Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(97)

No, he wasn’t. Not quite.

“Hurry,” croaked Parsifal.

Then he died.





62

Declan couldn’t believe that Ronan had left him in the lurch again. His BMW had been parked in front of the town house when Jordan dropped Declan off (no point pretending she didn’t know where he lived now), but by the time Declan got up a few hours later, it was gone. Declan texted him: You leaving me to deal with Matthew today? and Ronan answered with only Dad’s working, sweetie.

Declan could’ve put his fist through the wall.

He didn’t know what had come over him.

It felt like going out with Jordan the night before should’ve let off steam and made it easier to ease into another decade of dull hibernation, but it had had the opposite effect.

He made Matthew a weekend breakfast, sausages from the freezer, eggs, fat toast from the organic local bread the farmers’ market people had sent to the senator’s office. Matthew sat silently at the bar in the kitchen, not fidgeting, not kicking his legs, not laughing, not humming, doing absolutely nothing annoying at all. Since he’d moved in with Declan, Declan had often longed for Matthew to be quieter—less chewing with his mouth open, less prattling, fewer jokes read off websites, less dropping and knocking over of things with ooops ha ha, less thundering up and down the stairs as if he were seven instead of seventeen.

But now that he was quiet, Declan hated it.

Declan came to sit next to Matthew. “Are you angry?”

Matthew moved his food around his plate.

“Are you sad?”

Matthew lined up his sausages, then separated them with chunks of egg.

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk.”

Matthew studied his breakfast as if it might wander off if he didn’t. “This is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.”

It was an interesting way to frame it, but it wasn’t wrong. It was a thing acted upon the creature that was Matthew Lynch. Ronan had imposed existence on him. Declan had decided for him how it would be easiest to bear it, knowing full well it would be disastrous if the truth came out. Yes, they had done it to him. Yes, Declan accepted blame for it.

Declan brushed his younger brother’s curls back from his forehead. This motion was one he’d done so often—ever since Matthew was just a toddler—that sometimes he dreamt of it. His fingers had memorized the texture of his dense curls, his round forehead, the gentle warmth of him.

“Do I have a soul?” Matthew asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do I have magic powers?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Am I invincible?”

“I wouldn’t press it.”

“Are you dreamed?”

Declan shook his head. No, he was human in a family that wasn’t.

“Does this mean that if Ronan dies, I’m going to fall asleep like Dad’s cows and Mom did?”

It was a rhetorical question. There was silence for several minutes. Declan heard the neighbors talking on their phone in the next town house over. They were benevolent shouters. They wanted to cancel their premium stations, they told the phone, they just weren’t home enough to justify it. This was untrue. They were home all the time.

Declan did his best to dispense comfort. “Matthew, everybody dies. We all have to come to grips with that. We all know that it’s life-threatening for us to fall off a cliff or eat poison or step in front of a bus. You just have to also add that it’s dangerous for you if something happens to Ronan. Nothing really has to change. You just know now that Dad bought your social security number on the black market.”

“He did what?”

Declan went on, “And now we can be open with you about why you’ve never had a real school physical or anything.”

“Wait, why?”

Declan regretted saying anything. “In case you don’t have internal organs.”

Matthew made a strangled noise. He dropped his head into his hands. Declan didn’t know what was worse—being caught in the lie, or not knowing if it was even worth the lie all along. Would it have been easier for Matthew to grow up knowing he wasn’t real? That he was a piece of Ronan’s imagination, something so utterly dependent that if Ronan died, he couldn’t go on? That his existence was so subservient that when an invisible external energy source fluctuated, he began to power down like a machine without fuel? Declan had thought he was giving him the gift of reality. Of believing he was true, whole, just as worthy of love as someone who had come into this world by more ordinary means. Not a thing. Not a creature. A human.

In a very small voice, Matthew said, “I’m the fake brother.”

“What?” Declan, the true fake brother, asked.

“You two are real Lynches. You and Ronan. Real brothers. I’m just pretend. I’m just—”

This was awful.

“Matthew,” Declan interrupted. “That’s just not true.”

Matthew’s mouth was crumpled.

This was awful. Declan could feel the awfulness rising in him, combining with that desire to put his fist through the wall, combining with just plain desire for Jordan Hennessy and everything she represented, and he thought about diving deep into The Dark Lady’s turquoise ocean and disappearing and everything that meant.