Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(25)

The Potomac was unsettled and fast and wide through here as it clawed over the rocks. Leaning on the railing, Matthew closed his eyes and sucked in huge breaths of air, as if he’d been suffocating until now. His brows released until-then-unnoticed tension. His Adonis locks lifted in the wind off the river, revealing not a kid’s profile, but a young man’s.

“Matthew—” Declan began, but stopped. Matthew had not heard him. The falls had him in their grip.

After many minutes, Ronan simply breathed fuck.

It was true that it was eerie—their normally ebullient brother transformed into this enchanted prince. Matthew was not prone to introspection; it was bizarre to see his eyes closed and his mind elsewhere. And it got worse the longer the minutes dragged on. Five minutes, ten, fifteen—that felt long to stand around waiting for him, but not uncanny. One hour, two, three—that was something else. That raised the hairs on the back of your neck. It was, Declan thought, becoming more obvious what he truly was, his existence reliant on Ronan and perhaps on something beyond even that. What powered Ronan? What had powered Niall? Something related to this surging water.

It seemed like only a matter of time before Matthew figured it out.

Ronan sucked air in through his mouth and released it slowly out his nose, such a familiar Ronan gesture that Declan could have identified him just by the sound of it. Then Ronan asked, “What’s the Fairy Market?”

Declan’s stomach heard the question before his brain did. It seized up in hot anxiety.

Damn it.

His thoughts rapidly followed the flowchart of secrets, of lies. How did Ronan even know to ask that question? Had he found something of Niall’s at the Barns; had someone approached him; was their secrecy in question; what had Declan triggered when he made that phone call, when he picked up that key, when he went to that house in Boston while Ronan met up with Adam—

Declan said blandly, “The what?”

“Don’t lie,” Ronan said. “I’m too pissed off for bullshit.”

Declan looked at his younger brother. The more natural brother of the two, but not by much. He had grown up to look exactly like their father. He was missing Niall’s long curls and Niall’s effervescent charm, but the nose, the mouth, the eyebrows, the stance, the simmering restlessness in the eyes, everything else was the same, as if Aurora had had no part in the transaction at all. Ronan was no longer a boy, or a teen. He was turning into a man, or a mature version of whatever he was. A dreamer.

Stop protecting him, Declan told himself. Tell him the truth.

But a lie felt safer.

He knew Ronan was failing alone at the Barns. The farm he adored wasn’t enough for him. His brothers weren’t enough for him. Adam wasn’t really enough for him, either, but Declan knew he hadn’t gotten that far yet. There was something strange and yawning and hungry inside Ronan, and Declan knew that he could either feed it or risk losing Ronan to a far more mundane ending and, by extension, lose his other brother, too. His entire family.

Declan clenched his teeth, and then he gazed at the river as it threw itself over the rocks. “Want to come with me?”





13

Sometimes Hennessy imagined flinging herself off the roof.

She imagined how, for just a collection of seconds, she would be ascending as her initial jump brought her a few feet above the roof level, before the sucking sensation of gravity wrapped itself around her body. Only then would she be officially falling. Nine point eight one meters per second squared, that was the speed of a fall, all other variables taken out of the picture. Air resistance, friction, balanced and unbalanced forces, six other girls leaning over the edge of the roof shouting Hennessy come back.

The French had a term for it. L’appel du vide, the call of the void. The urge even non-suicidal people felt to jump when confronted with a high place. Fifty percent of people thought about hurling themselves from heights, much to their shock. One in two. So it wasn’t only Hennessy who would imagine her body plummeting into the junipers three stories below.

Hennessy stood on the concrete balcony at the McLean mansion’s roof, the toes of her boots poking over the edge, looking at the yard far below. Music spat in the background, something murmuring and sensual and restless. One of the girls sang along with the song even though it was in a language Hennessy didn’t speak—had to be Jordan or June. Conversation spiked and lulled. Glasses and bottles clinked. Somewhere, a gun went off, once, twice, three times, distant and percussive in the house, sounding like distant cue balls on a pool table. It was a trash party. A secret party. A party for people who had so much dirty laundry they could be trusted to not air anyone else’s.

“You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream,” said a voice beside her.

It was Hennessy’s voice, but out of a different body. Not a different body. A distinct body. Hennessy had to look to tell which of the girls it was, and even then, she wasn’t sure. Trinity, maybe. Or Madox. The newer ones were harder to place. They were like looking in a mirror.

The girl eyed Hennessy’s body language and continued, “You jump, I jump, we all jump.”

Everyone at this secret party thought Hennessy’s big reveal was that she was one of the most prolific art forgers on the East Coast. The real secret was this: Hennessy, Jordan, June, Brooklyn, Madox, Trinity. Six girls with one face.

Hennessy had dreamt them all.