straight, looking like an undertaker behind the wheel of a hearse.
She heard someone—probably the doorman—coming up behind her.
She threw herself into the backseat. The car was already moving as she dragged the door shut behind her. The doors audibly locked.
A little thwick as they pulled away indicated the sound of both a bullet hitting the car and Farooq-Lane being glad she’d gotten full insurance coverage on the rental.
About a mile away, Parsifal pulled over and put the car in park. “I don’t want to drive anymore. I don’t have a license.”
Farooq-Lane was still out of breath, her side pinching with a stitch. She couldn’t believe that he’d been right there, waiting for her. Quite possibly he’d just saved her life. “Did you have a vision?”
He shook his head.
“How did you know to be there?”
Parsifal unbuckled his seat belt. “Common sense.”
We gave the world to them back before we knew any better.
Already they were telling stories about us and we were believing them. The story was this: The trade-off for being a dreamer was emotional infirmity. We could dream, but we couldn’t stand being awake. We could dream, but we couldn’t smile. We could dream, but we were meant to die young. How they loved us still, despite our weaknesses, our unsuitedness to all things practical.
And we believed them. A benevolent, wicked fairy tale, and we believed it. We couldn’t run the world. We couldn’t even run ourselves.
We handed them the keys to the goddamn car.
Ronan dreamt of summer, of Adam.
He was in a sun-simmering garden, surrounded by tomato plants as tall as him. Green. So green. Colors in dreams weren’t seen with eyes, they were seen with emotion, so there was no limit to their intensity. A radio was skewed in the mulch, playing Bryde’s voice, and Adam was there, his gaunt features looking sun-bitten and elegant. He was an adult. Recently, he’d been an adult in all of Ronan’s dreams, not just cigarette-legal but properly, truly into adulthood, every bit of him mature, certain, resolved—probably there was some psychological explanation for this, but Ronan couldn’t guess at it.
Now they’ve built the whole thing inside out. Conscious, that’s what they call being awake. Unconscious, that’s what they call dreaming. Subconscious, that’s what they call everything in between. You and I know that’s bullshit.
But thus spake Zarathustra or whatever and now they gave us spirituality and took actuality for themselves.
The audacity of it.
In this dream, this confident and powerful older Adam, still boyishly wiry but with jawline brindled with handsome scruff, put a ripe, ripe cherry tomato in Ronan’s mouth. Warm from the sun, skin taut against his tongue. Shockingly hot sweet-savory seeds exploded as Ronan crushed the flesh against the roof of his mouth. It tasted like summer felt.
You need to understand this: They need you to be broken. They can’t stand it otherwise. If you could do what you do, but without any doubt?
Don’t tell me you don’t have doubt.
Don’t tell me you have it figured out.
Your heebie-jeebie nightmare crabs are on you, not me. It wasn’t my birthday printed on their bellies. You don’t yet believe in the reality of your dreams. Of you.
I don’t want you to think this ever again: It was just a dream.
That’s a good way to get yourself killed.
“Tamquam,” said Adam.
“Wait,” said Ronan.
“Tamquam,” he said again, gently.
“Alter idem,” Ronan said, and found himself alone. The garden had vanished and now he stood on a ragged shoreline, shivering, bent against the wind. The air was frigid but the ocean was tropical blue. The rocks rising behind him were black and rough but the shore was creamy beige sand. He was filled with desire. The dream was made of longing for things just out of reach. It floated in the air like humidity. It washed up on the shore with the salt water. He sucked in more longing with every inhale, he exhaled some of his happiness on the other side. How miserable.
No. Ronan was not at the mercy of the dream.
“Happy,” Ronan said into the air. He said it with intention, so that the dream would hear him. Really hear him. “Fucking dolphins.”
Smooth gray backs surfaced joyfully a few yards out from shore. Dolphins squealed. The misery lifted from his chest somewhat.
There you are. You’re not without skills. I think you’re getting intrigued, aren’t you?
“I don’t like people who don’t show themselves,” Ronan said out loud.
You heard how it was last night. Everyone wants a piece of me. You’re going to have to come toward me a bit first. Remember our game? Throw the pebble, jump to the next box, closer to the center?
A plastic baggie of teeth washed up on the shore. Ronan snatched it up; he hated news stories about plastic in the ocean. “I don’t have time for games.”
Life’s a game, but only some bother to play.
Next box: You don’t know which rabbit to chase right now, me or her.
Next box: Doesn’t matter. Either rabbit will take you to the same warren. We’re all struggling the same direction these days. Foraging for crumbs.
Next box: Throw a pebble, jump, jump. Jump after the rabbits.
Next box: Happy hunting.
The morning after the Fairy Market, Ronan woke in Declan’s guest room. Since Cambridge, he’d had to give h
imself a little talking-to before he convinced himself to get out of bed, but today, he immediately rolled out from under the duvet and got dressed.
For the first time in a long while, he was more interested in being awake than asleep.
Bryde.
Bryde.
Bryde.
Plus a dreamlike underground market, and a stranger with his mother’s face. The world felt enormous and extraordinary, and his blood felt warm again through his veins.
Jump after the rabbits.
Ronan even had a clue: the card the mask-woman had given him outside the elevator.
Retrieving it from his jacket pocket, he took a better look at it. It was heavy cardstock, more like a disposable coaster than a business card. It was pleasant to hold. Professionally made, perfectly square, rounded corners. One side featured that image of the woman with a broad cross on her face, striping over her forehead and chin vertically, striping over her eyes and cheekbones horizontally. The other side was flat black. There was no other information on it that he could see, even holding it up to the light.
He snapped a photo of it, typed do you know what this is? and texted it off to Gansey in hopes that he was still tied to that black walnut tree or somewhere else with a phone signal. Richard Campbell Gansey III was the most academic and mythic person he knew, and the most likely of any of Ronan’s acquaintances to have an idea of what the significance of the image might be. He wanted to send it to Adam, but he didn’t want Adam to think he had to devote time to it. He’d already fucked up Adam’s life enough at the moment. He didn’t think Adam was angry with him, but things had been different since the dorm was destroyed. Quieter, sort of. Ronan didn’t know how to make things right again, and he was afraid of making things more wrong.
So he just texted him: dreamt of you.
As he headed downstairs and into the kitchen, Declan’s voice sounded lecturey. “You aren’t even remotely dressed for the recital. I need at least forty extra minutes for traffic. And please stop.”
Matthew was cheerfully chanting through a mouth stuffed full of pancakes and jam, accompanying the sound with a small dance. His chant sounded like “Ror a ror a ror a ror.” It was hard to tell if it was a phrase he liked the feel of or a fragment of a song, not that it particularly made a difference; he had, on previous occasions, sung phrases he liked the feel of for hours.
Declan looked long-suffering. He ate a handful of antacids and washed them down with coffee, which Ronan suspected was counter-indicated, but hell, everyone had their vices.
“What’s he saying?” Ronan asked.
“He’s saying he wants to be late for his recital,” Declan said sourly.
Matthew, still dancing and chanting, pointed at the now unwrapped Dark Lady where it was leaned against the cabinets. It was quite marvelous to see her in the full, hard light of morning. Last night’s dream had been reality, and vice versa. The Fairy Market existed; Bryde existed; the woman they’d seen with Aurora’s face existed. The Dark Lady peered at Ronan with her hard look. Aurora had been tender, trusting. There was none of that in this portrait.
Matthew finally swallowed his mouthful and sang, with more clarity: “More oh core-ah, More oh core-ah!”
Joining Ronan, he turned the painting over. The back of the painting was sealed neatly with brown paper, protecting the canvas. Matthew tapped the bottom right corner, where there was an inscription in their father’s handwriting. Mór Ó Corra.
Ronan said it out loud himself, throwing his back into the Irish r’s. “‘More oh core-ah.’”
It did have a certain addictive ring to it. A certain nostalgic shape to the vowels that reminded him of his father, of the parts of his childhood that were unsullied by everything that came after. He’d nearly forgotten his father’s Northern Irish accent. What a ridiculous thing to forget.
Ronan looked at his older brother. “What’s Mór Ó Corra?”
Declan said, “Who knows? It’s just a dream. Could be anything. Matthew, please for the love of Mary. Get dressed. Let’s please grease the wheels.”
This Declanism drove Matthew upstairs.
Declan’s words—just a dream—echoed in Ronan’s mind as he recalled how Bryde had forbidden him from ever saying them again. He asked Declan, “Did you dream of the sea?”
“Yes,” Declan said. “An Irish one.”
“So it performs as advertised.”
“Looks that way.”
Ronan’s phone buzzed with a text: Gansey.
Reached out to a few peers, it said, as if he were sixty instead of the same age as Ronan. Image you sent confirmed logo for Boudicca. All-lady group involved in the protection and organization of women in business. Henry says his mother thinks they’re pretty powerful.
Another text came in. Boudicca is actually a very interesting historical figure in her own right.
Another: She was a warrior queen of the Celts around 60 CE and she fought against the Romans
Another: Blue wants you to know Boudicca is
Another: Sorry sent too soon quote is ‘Boudicca is the original goth. Ronan Lynch wishes he was that badass’
Another: Is badass one word or two
Ronan’s phone displayed ellipses to show that Gansey was about to shoot off another text.
Ronan texted back hurriedly, If you have to ask you aren’t one. Thanks old man. I’ll wiki it.
Declan asked, “Parrish?”
“Gansey,” Ronan said. “He knows what Boudicca is. He knows about the card that woman”—he didn’t know what to call the woman with his mother’s face—“left with the mask-ladies last night.”
“Don’t go chasing this, Ronan,” Declan intoned. Hefting up the painting, he slid it into the nearest closet and closed the door on her. Ronan was no art aficionado, but he wasn’t exactly sure that was the display method he would have chosen. “I can see you think it’ll be fun, but it won’t be.” He was always doing that—guessing Ronan’s next action correctly, guessing his motivation incorrectly.
“You don’t want to know?”
“No.” He began to get ready to go: shoving dishes in the sink, stabbing food down the disposal with a spatula, rinsing out his coffee cup and setting it upside down on a towel. “No, I don’t. Matthew, come on, hurry up, two minutes! I’m giving up my day for this!”
Ronan snarled, “It’s like you checked out of the family at birth.”
He knew it was nasty. He knew it was the kind of thing that would’ve made Gansey say Ronan and Adam give him a knowing look. But he couldn’t help it. It was as though the less Declan got riled up, the less he seemed to care, the more Ronan wanted to make him break.
But Declan just continued stacking dishes, his voice as even-keeled as if they’d been discussing gardening. “Evolution favors the simplest organism, Ronan, and right now we’re the simplest organism.”
Ronan made a vow to never be as dull a person, as passionless a person, as dead a person as Declan Lynch.
“A fucking single-celled organism is the simplest organism,” Ronan said. “And there are three of us.”
Declan looked at him heavily. “As if I don’t think about that every single day.”
Matthew reappeared, dressed in all black—not the classy black of a funeral, but the rumpled black of either a server at a steakhouse or a student in a high school orchestra.
“Thank God,” Declan said, retrieving his car keys.
“You can if you like,” Matthew said. “But I dressed myself.”
He shot a look at Ronan to make sure his joke had been funny.
Acting like Ronan had not just been foul to him, Declan asked, “Ronan, are you coming to this thing?”
Ronan wasn’t one hundred percent sure what kind of recital it was, but he was one hundred percent sure he’d rather be chasing rabbits toward Bryde and Boudicca. He was also fairly sure from Declan’s expression that Declan knew this.
“You should totally come,” Matthew said, bounding over. “I’m awful, it’s grea
t. There’s this one organ solo that’s so bad you’ll pee yourself laughing. There’s … oh. Ronan?”
He broke off and made a little gesture under his own nose, the sort you do when you mean to be a benevolent mirror for someone else.
Ronan mirrored Matthew’s gesture, dabbing his knuckle against his nostril. Looked at it. A smear of black, dark as ink, covered his skin.
Nightwash.
He hadn’t even felt it coming. He always thought he should be able to feel it coming.
Declan’s eyes tightened, as if he were disappointed in Ronan. Like it was his fault.
“Guess you’re not coming with us,” Matthew said.
Parsifal?” Farooq-Lane said. “I need to get in there eventually.”
She’d been waiting for her turn in the bathroom for ages. He’d already been in there when her alarm woke her, having silently made it through her room and into the bathroom at some point in the night. She didn’t want to know what was taking him so long. Nathan had been clean and secretive as a teenager, but the cultural idea of teen boys being disgusting had nevertheless fully invaded her subconscious. She didn’t ask questions.
She made herself a cup of bad instant coffee, ate an apple, and then, when he still didn’t emerge, prepared an egg-white omelet. She curled over her laptop and scoured forums for clues about Bryde. It was the only thing she had to go on—the only other thing she’d gotten from the Fairy Market was a workout. What she needed was more visions to work with. She’d never appreciated how difficult this side of the job was. Before, when she was traveling places with the Moderators, someone else had already interpreted the Visionary’s information into drawings, locations, or times. Often it was incredibly detailed—they’d basically gotten written instructions for where to find Nathan in Ireland. She hadn’t thought about what it had actually been like to get that information: that somewhere a Moderator had to sit in a hotel room with a Visionary who may or may not have been impossible to live with, waiting for visions to appear.
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