Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(93)

Sad violins, said Ronan’s silence.

I don’t need your pity, said Hennessy’s.

“Good morning, kids.” The server had appeared and, without prompting, began disseminating coffee from an old metal carafe into the mugs already assembled on napkins before them. She was an older woman, plump and bright-eyed. Her name tag read “Wendy,” as if it might be an alias, her true identity hidden from the regular clientele of the Shenandoah Café. She leaned close to get their orders, confidentially, as if they were secret debriefings, then tapped her pencil against her pad and left.

Ronan waited.

Hennessy sighed and slid down into her side of the booth with her mug of coffee. She wished she could have a cigarette. She wanted something more to do with her hands. “Okay then, what do you want to know? I’ve had the same dream since my mum died. Every time I close my eyes long enough to dream, it begins, always the same. Always the shit, always awful.”

“What’s the dream?”

“I read,” Hennessy said, “that the most common recurring dream in America is falling. I would’ve guessed test-taking. I hear that one’s common for perfectionists.”

“What’s the dream?”

“Supposedly, lovers can share the same dream if their heads are in close proximity,” Hennessy added, a little desperately, holding her fingers up to demonstrate. “Not very peer-reviewed, though. At least the blog post I read said it wasn’t.”

“What’s the dream?”

Wendy slid their food in front of them. She leaned in close, conspiratorially, and asked if she could get them any condiments. Ronan looked at her with his heavy silence. It said, Get the fuck out of here we’re having a private conversation.

She patted his hand. “You remind me of my boy,” she said fondly, and withdrew.

Ronan turned that silence on Hennessy, leveling it over the top of a waffle that Wendy had sprayed a whipped-cream smiley face on.

Hennessy looked down at her plate, which had four triangles of French toast, all pointing in the same direction, toward the door. She swallowed.

“It’s,” she said.

She tried to not even think about it while she was awake. It felt contagious. This was the closest she had gotten in a decade and it felt bad. Incredibly bad.

She didn’t say anything else. She couldn’t do it. She’d just have to let down Jordan and the other girls. Jordan didn’t know what it was like.

Ronan turned his arms over so that his hands lay palm up on the table between them and for a moment, she thought he was making an elaborate gesture for come on. But instead he said, “Those are from nightmares.”

She had to lean to look. Crazed white scars traveled up his forearms, carved by a sizeable weapon.

“Night horrors,” he said. “Claws like this.” He formed his fingers into talons, and then mimed them ripping him open, fingers skipping over the top of the leather bracelets that hid the worst of it and right up to his elbow. “Two days in the hospital.”

He didn’t add anything sentimental like We’ll beat this thing or I’ve been there, you can trust me. He just withdrew his arms and smashed the whipped-cream smile on his waffles with the back of his fork. He said, “They all thought it was something easy as razor blades. And they couldn’t fucking understand even that.”

Ronan was not Jordan. Not a dream. He knew what it was like.

“The Lace,” whispered Hennessy.

She could feel her ears ringing. Little sparks danced around the corners of her vision. She had to put down her coffee cup because her fingers couldn’t hold it; they were weak and tingling. She was so afraid she thought she would pass out. She needed her timer—

Snap.

Ronan had snapped his fingers in front of her face. She focused acutely on his fingers, right in front of her.

“You’re awake,” he said. When she didn’t say anything else, he handed her one of the overturned coffee cups and added, “Breathe into that.”

While she breathed into the cold mug, he cut his waffle into four enormous bites and ate two of them.

“It’s just me,” Hennessy said. Her voice was very quiet. He had to lean on his elbows to hear her. “And it.”

In her mind, it was unfolding, clear as the dream. Hennessy, small, insubstantial, fragile, every skill and power and cleverness she had ridiculous and human. It, however, was huge in ways her human mind couldn’t fully understand. It was dark, but again, dark was an incomplete description of it. Shape and color were three-dimensional concepts and it was something beyond that. Where it was closest to her it looked like geometric slants and cutouts, through which she could see light behind it. Or perhaps included in it. It looked like a hectic, looming lace.

“It sees me,” Hennessy said, in an even quieter voice. Her hands were shaking. God, it could see her now, she was sure of it, because she’d said it out loud, and that was enough to bring it into the waking world. “The dream begins, and it’s there, and then it sees me—”

Her shoulders were quivering now, too. She could feel tears smarting in her eyes, but she couldn’t quite convince them to go away.

Ronan was watching her closely, pensively.

“What does it look like?” he asked.

“The Lace,” Hennessy whispered. “Like lace. It’s huge. I can’t explain it. It’s something …”