At the next Fairy Market, Jordan saw a deal go down badly. She didn’t see the fine details of it, but she heard the man shorting the woman for the price of her dyes. She saw the edge of the whispered conversation, the threats he made to keep the woman from making a fuss about it. Later, she saw the man being beaten by three women in the parking lot as other vendors walked by without turning their heads. They sliced a cross on his clothing that matched the squat, square one on the logo’s face. Jordan understood a little better.
At the Market after that, Jordan saw another woman arguing with the blazer-wearing woman from her first meeting. The blazer was saying it was time to pay what was owed; she had known it was a fair exchange. The woman said she didn’t have it. Later, when Jordan and the girls had packed up, Hennessy said that she’d seen the arguing woman strung up in the elevator, half-dead, a cross marked on her face.
Jordan understood even more.
Boudicca offered protection, it seemed, opportunity, maybe. But Jordan was already tied to one group of women. She wasn’t tempted to be tied to another. She wouldn’t have ever called the number on the back of the card.
But she was willing to go with Declan Lynch to see what there was to see.
“Do you know what you’re walking into?” Jordan asked, after she’d found parking on the congested streets. They were within walking distance from where they’d spent the night before, actually; they could’ve walked there without much trouble. Boudicca had arranged for the meeting to take place at the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, at the edge of Georgetown. Jordan had been to Dumbarton Oaks, many times, more often to the museum than to the gardens, and she thought she understood their choice. The garden was a place that would be private but also a place where extreme violence would be noted. It was polite for both parties.
Declan said, “Not at all. All they said when I called the number was ‘who?’”
“What’d you say?”
“I didn’t know what to say. I just said ‘the new Fenian.’ That’s what was written on the card. Then they asked ‘where’ and I said DC. They told me to call back in ten minutes, and I did, and they told me Dumbarton Oaks. I didn’t expect it to happen so fast. Not the same day.” He didn’t sound pleased about this and Jordan understood; it would’ve made her a little nervous, too. One didn’t like to be too wanted. As they turned to walk through the gates to the garden, he said, “So that we’re on the same page, this is my understanding: Boudicca is the mob, right? They take a cut in exchange for protection?”
“I think so,” Jordan said. “There might be a bit of marketing to it, too. Access to their client base and all that.”
“You’re not tempted?”
“Not a golden chance,” Jordan said as the attendant waved them on; he recognized her.
“I was going to call you anyway,” Declan said. “Not for this.”
She grinned. “Crime syndicate today, maybe a steak dinner tomorrow.”
Declan frowned, completely earnest. “Maybe not steak.”
Now it was her turn to laugh outrageously.
They were to meet the Boudicca contact by the fountain terrace, so they made their way there. The surroundings were striking this time of year: the lawns were still bright, lush green, but the trees were moodily arrayed in autumn browns and reds. The winds and rains had not been strong enough here to strip them of their leaves. Everything smelled good—the damp released the scent of the oak leaves, a smell that couldn’t help but be nostalgic. The gardens were impeccable, and so, too, she thought, was Declan Lynch among them in his good sweater and collared shirt, in his good shoes and his good watch. He was very good at being companionably quiet, and for ten or twenty strides, Jordan let herself imagine it was an ordinary date, an ordinary stroll, two people walking in companionship instead of the strange demands of a powerful secret group.
“Go on, tell it,” she said eventually, as they moved through the dormant rose garden.
“Tell what?”
“I know you must have a story about this place you’re dying to tell.”
He smirked a little. “I don’t know very much about it.”
“Liar.”
“That’s what they tell me.” But after a moment, he said, “All of this was created by the Blisses. What a name. The Blisses. Mildred and Robert. A couple notable for many things, including managing to make the ambitious move from stepsiblings to spouses.”
“The scandal! How old were they when they met? Do you know? Of course you do.”
“Teens, I think, I—” Declan broke off.
A figure was already standing at the fountain as they came down the stairs to the fountain terrace, clad in a dark jacket and dark slacks, a square gray bag by his shoes. Jordan turned Declan’s wrist enough to look at his watch. The time was right, but she didn’t think that could be the contact—it was a man.
The figure turned around, and both Declan and Jordan stopped in their tracks.
It was Ronan Lynch.
But then he stepped toward them and Jordan saw that it wasn’t Ronan at all. The way he carried himself was all wrong, the way he wore his face was all wrong. His hair was curled like Declan’s, but longer, chin-length. This man looked like a brother, perhaps, more like a brother to Ronan than Declan was.
“Look at you, Declan,” the man said to Declan, and his face was delighted. “Look at yourself. What a handsome devil. You could knock me over with an eel. Declan himself, all grown.”
Declan hung back.
All the handsomeness Jordan had seen in him had vanished, just like that, and suddenly he had become the bland and invisible Declan she had first met. Young Man on a Terrace, name unknown.
“Always the clever one,” the man said. He had a bit of an Irish accent, mostly on the Rs. “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.”
Jordan looked from Declan to the man. Dad?
“Who are you?” she asked.
The man stuck out a hand, seeming relieved that she had spoken to him. He was jumpy, nervous, flighty in a way that Ronan wasn’t. It was hard once he was moving to see how she’d ever mistaken him for Ronan. “The new Fenian is what they call me, and it’s good enough for this.”
“Hennessy.”
He shook Jordan’s hand, but he was still looking at Declan, his expression complicated. Longing. Proud. “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.”
Declan physically flinched.
The man saw it, looked sorry. “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.”
Declan finally said, “You’re a copy.”
It was an unsettling thing to hear. Jordan had gotten used to the idea of being an I to Declan instead of a we. He didn’t know she was anything more than Jordan Hennessy, singular, and she liked it far more than she was allowed to.
This was a reminder that he was brother to a dreamer, son of a dreamer, and he knew what mysteries they were capable of.
Jordan expected the man to dislike being called such a thing, but he just laughed a little. “Maybe my face. 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.”
Declan swallowed.
He was as dazed as she was during her episodes. But Jordan hadn’t forgotten his task. “We’re not here about that, though, friend.”
Declan shot her a grateful glance and then said, “I didn’t expect the number to bring me to you. I’m here about Mór Ó Corra?”
“That’s a name you definitely don’t want to be whispering,” the man said.
“Is she in Boudicca?”
He inclined his head. “But forget it, forget Boudicca. Pretend you never met me. I’ll tell them you didn’t show. They’ll leave it at that. Mór will make sure of it.”
“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.”
“Does she not want to see me?”
This made Jordan look away, much to her own surprise. This felt a little too personal, like she wanted to give him privacy for it.
“I wouldn’t answer for her,” the man said. “She deserves that much. That’s all I can say.”
Declan’s eyes narrowed just a hair, judging this, and then he nodded a little and pressed no more.
“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.”
Jordan knew someone like that.
“That’s that, then,” Declan said.
The man hesitated, then reached a hand out toward Declan. “Can I—I don’t know if I’ll see you again like this.”
Declan didn’t draw back, and so the man stepped forward and put his arms around Declan’s neck. He hugged him, the simple, complete hug of a parent hugging a son, hand on the back of his neck, cheek rested against the back of his head.
Declan stood stiff as a middle-schooler hugged by a parent in front of school, but Jordan saw his nostrils flare and his eyes go terribly bright. He blinked, blinked, blinked, and then he had his usual bland expression by the time the man stepped back.
“I’m proud of you,” he told Declan. Her dauntless Declan.
“Thanks for meeting us,” Jordan said, because it felt like someone ought to say it.
The man leaned and picked up his bag. “Stay alive.”
Hennessy had not had a dream that wasn’t the Lace for so long that she’d forgotten what they could be like.
Lindenmere was a dream.
It was worlds away from the café she’d met Ronan at that morning, both physically and spiritually. A two-hour drive had taken them to the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then Ronan had navigated up increasingly smaller roads to an unpaved fire road, and then he’d told her they would have to walk.
They walked.
Neither of them looked particularly like the hiking sort—Hennessy in her leather and lace, and Ronan in his black boots and his shaggy raven on his shoulder. There was comfort in the absurdity of that, Hennessy thought.
Because she was getting afraid again.
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.
She checked her timer on her phone. She’d just reset it. The odds of her slipping and knocking herself out while walking were low, but she couldn’t bear living without the comfort of it counting down to waking her up before the dream.
Ronan texted someone as they were walking. Hennessy saw only that the contact was labeled MANAGEMENT.
“Who’s that?”
“Adam,” Ronan said. “I’m telling him I’m going in so that he’ll know where to find me if days go by.”
Days?
“We’re here,” Ronan said.
She didn’t think she’d be able to tell, but she could tell. This far into the mountains, the ordinary trees were thinner, more slanted, striving for toehold among the granite and straining for the sun. But Lindenmere’s supernatural trees obeyed different rules. They were broad and tall, watchful and lovely, unaffected by the paucity of resources on the mountaintop. Green mosses and lichens furred their northern sides, with small moss flowers trembling at the end of delicate stalks.
And the sky was different. It had turned gray. Not the dull gray of high fall cloud cover, but rather a turbulent, molten gray that was really blue and purple and flint, all of it shifting and moving and swirling like the undulations of a snake. It had no eyes and no heartbeat and no body, but nonetheless one got the sense that the sky itself was sentient, even if it did not notice them below it.
“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.
She was trying not to shake again. For a decade she’d held herself together and now she was a ruin.
She couldn’t bear the idea that she might have to see the Lace again so soon.
Ronan regarded her.
Then he cupped his hands over his mouth and said, “Opal!” He paused, listened. “Where are you, maggot?”
Hennessy asked, “What’s Opal?”
An invisible bird let out an alarmed bark from somewhere overhead. Hennessy turned in time to see something dark move between the trees, or rather to experience the feeling that she’d just seen something dark.
“I told you, keep your thoughts steady,” Ronan told Hennessy. “Lindenmere will give you what it thinks you want.”
“They’re like a fucking rock.” They were not like a fucking rock.
“Chainsaw, go find Opal,” Ronan told the raven. “She needs Opal.”
Hennessy was not one hundred percent on bird body language, but she thought the raven nonetheless managed to look pouty. She hung her head and stepped from foot to foot on his shoulder, her neck feathers all ruffled up.
Ronan rummaged in his jacket pocket and removed a package of peanut butter crackers. He unwrapped one as the raven became suddenly attentive.
“Cracker,” he said to her.
“Krek,” she replied.
“Cracker,” he repeated.
“Krek.”
“Cracker.”
“Kreker.”
He gave her one. “The other’s if you get Opal.”
The raven took flight, her wings audible as they beat the air. Hennessy watched it all with some amazement. She and Ronan had been out of place while hiking, yes, but he was not out of place here. He belonged in this strange lush forest with his strange dark bird.
“You dreamt this place,” Hennessy said.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I had a dream, and after it, Lindenmere was here,” Ronan said. “But I think I might have just dreamt of it where it existed somewhere else, and then my dream was just the doorway for it. It’s a forest because that’s what my imagination could hold for it. It was limited by whatever my thoughts were. So, trees. Ish.”
Hennessy shivered, both because it was cool in this lofty forest and also because this reminded her of the Lace and what it wanted her to do. “That doesn’t bother you?”
She could see by his face that it didn’t. He loved this place.
Another alarmed animal cry came from the underbrush, and something like a growl, either an animal or a motor.
“Steady,” Ronan said, but she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself.
“If you made this place,” Hennessy said, “why didn’t you make it safer for you?”
He reached up to run his fingers along a low-hanging branch. “I had another forest before Lindenmere.” He looked like he was going to confess something, but in the end, he just said, “Bad things happ
ened to it. I made it too safe, because I was a chickenshit. Made it more ordinary. So it had to rely on me to keep it safe and—” He did not finish this, but he did not have to. The girls relied on Hennessy to keep them alive, too, and she knew how it felt to let them down. “I let Lindenmere be more of itself, whatever it was in that other place.”
“And what it is over there is dangerous.”
“Dangerous things can protect themselves,” Ronan said.
She could see he didn’t judge Lindenmere for it. Ronan Lynch could be dangerous, too.
“It’s not only dangerous,” Ronan said. “Watch.”
He held out his hands and said some words in an appropriately archaic-sounding language. Above him, small glowing lights winked into being among the fall leaves. They began to rain down around them. Ronan walked backward, admiring the lights, keeping his hands held out to let the lights sink into them.
Hennessy flinched as one sank into her skin with the slightest feeling of warmth. Not all of them dissolved. Some of them caught on her clothing, or in her hair. One caught in her eyelashes, and as she blink, blink, blinked, she found herself looking right into the light. It didn’t burn her to look right into it as an ordinary light would have, and as she gazed into it, instead of a sensation of visual brightness, she felt brightness inside her. Like happiness, or optimism. As if she was gazing into a sun of actual bliss.
Ronan said, in a reverent voice quite unlike his usual, “Gratias tibi ago.”
“What are you saying?” Hennessy said, finding her words only after the little light had finally dissolved from her eyelashes.
“That means ‘thank you’ in Latin,” Ronan said, “and it’s goddamn polite to say it when you like something. Opal! Come on, now! Here, come on, look over here.”
It was like a devil’s bargain, a fairy dance. Ronan Lynch stood there, dressed all in dark colors, only his eyes gleaming with color, his hand held out to her, glimmering lights drifting down around him. Come away. He didn’t say it, but Lindenmere remembered the words for her, somehow, as if he had.
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