Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(57)

Declan paused as if he was thinking, but Jordan could tell that he was also pausing for the oratorial effect, allowing her to digest the words he’d just given her before he offered her more; this was a man who had been fed stories at some point and remembered how it was done.

Then he concluded: “Once he got out of jail, he moved his entire family to Venice, bought the Palazzo Barbaro, and literally did nothing but live and breathe art for the rest of his life.”

He cut his eyes over to her. He was a good storyteller. It was obvious he liked the sound and play of words released into the air.

She sensed he’d given her as much as she’d given him. She wanted to ask him when he was going to punch a judge, but a question like that was basically begging intimacy, and she’d already gotten in too deep for a disposable date. “Art and violence. Is that story true?”

“I’m not as uninformed as you think.”

“I don’t think you’re uninformed,” Jordan said. “I think you’re all safe and sorted. Why don’t you dress the rest of you like your feet?”

“Why do you only paint what other people have already painted?”

Touché, touché.

Jordan’s phone buzzed. It was Hennessy. Deed’s done Trinity will come get you.

“I …” she said, but she didn’t know how to finish it.

He smoothly anticipated the cue. “I have to go to class anyway.”

It was impossible to imagine him in class. In class for what. Probably business school. Whatever the most boring option was. She was beginning to understand his game; it was the same game as hers, played in the exact opposite way.

Declan’s fingers found his jacket lapel and assessed it for blemish. A firm pinch reestablished the sharp edge. “Do you want to see me again?”

They regarded each other. It was now impossible to not see the lines of the Dark Lady in his face: his nose, his mouth, her nose, her mouth, those shared blue eyes.

As one-sixth of a person—one-sixth of a person who was currently robbing this guy—Jordan knew now what the real answer was.

But she answered as she would’ve if her life was her own.

“Yes,” Jordan said.





35

Farooq-Lane’s morning began with dead ends but finished with fresh leads.

It began quite typically. When she’d told Parsifal they needed to go out and drive until they found some clues, he’d disappeared into the hotel room bathroom and turned on the water. He’d stayed in there so long that Farooq-Lane had finished her coffee and then given in to her curiosity. Guiltily, quietly, she had typed his name into a search engine to find out what had happened to his family. Killed them all, Parsifal had said, and she’d guessed at the generalities. She, like every other Moderator, had been given the same crash course in Visionaries: Visionaries saw the future in dreamlike spurts. Visionaries’ visions always had either a Zed or an unschooled Visionary in them. Undirected Visionaries were deadly when they had their episodes, so approach them with as much care as a Zed. Possibly more: They would kill you whether or not they wanted to if you were around when they had a vision. A new Visionary should be advised that the visions didn’t have to be deadly to other people if the Visionaries turned them inward, they’d been told. They’ll know what this means. Don’t tell them it will kill them instead. They’ll figure it out eventually.

Twenty-two Killed in Germany; Teen Survivor Under Investigation

In the bathroom, Parsifal let out a little yelp, and then there was a crash.

“Parsifal? You all right in there?” Farooq-Lane slapped her laptop closed.

When he emerged, fully dressed, he nonetheless looked naked and unlike himself. His broken glasses were cradled in the bony cage of his hand.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m nearly out of toothpaste,” he replied.

Later, as he sat rigidly in the waiting area of a same-day eyeglasses shop in a mall, squinting into nothing, he asked her, “What kind of places have many teapots?”

Farooq-Lane looked up from the home and garden magazine she’d been reading. She used to really enjoy those sorts of magazines when she lived in a home and had a garden. “Kitchen stores. Collectors. Novelty shops. What kind of teapots?”

“Colorful.” He frowned. He didn’t look real, sitting straight up among the banks of frames in the shop. He looked like a very convincing mannequin waiting to model the latest styles. “Ugly.”

“Is this about a Zed?”

“Try these on, sweetie.” The optometric technician had returned with Parsifal’s glasses. He endured her hooking them onto his ears. Everything about his body language silently raged against the contact of her fingers against the side of his head. “How are those for you? You like them?”

Farooq-Lane could tell from Parsifal’s face that he did not, he very much did not, but he shot a quick glance at Farooq-Lane and said, “Thank you very much.”

Parsifal Bauer had just been polite to another human being because of her.

Miracles never ceased.

“Let’s just give them a little fine-tune,” the technician said. “You like them now, just wait till we adjust how they sit!”

Parsifal’s mouth worked. He had come to the end of his politeness. He cut his eyes over to Farooq-Lane again.