Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(35)

Farooq-Lane risked a glance around as the fortune-teller closed her eyes. The gazes had turned away from her, but she nonetheless felt watched. She wondered how upset Lock would be if she emerged from this experience with only a name: Bryde.

Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with the smells of mist, of damp, of warm blood freshly spilled. She was back in Ireland, and Nathan’s body was accepting bullets from Lock’s gun without protest. Farooq-Lane’s mind reeled, and the fortune-teller’s eyes opened again. Her pupils were enormous, her eyes all black. Her mouth was somehow arranged differently than it had been before. Her grip was tight on Farooq-Lane’s fingers.

She smiled cannily.

“Bryde …” the fortune-teller started, and the hair on the back of Farooq-Lane’s head tingled. “Beautiful lady, Bryde says if you want to kill someone and keep it a secret, don’t do it where the trees can see you.”

Farooq-Lane felt the words before she heard them.

Her lips parted in shock.

She jerked her hand out of the fortune-teller’s fingers.

The fortune-teller blinked. She looked at Farooq-Lane with her ordinary eyes, her face arranged as it had been before. Just a woman. Just a woman with silver curls, looking at Farooq-Lane as she had when she’d first stopped in front of her table.

But then the fortune-teller’s expression hardened. She said, loudly and clearly, “Who wants a piece of the law?”

Every single head nearby turned to look at Farooq-Lane.

Farooq-Lane didn’t wait.

She ran.





19

Declan hadn’t told anyone that he knew Aurora Lynch was dreamt.

It was a secret, after all, and he knew how to handle secrets. It was a lie, too, because Niall expected them to believe that she was as real as the rest of them, but Declan knew how to handle lies.

It was a little heavier to carry than Declan’s other secrets and lies.

Not heavier.

Lonelier.

Aurora didn’t fall asleep right away after Niall died. She should have. On the day of his murder, the cows fell asleep. The cat. The family of finches that nested outside the farmhouse. The coffee machine that had always felt warm must have been technically alive, because even as other dreamt contraptions continued working, it stopped. Every other dreamt creature of his was fast asleep within seconds of his death, but not Aurora.

It was a Wednesday. Declan remembered that, because for years he’d considered Wednesdays days of bad news. Maybe he still did. He wouldn’t schedule something on a Wednesday if he could help it. Magical thinking, probably, but it felt like midweek still soured things.

On Thursday, Aurora was still awake. Awake? Sleepless. She stayed awake all night, pacing, restless, like those animals sensing an impending natural disaster. Declan knew she was awake, because he was, too. On Thursday, the Lynch brothers were not yet orphans.

Friday, a dead-eyed Ronan took Matthew out for a walk in the hayfield, leaving Declan alone in the still house with the dreamt thing called Aurora Lynch. Declan was relieved. He couldn’t bear looking at Ronan right now. Something foul and dark had nested inside Ronan the moment he’d found their father’s body; it was as if it woke up as everything else fell asleep. It was the most terrifying aspect of the situation so far—proof, it felt like, that things would never be the same.

Aurora was slow by Friday. Bewildered. She kept starting in one direction and then being distracted by things that ordinarily wouldn’t have drawn her attention. Mirrors. Sinks. Glass. She shied away from metal, coming suddenly alert when she nearly touched a doorknob or a faucet, before falling dazed once more.

Declan found her fumbling in the hall closet. She was moving the same three coats back and forth and gasping a little, as if the space was airless. Her eyes were glazed, half-lidded. He watched her for several long minutes, dread icing his heart. Dread and anticipation.

By then, he felt sure he was the only one in this house who knew the truth about her. The only one who knew what was coming.

Ah, Ronan, ah, Matthew. The brothers Lynch. They didn’t think their hearts would break more.

Aurora noticed him, finally, and wafted away from the coats to him.

“Declan,” she said. “I was going to walk. I was going to find …”

He stood motionless and stiff as she hugged him, thoroughly, messily, her face pressed against his hair. He felt her swaying. He felt her heartbeat. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was swaying. Maybe it was his heart. She might not even have a heart. Dreams didn’t have rules like men did.

He was going to be alone, he thought, he was going to be alone and it was going to be just him and that new terrifying Ronan, and Matthew whose life depended on him, and somewhere out there was something that killed Lynches.

“The will is in the cedar box in our bedroom closet,” she said into his hair.

Declan closed his eyes. He whispered, “I hate him.”

“My dauntless Declan,” Aurora said, and then she slid softly to the floor.

The orphans Lynch.

Now Declan watched Ronan stare at a painting that looked very, very much like Aurora Lynch. It was called The Dark Lady, and it was the reason Declan had come to the Fairy Market.

The subject of the painting was a woman with golden hair pinned to bob around her chin and a particular, puerile way of standing, head and neck jutted forward, hands defiant on hips. She wore a diaphanous periwinkle-blue dress and had a man’s suit jacket across her shoulders, as if it had been offered against a chill. Her head was turned to stare at the viewer, but the meaning of her expression was difficult to discern because the hollows of her eyes were cast in deep, almost skull-like shadow. Every color in the painting was black or blue or brown or gray. The entire image was subtly imbued with desire in a way observers probably thought was good art but Declan understood was part of the dream object’s magic. It was signed in familiar handwriting.