Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(81)

“Ronan—it is Ronan, right? Lynch?” Hennessy broke into his thoughts. “Brother of Lynch, Declan, son of Lynch, Niall? Yeah, so I thought. I’m gonna give you a very solid piece of cheddar to chew. I can tell you’re looking at me and thinking you can fix this. You’re looking at me and thinking you’re a big-shot dreamer”—she wiggled the palm cross at him—“and you can make this work. You’re running those numbers of how to get it done before I die. But here’s the thing, Ronan Lynch. I’ve killed so many people. You wouldn’t believe how much blood these hands have on them. You’ve seen my girls. Their blood’s on my hands, too, when I die. I can’t change any of that. But I can stop you from being just more blood that won’t wash out. Get out of this cursed place while you can.”

“You don’t care about me,” Ronan said. “You just met me.”

Her eyes glittered.

“So you don’t care if I get dragged into something.”

Her timer went off. Automatically, she thumbed it to begin counting down again. Twenty minutes. Who could live like that? She had to be tired every minute of every day of her life. It had to feel like she was sleep walking. Nothing mattered to Ronan when he hadn’t slept, because nothing felt true.

Every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year, that had been her life.

The girls said Hennessy didn’t give a toss about anything. How could she?

“So sending me off is about you, not me,” Ronan said. “What are you afraid of? What is this dream that’s killing you?”

There was no trace of the spoiling, catty rock star the other girls had painted large in their stories. Whatever this thing was, it loomed over her, bigger than the need to impress him. She was hiding from it. He found that cowardice far more acceptable than the lying. Some things took time to look in the eye.

“If I haven’t told them for a decade,” Hennessy said, “I’m not sodding telling you.”





51

Because Ronan wouldn’t pick up his phone, because nothing had changed, because it was always Declan being responsible at the end of the day, Declan went to Great Falls himself.

It was a wide-awake day, too bright and too warm for a Virginia November, the cloudless sky a sick, hazed blue. Declan had to wind around strolling locals and foreign tourists as he made the familiar walk along the canal. His pockets were ten dollars lighter from the parking fee; how much money had he spent coming to this place on Matthew’s behalf? Tourists glanced at him as he walked, and he knew he was conspicuous in his suit. It made him invisible downtown, but not here.

Matthew wasn’t at the first viewing area, nor the second, nor the third. There were only old folks with their dogs and chattering tourists asking Declan to take a photo for them.

The canal walk was ever so long when one was looking for a brother who had to be caught somewhere along its length. On past visits, Declan had walked for nearly an hour before finding Matthew. He didn’t have that kind of time today. His work might have been torpedoed, but he still had a chance of making his adviser meeting, and, after that, his volunteer hours at the gallery.

“Can you make a photo?” a lady asked Declan in accented English. “Of us?”

“I can’t,” Declan said. “I’m looking for my brother.”

She became solicitous. “Do you have a photo?”

He did.

“Good-looking boy,” said the woman’s companion.

“I saw him,” said the other woman. “Number one deck. Number one. He was looking at the falls so nice. Now can you make a photo?”

He did. He returned to the first observation deck. Matthew still wasn’t there; no one was. Declan leaned on the railing long enough to text his adviser that he had to reschedule again. Rescheduling again wasn’t good; it was not invisible. The falls roared. Dry leaves rattled. Voices lifted from the trail. He ate three antacids. He gave himself a little pep talk. So he was failing as a student and as an intern, he thought, but at least he had shepherded Ronan to another birthday alive. And in a month he would have managed to get Matthew to eighteen, all the Lynch brothers surviving to adulthood. Surely that was worth something.

Leaning on the edge of the observation deck, a dark assemblage in the nearby trees caught Declan’s eye. He studied it for a long minute, trying to decide if it was a collection of dried leaves or something else, and then he climbed into the woods to get a closer look, the underbrush snarling at his suit pants.

It was Ronan’s damn bird.

Chainsaw, the raven. It could have been another raven, of course, but what were the odds that another raven would be here where Ronan’s other dream came to stare at the water? With a glance behind him to make sure he wasn’t being observed by any tourists, he stepped closer, using trees to keep his footing; the ground sloped precipitously down to the river.

“Bird,” he hissed. No response. “Chainsaw.”

Now Declan saw something else on the branches around her: several trembling blue moths, a handful of jet-black hornets, two mice, an improbably colored skunk, and one of those damned double-sided murder crabs that he’d had to haul out of Adam Parrish’s dorm.

A confluence of Ronan’s dreams at the riverside.

Declan narrowed his eyes. He tilted his head back to look at the other dreams. It was impossible to tell if the hornets or the moths or the murder crab were distressed, but the mice and the skunk looked as out of sorts as Chainsaw.