Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(73)

Jordan agreed. It was really fucked up.

There’s always another idea, she told herself. You have to just open your eyes, there’ll be another one. Come on, Jordan.

She climbed to her feet. She felt wobbly as a new colt, like she’d swum a mile instead of across a bathroom. Her throat was sore as if she’d been screaming instead of drowning. Her mind felt stronger standing to face Ronan, but her body resented it. “Dude, we’re grateful. But I mean it in the nicest possible way that I think you ought to tell Bryde to forget he ever knew we existed.”

“You—” Ronan broke off as a framed piece of debris caught his eye. Turning the frame over, he found the Dark Lady peering at him bitterly. She was less damaged than any of them by the events; her glossy varnish beaded water but was otherwise unharmed. “I thought I recognized that. What, as the kids say, the fuck? Why would you copy this?”

Jordan, June, and Madox all exchanged looks. Why indeed.

June’s expression said, Well? Jordan supposed they might as well give it back. There was no point sticking Declan Lynch with a copy when the original wasn’t doing them any good. No point trying to keep Declan Lynch from knowing the others had nabbed it while she was out with him. No point to any of this whole damn business now that The Dark Lady had failed.

No point to—

Jordan had an idea.

“How good of a dreamer are you?” she asked.

Ronan raised an eyebrow.

“If you are one at all. Maybe we should ask you to prove it.”

He grinned. It was a sharp, durable expression, hard-won. “I’m going to need someplace dry to lie down.”





46

By the next workday, Declan decided he was glad there hadn’t been anything beneath the backing paper of The Dark Lady. Thank God, really. It had stopped him from being stupid. He’d gotten an idea in his head and the obsession with it had carried him through several weeks of increasingly risky behavior, late-night phone calls, trips to Boston, the Fairy Market, everything escalating without him quite realizing it, all common sense tased and tied up in the backseat. Who knew how far he would’ve gone? Far enough for something to get broken, probably. Far enough to throw away everything that he’d done to this point.

He had lawless DNA, after all. Niall was a charming bastard who was always happiest darting in and out of the shadows, and Declan wasn’t stupid enough to pretend he didn’t like it, too. No, it was good that he’d opened up the back of the painting and found it had been for nothing. Good that he hadn’t gotten Jordan’s number, that he’d left the ball in her court, so he wasn’t tempted.

It was all good. It was all good.

Everything was back to the way it had been before.

“How are those printouts coming, Declan? We gotta get out of here,” called Fairlady Banks, the senator’s personal assistant, who was not as fair a lady as her name suggested.

Declan interned part time with Senator Jim Rankin, which meant, practically, that he spent several hours a week making copies in the Hart Senate Office Building, a place of windowless offices and plaques and fluorescent lights and suits and ties and staffers walking without lifting their eyes from their phones and take-out brought up from the lobby by people like Declan.

He was not making copies that morning, but only because he’d already finished them—they were fresh enough from the printer to be still sweet-smelling and warm. He was binding them into handouts, a slightly different menial task. He regarded his watch—God, there was so much more of this day left, it had only just begun—and guessed at the answer Fairlady wanted. “Ten minutes.”

“How about eight?”

When he nodded, she moved on to carry two cases of locally sourced organic beverages outside to the hand truck in the hall. The senator was visiting a group of local growers today to discuss how they felt about regulation of farmers’ markets, and it was important to show solidarity when feeding and watering them.

Declan didn’t hate his job, which was good, because he’d probably be doing some version of it for the rest of his life. There was a point before his father died when he thought he might one day have a word like Senator or Congressman in front of his name, too, but he knew now that was too much exposure for his family. Still, there were plenty of jobs in government that didn’t draw attention. Plenty of jobs that were fine. Livable. He just had to keep performing the delicate, inconspicuous dance of being just good enough to continue being hired, but not good enough to stand out.

Fairlady clicked by him again, making her path to the next case of drinks cleave close to him, not because it needed to, but to remind him that he had a job to be done in six minutes.

He kept working. When he was finished here, he’d pick up Matthew from school, and then meet Ronan for his birthday. Last year, Ronan had given himself the gift of dropping out of high school for his birthday, throwing away all of Declan’s studious efforts to drag him through to a degree. He hoped Ronan wasn’t intending on doing anything as stupid for this birthday. Declan had gotten him a membership for the zoo; what did you get for the man who could make himself anything? It would be a nice outing. A quiet afternoon. Ordinary.

Everything back the way it was before.

Declan, said Jordan Hennessy, standing in the museum like a piece of art herself, enigmatic, open to interpretation, unobtainable.