Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(111)

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.”





71

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.