Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(47)

Parsifal’s fingers clawed a little more tightly around his takeaway cup. “The vision was not so good after that.”

“Try.”

“I saw him in a gray car. I … I saw him in a white car, too. I think the gray car is correct. A BMW. I think. I don’t know. I am more confused than I used to be. I could say before if … I could tell if …” He trailed off. His mouth made an agitated shape.

“It’s all right if it doesn’t make sense,” Farooq-Lane said. “Just talk it out. That’s why I’m here.”

“I saw a road that does this.” Parsifal did a somewhat rude-looking hand gesture. “I don’t know it in English.”

“Roundabout?”

“Sackgasse?” he suggested.

“Exit ramp?”

He drew an imaginary street on the dashboard. “Here house, here house, here house, here, here, here house, turn around here, house, house, house.”

“Cul-de-sac,” Farooq-Lane said immediately. He squinted, not understanding. She tried again. “Dead-end street.”

He brightened. “Yes, yes.”

“Near here?”

“Surely he is close if those tire tracks are still clear on the street,” Parsifal said logically. “No one has yet driven through them.”

Relieved to have something to do, Farooq-Lane rapidly opened a map app. She zoomed out until she could see the neighborhood streets around her. Worst-case scenario would be if there were no cul-de-sacs nearby. Real-world scenario would be if there were several cul-de-sacs nearby. Best-case scenario would be just one within a few-mile radius.

They were living in the best-case scenario.

Parsifal, who was leaning over her shoulder, mouth-breathing into her ear, pointed, splashing his cocoa onto her screen. She made a soft noise of annoyance. He had a gift.

“Da, there, there,” he said. “Andover. That’s the word I saw. This street is where your Zed is.”

And just like that, they had a destination.

Parsifal rolled up his window and put his cocoa cup securely in the holder behind Farooq-Lane’s.

The fortune-teller’s words came back to her.

If you want to kill someone and keep it a secret, don’t do it where the trees can see you.

Farooq-Lane shivered. She was doing this for the right reason. She was saving the world.

“This Zed,” she asked Parsifal as she put the car into gear. “In your vision, was he armed? Was he dangerous?”

I expected more complexity from you, Carmen.

She kept having dreams of Nathan being shot and Nathan being alive again, and she couldn’t decide which one was worse.

“No,” Parsifal said. “I remember that part well. He is quite helpless.”

She said, “Let’s go get him, then.”





28

Black.

It’s harder when you’re far away.

Everything was black.

Not black.

It was whatever you called the absence of light.

Ronan’s throat full of it, choking— You think it’s hard for you to hear the dreams when you’re far away from your mountains. From our ley line. From your forest. From Lindenmere. That’s not right. It’s not wrong, but it’s only half right. It’s hard for the dreams to hear you.

Even in the dream, he was dying of it.

You ever get asked to identify a song playing in a crowded restaurant? There’s noise everywhere. That shitty father lecturing his kid in the booth behind you. The waiters singing happy birthday to someone who never wanted to remember the occasion. The song’s playing out of speakers bought by the lowest bidder, an afterthought. When people shut the fuck up for a second, you can catch part of the tune here and there. If a lull coincides with the refrain, you have it. Done, shout the title, look clever.

His eyes, wet with it— Otherwise, it’s just a song you heard once but can’t place. That’s what you are to the ley line, to your forest, when you’re far away.

Ronan tried to reach for Lindenmere. He didn’t even know which way to reach in the darkness. He just knew he needed to grab something to bring back if he was to end the nightwash. But there was only blackness. The absence of dreams.

It’s trying to place you, but you’re not making it easy. It’s guessing what you want. Auto-filling, and we all know how that goes. That’s when shit starts to go wrong.

Please, Ronan thought, but he didn’t even know what he was asking.

You shouldn’t have waited so long. I’ll do what I can, but you’re a song in a crowded restaurant and it’s so hard to hear with all this shitty noise.

Ronan reached, and the darkness reached back.

Hold on, kid.





29

Ronan woke. Slowly. Stickily. His eyelashes were glued together.

He was frozen, unmoving, looking at himself from above. A gloriously incandescent bar of golden sun burned his eyes, but he couldn’t turn his head away from it. A single trail of black tapered thinly from one nostril; the rest of his skin was clear.

His body was in the backseat of the BMW. One of Matthew’s school sweatshirts was balled up under his head as a pillow. His hands were folded on his chest in a way that seemed unlike any gesture he would have chosen for them. The quality of light in the car was curious; it seemed like neither day nor night. It was dark, save for that bar of strong light. He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand how he’d gotten into the backseat. And he couldn’t understand what he’d brought back from his dream.