Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(66)

He felt strangely bereft as the seconds ticked by. It was not what she had asked for but what she hadn’t asked for. It wasn’t that she reminded him of his wife; it was that she hadn’t. It wasn’t that she had made him forget about the frustration of the day; it was that she had made him feel it even more acutely.

Suddenly, he threw back the bolt, pushed open the door, and rushed a few steps down the walk.

“Hey,” he shouted. “Hey!”

She had made it several yards already. She stopped on the sidewalk.

“I’ll drive you,” he said. “To a shelter. To get some food.”

She smiled very sweetly and very sadly, then shook her head, her feet already starting to take her away. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She turned and walked away, and both of them began to cry.





41

As night fell, Ronan walked Adam to the end of the driveway, Chainsaw hunched on his shoulder, the dreamt sun tucked into the hood of his sweater to cast some light around their feet. His three hours were up, and now the carriage was to turn back into a pumpkin, the horses back into mice. Adam was trying to ride the dreamt motorcycle at the same pace as Ronan’s fast walk, turning the handles this way and that to maintain a wobbly straight line, making the headlight shake its head uncertainly no. It seemed at any moment he would dump it, but he hadn’t yet. Ronan didn’t know where Adam had learned to ride in the first place. Possibly the mechanic he’d worked for during high school had taught him. Maybe someone at his warehouse job. Adam picked up skills like other people picked up clothing or groceries. He was always in the market.

Now his shadowed face was lost in concentration. One hand rested lightly over the clutch lever and the other over the brake; the one over the brake was wrapped neatly with gauze, the only physical evidence of the scrying session. It was hard to tell what lingered mentally. Ronan knew that scream and the dread that came with it were going to live with him for a long time.

There was something out there so awful that Adam couldn’t bear to have it look at him.

But whatever had made him scream was afraid of Bryde.

Ronan’s mind turned this over and over and over.

Just before the end of the driveway, Adam tried to stop the bike and dumped it instead, the front wheel buckling suddenly to the left and depositing the bike on top of him. He made a soft, ordinary sound of pain and frustration, and Chainsaw flapped off, looking betrayed. The two of them heaved it back up.

“I always forget …” Adam said, but didn’t say what he always forgot.

Ronan threw his leg over the bike instead, holding the wheel straight, taking care not to make the same mistake Adam had. Sitting on it felt good, physical, tangible. “Next time you can teach me how to do this the real way, Parrish.”

“Return the favor,” Adam said, and after a moment, Ronan realized he was talking about the time long ago when Ronan had taught him to drive stick shift. “You don’t have to do this for me.”

Ronan peered into the darkness, where the dreamy security system hung invisibly over the end of the driveway. “I go in and out of it every day. I’m used to it.”

Adam made a dubious sound. But he didn’t reject the gift.

“Take the sun thing.” Ronan waited until Adam had reached into his hood to retrieve the sun. “That tree over there, the oak with that low branch? Walk around the outside of that one to the road and you’ll be clear of it. I’ll meet you out there.”

It struck Ronan then that he didn’t want Adam to go. For many reasons: beginning with the bad feeling of that scream, proceeding through the way his body would miss Adam’s when he curled in his bed, and finishing with the knowledge that something big and unknown lurked out there, unseeable to his dreamer’s eyes, seeable to Adam’s uncanny ones. It seemed incorrect that Adam visiting would have made his loneliness worse, but he missed him acutely even as he was looking at him.

Ronan had not said anything out loud, but Adam said, “I can’t miss class in the morning.” There was some comfort to seeing that he was stalling as much as Ronan, fidgeting beside the bike, touching a scuff on the tank from his ride down and then a scuff on Ronan’s wrist from the murder crabs, turning his head sharply when a night bird came into range of his hearing ear, adjusting the zipper of his jacket. “Say something in Latin.”

Ronan thought. “Inuisus natalis adest, qui rure molesto et sine Adam tristis agendus erit.”

Some ancient poetry bitching about spending one’s birthday without a loved one felt apt.

Adam thought it through and then laughed. “Propertius? No. Sulpicia?”

“Sulpicia. Are you sure I can’t drive you?” Eight hours back to Harvard, through the night, on a bike. Ronan was still tired from the nightwash and too many nights of checkered sleep, but he’d stay awake if he was with Adam.

“Matthew wants you for your birthday, and you can’t let him down. I’m awake. I promise. I’m very awake. I have a lot to think about.”

They both did.

Letting out a breath, Ronan began to walk the bike toward the dreadful security system. Adam patted the tank twice as a good luck and headed off to pick through the woods.

Ronan steeled himself as he would steel himself for dreaming. He reminded himself of where his physical body was in the present. He reminded himself that what was about to happen to him was in the past.