Call Down the Hawk

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “I said I do it for the same reason you do it,” Farooq-Lane replied. “To save the world. Who wouldn’t do that?”

  He looked perplexed. “What?”

  “You can’t tell me that you aren’t sitting in this car with me because you want to stop the apocalypse from killing all of mankind,” Farooq-Lane said.

  “What?”

  “You asked why I did this.”

  He shook his head, eyeing her warily. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Farooq-Lane put her coffee down in the cup holder a little harder than she needed to. Her hands were wobbly again. She replayed the last minute back in her mind. Had she actually heard Parsifal? Or had it sounded instead like Nathan taunting her, inside her head, just like he had done when he was alive?

  “Sorry,” she said. “I think I’m a little on edge.”

  Parsifal gave her an extremely annoying look that indicated that he completely agreed, and then he said, “That’s him.” He pointed out the window to the tire tracks that dragged ash across the street. “I saw that. I remember that. I saw his car make them. Today. I’m sure it was today.”

  She felt her heart beat a little faster. This was more like it. This was how it had felt when they were closing in on Nathan. Specific little puzzle pieces that made more and more of a picture as each was revealed. Things that could be checked off a list. Things that might prove to Lock that his faith in her wasn’t unfounded. “Good. That’s good, Parsifal. What happened after that? Where do we go?”

  Parsifal’s fingers clawed a little more tightly around his takeaway cup. “The vision was not so good after that.”

  “Try.”

  “I saw him in a gray car. I … I saw him in a white car, too. I think the gray car is correct. A BMW. I think. I don’t know. I am more confused than I used to be. I could say before if … I could tell if …” He trailed off. His mouth made an agitated shape.

  “It’s all right if it doesn’t make sense,” Farooq-Lane said. “Just talk it out. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I saw a road that does this.” Parsifal did a somewhat rude-looking hand gesture. “I don’t know it in English.”

  “Roundabout?”

  “Sackgasse?” he suggested.

  “Exit ramp?”

  He drew an imaginary street on the dashboard. “Here house, here house, here house, here, here, here house, turn around here, house, house, house.”

  “Cul-de-sac,” Farooq-Lane said immediately. He squinted, not understanding. She tried again. “Dead-end street.”

  He brightened. “Yes, yes.”

  “Near here?”

  “Surely he is close if those tire tracks are still clear on the street,” Parsifal said logically. “No one has yet driven through them.”

  Relieved to have something to do, Farooq-Lane rapidly opened a map app. She zoomed out until she could see the neighborhood streets around her. Worst-case scenario would be if there were no cul-de-sacs nearby. Real-world scenario would be if there were several cul-de-sacs nearby. Best-case scenario would be just one within a few-mile radius.

  They were living in the best-case scenario.

  Parsifal, who was leaning over her shoulder, mouth-breathing into her ear, pointed, splashing his cocoa onto her screen. She made a soft noise of annoyance. He had a gift.

  “Da, there, there,” he said. “Andover. That’s the word I saw. This street is where your Zed is.”

  And just like that, they had a destination.

  Parsifal rolled up his window and put his cocoa cup securely in the holder behind Farooq-Lane’s.

  The fortune-teller’s words came back to her.

  If you want to kill someone and keep it a secret, don’t do it where the trees can see you.

  Farooq-Lane shivered. She was doing this for the right reason. She was saving the world.

  “This Zed,” she asked Parsifal as she put the car into gear. “In your vision, was he armed? Was he dangerous?”

  I expected more complexity from you, Carmen.

  She kept having dreams of Nathan being shot and Nathan being alive again, and she couldn’t decide which one was worse.

  “No,” Parsifal said. “I remember that part well. He is quite helpless.”

  She said, “Let’s go get him, then.”

  Black.

  It’s harder when you’re far away.

  Everything was black.

  Not black.

  It was whatever you called the absence of light.

  Ronan’s throat full of it, choking—

  You think it’s hard for you to hear the dreams when you’re far away from your mountains. From our ley line. From your forest. From Lindenmere. That’s not right. It’s not wrong, but it’s only half right. It’s hard for the dreams to hear you.

  Even in the dream, he was dying of it.

  You ever get asked to identify a song playing in a crowded restaurant? There’s noise everywhere. That shitty father lecturing his kid in the booth behind you. The waiters singing happy birthday to someone who never wanted to remember the occasion. The song’s playing out of speakers bought by the lowest bidder, an afterthought. When people shut the fuck up for a second, you can catch part of the tune here and there. If a lull coincides with the refrain, you have it. Done, shout the title, look clever.

  His eyes, wet with it—

  Otherwise, it’s just a song you heard once but can’t place. That’s what you are to the ley line, to your forest, when you’re far away.

  Ronan tried to reach for Lindenmere. He didn’t even know which way to reach in the darkness. He just knew he needed to grab something to bring back if he was to end the nightwash. But there was only blackness. The absence of dreams.

  It’s trying to place you, but you’re not making it easy. It’s guessing what you want. Auto-filling, and we all know how that goes. That’s when shit starts to go wrong.

  Please, Ronan thought, but he didn’t even know what he was asking.

  You shouldn’t have waited so long. I’ll do what I can, but you’re a song in a crowded restaurant and it’s so hard to hear with all this shitty noise.

  Ronan reached, and the darkness reached back.

  Hold on, kid.

  Ronan woke. Slowly. Stickily. His eyelashes were glued together.

  He was frozen, unmoving, looking at himself from above. A gloriously incandescent bar of golden sun burned his eyes, but he couldn’t turn his head away from it. A single trail of black tapered thinly from one nostril; the rest of his skin was clear.

  His body was in the backseat of the BMW. One of Matthew’s school sweatshirts was balled up under his head as a pillow. His hands were folded on his chest in a way that seemed unlike any gesture he would have chosen for them. The quality of light in the car was curious; it seemed like neither day nor night. It was dark, save for that bar of strong light. He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand how he’d gotten into the backseat. And he couldn’t understand what he’d brought back from his dream.

  His hands were cupped over something, but the shape under his fingers didn’t make sense to him. He didn’t feel anything moving, but who knew. It could be a murder crab waiting for light to activate it. It could be a disembodied scream. It could be anything. What he recalled of his dream offered no clues. He just remembered a wasteland of many convulsing darknesses, and Bryde’s voice breaking gently through.

  Ronan could move again.

  He gingerly opened his hands. Collected in his palms was a broken sword hilt, its finish complexly black, just like the Soulages painting from the Fairy Market, the one that made Declan Lynch want to goddamn cry. The matte-black blade was broken off just beneath the guard. On the grip, three words were printed in very small letters, also black, only visible when the hilt was tilted in the light: VEXED TO NIGHTMARE.

  He had no recollection of dreaming about it.

  It was possible that Bryde had just saved his life.

  It was a strange feeling, too big to be labeled with good or
bad just yet. It had been overwhelming enough to know that the world was vastly huger and more mysterious than he had given it credit for. It was above and beyond to think that world had his back.

  He sat up to get his bearings.

  The not-day-not-night quality of light in the car was because it was parked in something like a lean-to or an old shed. The siding was battered and rustic, only as constructed as it needed to be. The slat of light that had burned Ronan’s eyes was from a missing board.

  The floorboards of the backseat were covered with wadded-up tissues, each of them soaked in black. He hadn’t had tissues in the car, had he? No, he’d had receipts to sop up his face. The driver’s seat was moved far forward, revealing a cache of trash formerly hidden by the seat, and on the floor mat were two black shoe prints, too small to be his. Someone had laid his car keys on the center console where he would see them.

  It was backward to sleep and wake somewhere different rather than falling asleep so that his mind could fly elsewhere. Everything was impossible today.

  He let himself out of the car, stumbling a little as he did. The dried ground was stubbled with hoofprints—this was an animal lean-to. Stepping out of the shed, he shielded his eyes from the long afternoon light, taking stock. Distant horses cropped grass, taking no interest in him as he peered around the sloping long field. He could hear the rush of cars fairly close by. The interstate. A flattened path through the grass led from the lean-to to a distant gate and then, beyond that, to a crumbling two-lane road.

  There was no sign of the little white sedan, or any other cars, for that matter.

  Taking out his phone, he opened the map. He was forty minutes outside the city. Northwest, not remotely on the way to the Barns.

  The truth of the situation was slowly unfolding. One of them—the woman, probably, because the seat was moved so far forward—must have driven him far out of the city to dream, to make sure his two conflicting geasa didn’t get him into trouble this time. Then hidden his car. Cleaned his face. Left his keys where he could find them. Driven away with the man with a Lynch’s face, leaving Ronan with more questions than answers.

  They’d saved his body and Bryde had saved his mind, and he was no closer to knowing who any of them were.

  Ronan kicked the ground.

  One step forward, two steps back.

  Hold on, kid.

  Hennessy.”

  It was Hennessy’s fault.

  That was the beginning and end of most of the girls’ problems, really. They couldn’t go to college or do anything that required a distinct social security number: Hennessy’s fault. Were banned from the Nine O’Clock Club: Hennessy’s fault. Had painful wisdom teeth in bad weather: Hennessy’s fault. Had to resort to an elaborate plan to forge and nick a painting instead of just liquidating some shit and buying it with a wad of cash: Hennessy’s fault.

  Everything about The Dark Lady situation was Hennessy’s fault.

  “Hennessy.”

  Last year, Hennessy had sold a John Everett Millais forgery to Rex Busque, muscle-bound dealer of portraits and Pre-Raphaelite pieces, longtime Fairy Market attendee. It featured a young titian-haired woman holding a single card, its face pressed to her bosom, leaving it up to the viewer to decide if it was a playing card, a tarot card, or something else entirely. Her eyes suggested it was whatever was the most mysterious option. The forgery was a bit more gutsy than Hennessy would have ordinarily done—it would’ve been safer to “find” some Millais sketches or unfinished works—but Busque had asked for something splashy, as he’d gotten himself into a bit of money trouble and wanted to turn something over for a lot of money in a little time. She’d warned Busque it was too good a find to go without scrutiny and that he should only try to turn it overseas to a private collector.

  “Hennessyyyy.”

  Of course it got busted by the first prestigious gallery Busque had tried to pass it to. Millais worked his compositions directly on the canvas, graphite underdrawing and all, and Hennessy had just winged it, and once the question had been asked, the dominoes fell: the strokes were too big, the varnish was wrong, where did you say you found this?

  Hennessy was viciously uncontrite. She’d warned him, she told him; his fault he was a lazy needledick who couldn’t be bothered to look up an international country code.

  Of course he would be the one who ended up with The Dark Lady months later.

  “I’d sooner burn a painting than sell it to you,” he’d told Hennessy.

  Hennessy’s fault.

  She’d have given up by now if it weren’t for the rest of them.

  She was so tired.

  “Heloise,” Jordan said. Hennessy wasn’t looking at the girls, but she knew it was Jordan; only Jordan called her that. Hennessy’s name was not Heloise. That was the joke. “Your face.”

  Hennessy knew about her face. Wiping it wouldn’t change it. She lay on her back on the tiled kitchen floor, smoking, a small rivulet of black running from her nostril down her cheek.

  It had been too long since she’d dreamt.

  And since their plan had fallen through, there’d be another copy of her soon. Another flower on the tattoo encircling her throat. Another step toward dying. Another step toward every girl in this kitchen going to sleep forever.

  Hennessy’s fault.

  “Did that just start?” June asked. Poor June. She mostly tried hard and was the second most likely to show up if you called and was the best at holding down a legal part-time job. Like Hennessy, she drank too much and liked dogs. Unlike Hennessy, she had straightened her hair and also liked cats. She was the second oldest living copy, which meant she was the most complex copy after Jordan.

  Poor Jordan. She didn’t deserve this. None of them did, but especially not her.

  “If you think about it metaphorically,” Hennessy said, “has it ever really stopped?”

  The girls were cleaning the mansion’s white-and-copper kitchen, which was trashed. It was always trashed. It was used by six forgers to form pastels, mix pigments, make glue, stain paper, and reheat pizza, and all of these components were scattered across the floor and counter, along with some hair and teeth from the Breck break-in. Long evening light through the garden windows illuminated paint spattered over marble floor, cobwebs trailing through the copper pots hanging overhead, take-out boxes covering the marble island.

  “You know who I hate?” Madox said. She sounded pissed. She always sounded pissed. It was like Hennessy’s temper was the main thing that made it to her. “That fucking junk handler Busque.”

  “You want to run your mouth?” June said. She tended to be practical. It was like Hennessy’s problem-solving was the only thing that had made it to her. “Then fuck off outside. What’s the move?”

  “The kid has it. The Lynch kid,” Hennessy replied.

  “He lives here,” Madox said. “I saw his swish town house. I still vote we jump him.”

  “You are the stupid one. He works for a senator,” June said. “You don’t think that won’t be headlines on some shock blog? That’s a risk.”

  “June’s right,” Trinity said pensively. She always sounded pensive, down on herself, like Hennessy’s self-hatred was the only thing that had made it over to her. “We’d have to split town, which is only worth it if The Dark Lady works.”

  Hennessy exchanged a look with Jordan, who leaned against the counter with a handful of brushes. It was hard to say what Jordan was thinking. She was looking at the black ink running from Hennessy’s face and touching the floral tattoo on her own neck, the one that matched Hennessy’s.

  Jordan, of all the girls, should have had a life of her own. She wasn’t Hennessy. She was Jordan. Her own person, trapped in Hennessy’s shit life.

  Hennessy’s fault.

  “I’m tired of naming you girls,” Hennessy said.

  “Can we buy it off him?” Brooklyn suggested, standing by the sink with a dustpan full of obliterated pastels. This was a shock of a suggestion, but mostly beca
use Brooklyn’s suggestions ordinarily tended toward the sexual, the only part of Hennessy that had really rubbed off on her.

  “If he doesn’t want to sell it, then we’ve tipped him off, haven’t we?” June said.

  “Maybe we should just give it up. It might not work anyway,” said Madox.

  “Bad take, Mad,” said June.

  “Or at least go into it knowing it’s an unpopular opinion,” Trinity muttered.

  The principle behind acquiring The Dark Lady was simple. Her legend was well documented: Whoever slept under the same roof as her would dream of the seaside. Hennessy, therefore, would be forced to dream of the seaside instead of her usual recurring nightmare, and would bring back a gull or sand or some other beach paraphernalia, all of which would cost her less physically than producing a copy of herself.

  Jordan finally spoke up. “What if we just swap it again?”

  Trinity asked, “What … break into his house?”

  “Same plan,” Jordan said. “Exactly same plan. Nip in, leave our copy, nick the real one.”

  The girls thought.

  “You’re round the twist,” Madox said.

  As if she hadn’t said anything, June mused, “Still risks exposure.”

  Brooklyn chucked the pastel dust into the garbage disposal. “Not if we break a window and then replace the glass when we’re done.”

  “We’d need time,” Trinity said. “He’d have to be out of the house for a good long while.”

  All this fucking trouble, Hennessy thought. All because Hennessy couldn’t stop having the same damn dream.

  Hennessy’s fault.

  Jordan crossed the floor and took the cigarette from Hennessy. She took a drag before flicking it into the sink. That, Hennessy thought, was the biggest difference between the two of them. Like Hennessy, Jordan would try almost anything, but in the end, Jordan could always toss away the stuff that was bad for her before it killed her.

  Except for Hennessy. Hennessy was the deadliest habit any of them had, and none of them could quit her.