Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(76)

And it broke Jordan’s brain.

It wasn’t that he woke, and things appeared suddenly beside him. It wasn’t that they faded into existence. It wasn’t anything that easy. It was more that he woke, and something about the time around him changed, something about the way everyone experienced the time around him. Because Jordan knew—she knew, she knew logically and academically and completely—that Ronan had been sprawled empty-handed on that couch, but now he held a large parcel, and her brain was trying its best to convince her that he had always been holding this new thing. Somehow reality had been edited to allow for the presence of something that hadn’t been there before, without allowing her the revelation of seeing it come into being.

Trinity breathed, “Aw, pants,” which seemed as good a response as any.

He had sand on his knees. Had he had sand on his knees before? Part of Jordan’s mind said, Yes, it’s always been like this, and part of it said, No, remember, he was soaking wet with the rest of you in the hallway.

Magic.

Jordan had always thought of Hennessy’s dreaming as a terminal diagnosis, but now she realized that it could be magic.

“How long will he be like that, do you think?” Trinity asked, leaning close over him.

Ronan was paralyzed, just like Hennessy always was after a dream, so at least that part was universal. Madox waved a hand back and forth in front of his face.

“Don’t be a shitbag,” Jordan said.

“Crikey,” June said. “Jordan, is that what’s supposed to happen? Is that what it’s supposed to be like for her? Look.” She pressed a finger into Ronan’s hand, showing how his skin sprang back, ordinary and healthy.

Jordan didn’t have an answer. They only had two data points, which was not enough for even the shoddiest of theses.

“Maybe he could teach her,” Trinity said.

“Because if there’s a thing Hennessy’s good at, it’s taking instruction,” Madox scoffed.

Jordan said, “Maybe he could dream something just for her. Not like The Dark Lady. Something that does the job.”

June started to carefully lift the parcel off his chest, and then, unexpectedly, Ronan smacked the back of her palm.

“Fuck you very much,” he said, and stretched.

All the girls laughed at him, with both surprise and something else, something less definable. Jordan could tell they were excited. Optimistic. Today, they looked like her, rather than Hennessy.

Jordan was more grateful to Ronan for this than for opening the door on the flooded bathroom. Hope was a thing that died easily in this house these days.

“Welcome back,” she said. “What’d you bring for us today? Do I get a prize if I guess?”

Ronan hefted the wrapped parcel to Jordan to open, careful not to spill June’s juice on it as he did. Glancing at him—she definitely already had a guess—she peeled down the brown paper.

Inside was a painting in a very familiar gilt-edged frame.

It was a woman in a periwinkle blue dress, hands defiantly on her hips, a man’s jacket thrown across her shoulders. She peered at the viewer defiantly.

Like Jordan’s tattooed Mona Lisa, this painting was nearly a perfect likeness of the original. It was The Dark Lady, the painting that had taken them hours upon hours upon hours to copy for the Fairy Market, but with Hennessy’s face and throat and knuckle tattoos.

A perfect and cunning forgery, as good as theirs. No. Better. Because it oozed with the same magnetic, otherworldly desire that the original had and that their copy had missed. This was not a real-world copy of a dream. This was a dream of a dream. Perfect. Beyond perfect.

And he’d done it in half an hour.

Jordan knew the other girls were thinking the same thing, because Trinity said, “That took Jordan forever.”

Ronan shrugged.

“You could do anything we do here in a night,” June said.

Ronan shrugged.

“What do you even do all day?” Brooklyn asked.

He grinned at her. The arrogance of him. The swaggering arrogance. And why not? What could it possibly be like living like that? He could do anything.

Including, perhaps, saving their lives.

There are some days, Dalí had said, when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

Jordan said, “We need to tell you a story.”





49

Parsifal Bauer had reached peak Parsifalness.

He did not like the apples they had for breakfast. They tasted like nothing, he said. Sandy? she asked. No, he replied. Even sand had a flavor. Did he want her to send for more? No, he said, he had lost his appetite. He did not want to read BMW vehicle registrations on Farooq-Lane’s laptop anymore. The screen was making his eyes tired. Couldn’t he have it in another format? His clothing irritated him. He thought it was the detergent the hotel used when she’d had them do their laundry. He needed it to be washed again, with detergent sourced from elsewhere. Something without dyes, possibly. No, he could not go out with her to pick out new detergent. He was held prisoner in a bathrobe, all other clothing dirty or marred by the hotel’s washing.

“This Spring Fresh detergent can be delivered in an hour,” Farooq-Lane suggested, tapping through her phone. Guilelessly.

“The fragrance is not the issue,” Parsifal replied tersely. “Just without dyes.”