Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(32)

This was so like a dream. All this time, places like this had existed, and Ronan had been shuffling across tidily paved parking lots and blinking underneath a suburban sun. He didn’t know if he belonged here, but he suspected he belonged here more than in the world where he’d been hiding. Declan must’ve known it, too, but he hadn’t told him. His father must have known it, but he hadn’t told him, either.

Ronan had been raised in an ordinary nest and made to feel like he had no kin.

“Don’t talk to anyone about Dad,” Declan said to Ronan in a low voice. “People knew him here. As a collector, not as a dreamer. They thought he found all the stuff he sold. Don’t give them any other ideas. Don’t—”

“Do I look like I’m gonna chitchat?” Ronan asked.

Declan eyed himself in a mirror as they passed. Ronan looked at him, too. He watched his brother’s reflection square his shoulders. He watched his brother’s reflection mouth: Don’t make me regret this.

They came to the first door. Declan swiped the keycard; the door hummed.

Ronan remembered, all of a sudden, one of the first things Bryde had told him: You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.

They plunged into the arcane.

Room one: textiles. It was a typical hotel room: two queen beds, high-sheen comforters, big mirror on one wall, flat screen on the other. But it was also a bazaar, a shop stall. Rugs were draped over the beds and curled into Fibonacci spirals on the floor. Sheer scarves hung from the golden curtain rods. A tattered wall-hanging covered most of the flat screen. Two men with deeply lined skin eyed the brothers as they entered. One was eating bright yellow rice from a take-out container. The other was playing on his phone.

Ronan wasn’t sure what he expected of a mythological underground market, but it wasn’t rugs.

One of the men said, “Declan.”

Declan shook hands with him, familiarly, like bros. “Heydar.”

How many people here knew Declan?

As the two of them conversed in low murmurs, the other guy offered Ronan some kind of patterned cookie. Ronan shook his head.

“For a hot moment I thought they were talking about your father,” Heydar was saying. “Everyone’s talking about it.”

“Who?” Declan asked.

“‘Him,’ ‘him,’ all this talk about a man with incredible things, leading them on a merry chase after that thing in Ireland.”

Declan said again, “Who?”

Heydar shrugged. He looked past Declan at Ronan. “Your brother is Niall’s son for sure.”

Declan’s expression changed. From one blank expression to another, blanker one. He’d always seemed annoyed that Ronan looked so much like their father. “I want eighty-four for paintings, right?”

“Eighty-four or two-Y,” Heydar said. He was still looking at Ronan. “Makes you miss the bastard, doesn’t it?”

“I’m used to it,” Declan said. “Hey, give me a call when you’re in town next.”

In the hall, Ronan waited until the door fell closed and then demanded, “Rugs?”

“Stolen,” Declan said. “Or looted from archaeological sites.”

“Is it all going to be this boring?”

Declan said, “I hope so.”

Room two: mechanical masks. Most of the light came from a collection of candles flickering in front of the black TV. The masks each had glass eyeballs fixed into them and what looked like real animal fur attached to human facial structures. Dozens of empty eyeholes gazed at nothing. Animal skins were stretched on tenterhooks on the walls between them, shaped like agony. Zebra stripes, endangered spots, ivory white and sharkskin gray; the whole place smelled like things that had been alive recently. This room was busy; they had to shoulder in to fit among the lookers.

Declan made a beeline for a collection of frames in the corner. Ronan stayed put; he didn’t want to get any closer to the masks. It all reminded him unpleasantly of the murder crabs, which reminded him unpleasantly of Harvard. He held his breath to keep from taking in any more of the dead animal stench.

A hand gripped his upper arm.

A tall white woman with a dopamine tremor looked down at him. She seemed like she should be teaching arithmetic instead of standing in a room of masks, her hair stretched into a bun, tight as those skins on their tenterhooks, her blouse buttoned all the way up to her chin, a bow tie knotted at her throat.

“Back again?” she asked.

Ronan attempted to pull himself free, but her fingers were long enough to wrap all the way around his bicep. He could’ve forced the issue, but she was strong enough that he’d knock into the assembled people behind him if he jerked harder. “Uh, wrong number, lady. Please hang up and dial again.”

“She doesn’t make mistakes,” said another woman, turning from the masks. Ronan blinked—she looked the same as the woman holding his arm. Then he realized there were subtle differences: longer nose, more pronounced crow’s-feet, deeper eye sockets. Sisters, one older than the other. She leaned in to Ronan. “Do any of these masks look back at you? If they look back at you, they’re meant to be yours.”

“You wouldn’t have come back if they didn’t look at you,” said the first woman.

He twisted his arm again. “I didn’t come back.”