The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(103)

And when he opened his eyes again, the old trees roamed upward all around him. The sky was black and star-full overhead. Everything smelled of hickory smoke and boxwood, grass seed and lemon cleaner.

And there was his father, sitting in the charcoal BMW he had dreamt all those years ago. He was an image of Ronan, and also of Declan, and also of Matthew. A handsome devil with one eye the color of a promise and the other the color of a secret. When he saw Ronan, he rolled down the window.

“Ronan,” he said.

It sounded like he meant to say Finally.

“Dad,” Ronan said.

He was going to say I missed you. But he had been missing Niall Lynch for as long as he knew him.

A grin cracked over his father’s face. He had the widest smile in the world, and he’d given it to his youngest son. “You figured it out,” he said. He held a finger to his lips. “Remember?”

Music wafted out the open window of the BMW that had been Niall Lynch’s but was now Ronan’s. A soaring bit of tune played by the uilleann pipes, dissipating into the trees.

“I know,” Ronan replied. “Tell me what you meant in the will.”

His father said, “T’Libre vero-e ber nivo libre n’acrea.”

This Will stands as fact unless a newer document is created.

“It’s a loophole,” his father said. “A loophole for thieves.”

“Is that a lie?” Ronan asked.

Because Niall Lynch was the biggest liar of them all, and he’d stuffed all of that into his eldest son. There was not much difference between a lie and a secret.

“I never lie to you.”

His father started the BMW and flashed his slow smile at Ronan. What a grin he had, what ferocious eyes, what a creature he was. He had dreamt himself an entire life and death.

Ronan said, “I want to go back.”

“Then take it,” said his father. “You know how now.”

And Ronan did. Because Niall Lynch was a forest fire, a rising sea, a car crash, a closing curtain, a blistering symphony, a catalyst with planets inside him.

And he had given all of that to his middle son.

Niall Lynch reached his hand out. He clasped Ronan’s in his own. The engine was revving; even while holding Ronan’s hand, his foot was already on the gas pedal, on the way to the next place.

“Ronan,” he said.

And it sounded like he meant to say Wake up



After the house had gone quiet, Blue got into bed and pulled the blanket over her face. Sleep was nowhere. Her mind was full of Adam’s dull expression, Ronan’s invented Camaro, and Gansey’s breath on her cheek.

Her mind took the memory of mint and spun it into a related memory of him, one that Gansey didn’t have yet: the first time she had ever seen him. Not at Nino’s when he asked her out on Adam’s behalf. But that night in the churchyard when all of the spirits of the future dead walked past. One year — that was the longest that any of those spirits had. They would all be dead before the next St. Mark’s Eve.

She had seen her first spirit: a boy in an Aglionby sweater, the shoulders of it spattered darkly with rain.

“What’s your name?”

“Gansey.”

She couldn’t make it untrue.

Downstairs, Calla’s voice suddenly swelled angrily. “Well, I will break the damn thing myself if I find you using it again.”

“Tyrant!” Maura shot back.

Persephone’s voice murmured amiably, too low for eavesdropping.

Blue closed her eyes, tight. She saw Gansey’s spirit. One hand braced in the dirt. She felt his breath. His hands pressed into her back.

Sleep didn’t come.

A few amorphous minutes later, Maura knocked the pads of her fingers on Blue’s open door. “Sleeping?”

“Always,” Blue replied.

Her mother climbed into Blue’s narrow bed. She jerked at the pillow until Blue allowed her a few inches of it. Then she lay down behind Blue, mother and daughter like spoons in a drawer. Blue closed her eyes again, inhaling the soft clove scent of her mother and the fading mint of Gansey.

After a moment, Maura asked, “Are you crying?”

“Only a little.”

“Why?”

“Generalized sadness.”

“Are you sad? Did something bad happen?”

“Not yet.”

“Ah, Blue.” Her mother wrapped her arms around her and breathed into the hair at the base of Blue’s neck. Blue thought about what Gansey had said, about being wealthy in love. And she thought about Adam, still collapsed on their sofa downstairs. If he had no one to wrap their arms around him when he was sad, could he be forgiven for letting his anger lead him?

Blue asked, “Are you crying?”

“Only a little,” her mother said, and inhaled snottily and unbecomingly.

“Why?”

“Generalized sadness.”

“Are you sad? Did something bad happen?”

“Not yet. A long time ago.”

“Those are the opposite,” Blue said.

Maura sniffed again. “Not really.”

Blue wiped her eyes with her pillowcase. “Tears don’t become us.”

Her mother wiped her eyes on the shoulder of Blue’s T-shirt. “You’re right. What becomes us?”