“Chu Teh-Chun,” Declan said. “I know it deserves better; you don’t have to say it.”
“I wouldn’t have said it,” Jordan said. “And who’s this?”
More black ink, rolled and splattered in pleasing, architectural shapes, like a creature flying or a sentence she couldn’t quite read. She was touching her head again.
“Robert Motherwell.”
She looked at another abstract print. This one was marked with jagged red and black exclamations like fire licking up the canvas. She guessed, “Still? Clyfford Still?”
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?”
She was touching her temple again. Her throat. She looked at the Still for a long time, but she wasn’t really looking at it. She put down her latte, trying to look casual about it, but he could see from the fumble that it was so she wouldn’t spill it.
A sinking feeling was appearing inside Declan, invading in darkening blooms and jagged strokes, just like the paintings all around him.
“Why did you steal The Dark Lady?” he asked.
Jordan closed her eyes. Her voice was dreamy, dazed. “We said … we said we weren’t going to talk about that or about … your dreamer father.”
No, he thought. Please no.
“I don’t think,” Declan said, “I ever said the word dreamer.”
Jordan’s eyes were still closed. She was fighting valiantly. Harder than Matthew. But he thought he knew what it was anyway. She murmured, “No, probably … Crumbs … Come on.”
But this last bit was to herself, not Declan.
He stood up and laid a hand on her forehead. Not hot. He knew it wouldn’t be, really. He was already touching her, so he used it as an excuse to slowly tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. She opened her eyes.
“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.
“Mm. I don’t know. Getting pissed somewhere. How did you guess?”
“You aren’t the first dream I’ve seen do this,” Declan said. Then he told her a lot of truth, because he was too crushed to not say it out loud. “It’s not just that. 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.
Jordan swayed. She was as bad as Matthew at his worst. There was air in the room but not the right kind for her.
“I’ll take you home,” Declan said. “You can come back for your car later. Okay? Is that okay?”
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.
She nodded.
Farther,” Liliana said. “There are houses there.”
Farooq-Lane and Liliana had been flying down the highway for several miles now. Liliana gazed out the window, her eyes on the lights of houses in subdivisions and speckled across increasingly broad fields. They were nowhere near the hotel. After leaving Ramsay, Farooq-Lane had told Liliana that she’d get her an end suite at the hotel until they could find a more private vacation rental. Just give her until morning, Farooq-Lane promised, and she’d have it all sorted out. Could she have that long?
No.
No, she couldn’t.
Liliana had not yet learned to turn her visions inside to make them harmless, but she promised Farooq-Lane that the episode would be productive regardless, as long as she was far enough away from other people.
So now they drove, and Farooq-Lane’s phone rang and went unanswered. It pinged as voicemails came in. She didn’t need to listen to them to know what they said; she had been on the other side of this part. Farooq-Lane had found a new Visionary and so now all over the world, planes were being boarded as Moderators got ready to mobilize according to the new visions.
She didn’t need to pick up the phone to tell them where to come or to give them the go-ahead. They knew where she was. They were coming no matter what.
Liliana was being very calm about the entire process, despite the fact that she had to have been as sleep-deprived and stressed as Farooq-Lane, despite the fact that she had just had to live through a conversation with Ramsay, despite the dead bodies in her past and probably her future. Despite the fact that she was about to blast into a completely different age, possibly taking Farooq-Lane with her.
Farooq-Lane wasn’t sure if she would have preferred for her to be frantic or not. It felt like someone had to be frantic, so if it wasn’t Liliana, it fell to Farooq-Lane.
“Don’t wait too long,” Farooq-Lane said.
“Soon,” Liliana said.
“Soon we’ll be to a place to stop, or soon you’ll need to stop?”
Liliana smiled as if she found her anxiety familiar and amusing. “Both.”
This was intensely discomforting. “What are you looking for?”
“What I remember,” Liliana said. She tapped the fingers of one hand on the fingernails of her other thoughtfully.
The miles passed. The houses thinned. The night blackened. Farooq-Lane wondered how much trust she was willing to put in the hands of this stranger.
Liliana said, “Oh, there. Over there.”
There was a dirt driveway that led a few feet to a metal farm gate before disappearing into field grass. A four-board fence on either side of the gate held back several drowsy cows.
Liliana clucked when she saw them.
“Pity,” Liliana said, opening the door. She put her legs down, stiffly, and hefted herself out of the car.
Farooq-Lane looked from her to the cattle. Slowly, it dawned on her. “Are they going to—”
Liliana advised, “Don’t follow me.”
In the headlights, she stumped through the field grass. Farooq-Lane saw her fiddle with the gate before letting herself into the field. She did not bother to close it behind her; Farooq-Lane found this to be possibly the most troubling development in the past twenty-four hours, a complete subversion of what was right and true.
Liliana disappeared into the darkness.
Farooq-Lane sat there for a long moment, trying to decide if she should back out and put some more distance between herself and the field. Then she tried to decide how she would know when Liliana’s episode was done. Then she tried to decide how she felt about anything at the moment. She’d punched Ramsay, and her hand still hurt, and Parsifal was dead, and her heart still hurt, but life went on.
She heard something hit the windshield. It was a small, odd sound, a feeling as much as a noise. It was a little like a strong gust of wind, or like the sound one got if you pushed a seashell over your ear. It lasted for less than a second. The entire car bucked a little, but only a very little.
Farooq-Lane realized the cows by the fence were no longer standing. They were dark lumps behind the four-board fence. One was keeled right against the post by the gate, its tongue lolling. Something dark oozed down the post.
She clapped her hands over her ears.
She knew it was a belated response, one that would do nothing, but it was that or put them over her mouth or her eyes, and neither of those gestures made any more sense.
Those cows were dead. Liliana had just killed them. Farooq-Lane had only been fifteen feet out of the Visionary’s
range. Had Liliana known that? Had she remembered it that well, or had she just been willing to take a chance with Farooq-Lane’s life?
Farooq-Lane had seen so many bodies today.
Movement caught her attention. Someone was letting themselves through the open gate and carefully shutting it behind themselves. The headlights illuminated Liliana’s familiar dress for a moment and then she stepped out of the headlights to approach the car. She opened the passenger side door and let herself into the car.
Farooq-Lane’s lips parted rudely.
Liliana was beautiful. She was still clearly the old woman who had just been there before, but she was also not. Her long pale braids had become long red hair instead, and the eyes that had before been full of calm were now full of tears.
She said, in a very small voice, “I hate killing things.”
This version of her had not yet worked out how to like living in her own life.
“Me too,” Farooq-Lane said.
Liliana sighed. “But there is more to come.”
There was something strange about the house when Jordan returned.
She couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe, she thought, it was only that she was strange. The house loomed out of its atmospheric yard lighting and indulgent landscaping as it always did once the sun went down. The windows visible to the street were kept dark; the windows that weren’t were squares of light. Brightness leaked out into the backyard through the big glass doors Hennessy had once opened to drive the Lexus through.
Declan opened the car door for her. They both stood by his dull Volvo and squinted at the house. If Declan thought it was an enormous house for her to live in, he didn’t say it. He didn’t say anything at all.
It looked as it always did, but—
Something’s not right, her head said.
“You seem a little better,” he said.
“They don’t last long.” She didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at her.
He peered around at the driveway as if it troubled him. His hand unconsciously rubbed his chest. Finally, he asked, “Are you okay to get in yourself?”
“Yeah, bruv,” she said with a smile. “I left my coffee in your attic. I forgot it.”
“I’ll get it,” he said.
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. She would feel something about it later. Right now everything just felt weird. So she just put out her knuckles for a fist bump. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Oh,” he said, and she didn’t know what that meant, either. But he bumped knuckles. He got in the car and sat there. He was still sitting there when she got to the door.
She let herself in.
Inside, the feeling was stranger. The downstairs lights weren’t turned on, which wasn’t unusual at this time of night if Hennessy wasn’t here—the other girls would be flung in other wings of the house. But she couldn’t find the light switches right away.
She didn’t know why she was so disoriented. Her dreaminess? Was that it? She ran her fingers along the wall for the switches.
There was music playing from farther in the house. The kitchen, or the living area. It thudded. Whoever it was had it cranked up.
She kept feeling for the switches.
An electric shock made her jerk her fingers away.
No.
Not a shock.
She thought about what she had felt a little harder. Not pain. Not electricity. Just the strange ping that comes when you feel dampness unexpectedly.
Dampness?
Jordan pulled her fingers close to her in the dark. The dreaminess broke through: trees, wings, fire, blackness. Was there something dark on her fingers?
No, she was confused.
The music was so loud. Why was the music so loud?
She ran her fingers across the wall as she headed down the hall and then stumbled. Someone had left their bag in the middle of the floor. It was heavy, warm.
It reached up and held her leg.
Jordan sucked in a breath of air, and then the bag resolved into not a bag, but Trinity.
She was twisted in the hall, a dark splatter the shape of one of Declan’s abstract paintings up her front. She released Jordan’s leg and instead put one finger against her lips. Shhhh. Her hand slipped limply to the ground beside her.
Jordan’s heart sped.
Now she looked behind her and saw that the dampness on the wall was another black abstract shape that smeared down to where Trinity lay.
Jordan crouched beside Trinity, but she was gone.
Just like that, she was gone.
Keep it together, Jordan.
She crept farther down the hall and into the great room. Although the lights weren’t on in here, either, it was a little easier to see because the large windows let in the ambient light from outside. The enormous easel that had held Madame X was knocked over, legs akimbo like a downed giraffe. The music was louder in here, thumping bass going strong.
Oh God, oh God.
Here was Brooklyn. Fallen back over the sofa, bullet hole dark between her eyes and another in her throat.
Sickness and dreaminess washed over Jordan. She swayed, her hands reaching for balance and finding nothing.
Get
It
Together
She leaned against the couch until she felt steadier, and then she walked through the great room to the hall, past a study, and through the big, empty foyer.
She nearly walked past the door to the back staircase up to the bedrooms, but then she saw that the doorknob had been completely ripped out of it. Softly pushing the door open, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Madox. It had to be Madox because she had natural hair, but her face was missing.
Jordan had to crouch then, stuffing her knuckles against her teeth to gasp silently against them, biting down until the pain focused her. She could tell she was getting light-headed, hyperventilating.
She made herself think about how Trinity had still been alive, and so maybe June still was, too. She made herself stand up. She made herself head down the hallway to the music, moving ever more cautiously.
It was coming from the kitchen, where lights were blazing. The entire house was fitted with a sound system and it could be adjusted by room. The kitchen had been adjusted to max.
So Jordan only barely heard June shout, “Get down!”
She rolled without question as a gunshot rang out. She just had time to glimpse an unfamiliar man as she scrambled behind the kitchen island.
The music blared. Every possible light was on; the shadows were confusing and didn’t give away if someone was coming around the island.
Jordan shuffled to the end of the island—no point being quiet, nothing was audible over the railing music—and risked a peek.
A gun blast.
Nowhere near, went wide.
Jordan risked another look over the top. A man was reloading right next to her. She hurled herself over the counter, sliding down on top of him. She could see June fighting with another attacker.
She was in over her head. The man didn’t need the gun to be a good fighter. He slickly flipped her onto her back and didn’t even flinch when she kicked him in the nuts.
June screamed, high and light and airy.
“Stay down,” the man said to Jordan, punching her. “Why won’t you fucking stay down?”
Jordan elbowed him right in the nose and he swayed. Not enough to stop him, but enough for her to scramble out from under his weight. She felt her arms seized from behind. Her feet kick, kick, kicked on the tile. They had her by her biceps and she couldn’t twist free. The guy was getting up. She was done, she could feel it.
Suddenly, she felt the hands holding her jerk. They jerked ag
ain, and then, just as the first man went for his gun, they fell away.
Jordan scrambled back, losing her balance, but an entirely different hand reached out to steady her. As this new person lifted her up instead of dragging her down, her gaze snagged on something familiar:
Beautiful shoes with exceptional tooling.
Declan released her in time to punch the man as he rose with his gun.
Jordan got her feet under her. There was a confusing number of people in the room. The stunned woman on the floor must have been who was holding Jordan before. Declan had landed another punch on the man. June was here, somewhere.
The man who Declan had punched staggered but didn’t go down. He threw himself at both of them.
There was a professional precision to both his offense and his defense, a surgical and effortless way that he fought both Declan and Jordan, using the two of them against each other instead of regarding them as a double threat. When the other woman got up, the two of them quickly forced Declan and Jordan up against the walk-in pantry door. It flapped open behind them.
Jordan didn’t want to think of how quickly it would be over in that small space.
Then the man violently spasmed back and the woman stumbled, unbalanced.
June, gasping blood, had shot the man.
She squeezed the trigger again, but the gun clicked, pointless, empty.
“Jordan,” she rasped. Everything about her was ruined. Jordan couldn’t bear it, but there was nothing to do but bear it. “Run. Go.”
“June,” Jordan said, “June, I can’t.”
The woman scrambled for one of the discarded guns.
“There’s so … many … more …” June said. “Go.” She told Declan, “They’re looking … for Ronan, too. They know about his brother. Where he lives—”
Then she threw herself at the woman as the woman rose with the gun, wrapping herself around the woman’s body even as the woman shot her.
“Matthew,” Declan said.
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