The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(44)

A high-pitched whine filled the kitchen; Blue had discovered that when the seat was rotated on one of the high stools, it emitted a wail that sounded a little like “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” played several times faster than it had ever been meant to be played. She gave it a few spins to see if it made it all the way through the tune. It didn’t. The product of another frustration dream.

“Goddamn it,” said Gansey, dropping a knife onto the counter. He shook his hand out. “It’s red-hot.” Only it wasn’t. The blade was ordinary stainless steel, its heat only evident by the faint scent of the counter finish melting beneath it. He tapped the handle a few times to verify that it was the entire knife that was hot, not just the blade, and then used a dish towel to replace it in the knife block.

Ronan had stopped searching in earnest and was merely opening and slamming drawers for the pleasure of hearing them crash. He wasn’t sure what was worse: leaving or the anticipation of leaving.

“Well, this isn’t frustrating at all,” Adam remarked, demonstrating a tape measure he’d found. The tape tugged out to two feet, six inches, and no more. “I would’ve thrown this out the morning after.”

“Perfect for measuring bread boxes,” Gansey observed. “Maybe it has nostalgic value.”

“How about this?” Blue, out in the hall, touched the petal of a perfect blue lily. It was one of a dozen gathered into a bouquet on the hall table. Ronan had never given much thought to the flowers, but when he did, he’d always assumed they were fake, as the vase they were displayed in had never contained water. The white and blue lilies were oversized and spidery with frothy golden stamen, blossoms like nothing he’d seen elsewhere. He should’ve known, in retrospect. Adam pinched off a bud and turned the moist end of the stem to the other two boys. “They’re alive.”

This was the sort of thing that Gansey couldn’t resist, and so Adam and Ronan moved farther down the hall toward the dining room while Gansey lingered over the flowers. When Ronan glanced over his shoulder, Gansey stood with one of the blossoms cupped in his hand. There was something humble and awed in the way he stood, something grateful and wistful in his face as he gazed at the flower. It was a strangely deferential expression.

Somehow this made Ronan even angrier. He turned quickly away before Gansey could catch his eye. In the pale gray dining room, Adam was taking a wooden mask from a hook on the wall.

It was carved of a smooth, dark wood and looked like a cheap tourist souvenir. The eyeholes were round and surprised, the mouth parted in an easy smile big enough for lots of teeth.

Ronan hurled himself through the air.

“No.”

The mask clattered to the floor. Adam, startled, stared at where Ronan’s hand gripped his wrist. Ronan could feel his own heart pounding and, in Adam’s wrist, Adam’s.

At once, he released him and fell back. He snatched up the mask instead. He hung it back on the wall, but his pulse didn’t calm. He didn’t look at Adam.

“Don’t,” he said. But he didn’t know what he was telling Adam not to do. It was possible that his father’s version of the mask was entirely harmless. It was possible that it only became deadly in Ronan’s head.

Suddenly, he couldn’t stand it, any of it, his father’s dreams, his childhood home, his own skin.

He punched the wall. His knuckles bit plaster, and the plaster bit back. He felt the moment his skin split. He’d left a faint impression of his anger in the wall, but it hadn’t cracked.

“Oh, come on, Lynch,” Adam said. “Are you trying to break your hand?”

“What was that?” Gansey called from the other room.

Ronan had no idea what it was, but he did it again. And then he kicked one of the dining room chairs. He hurled a tall basket full of recorders and pennywhistles against the wall. Tore a handful of small frames from their hangers. He’d been angry before, but now he was nothing. Just knuckles and sparks of pain.

Abruptly, his arm stopped in midflight.

Gansey’s grip was tight on it, and his expression, two inches away from Ronan’s, was unamused. His countenance was at once young and old. More old than young.

“Ronan Lynch,” he said. It was the voice Ronan couldn’t not listen to. It was sure in every way that Ronan was not. “Stop this right now. Go see your mother. And then we’re leaving.”

Gansey held Ronan’s arm a second longer to make sure he hadn’t mistaken his meaning, and then he dropped it and turned to Adam. “Were you just going to stand there?”

“Yeah,” replied Adam.

“Decent of you,” Gansey said.

There was no heat in Adam’s reply. “I can’t kill his demons.”

Blue said nothing at all, but she waited at the doorway until Ronan joined her. And then, as the other two began to tidy the dining room, she accompanied Ronan into the sitting room.

It was not really a sitting room; no one needed a sitting room anymore. Instead it had become a repository for everything that didn’t seem to belong anywhere else. Three mismatched leather chairs faced one another on the uneven wood floor — that was the sitting part. Tall, thin crockery held umbrellas and dull swords. Rubber boots and pogo sticks lined the walls. Rugs made tight upholstery scrolls in a corner; one of them was marked with a sticky note that said not this one in Niall’s handwriting. A strange iron chandelier, reminiscent of planetary orbits, hung in the center of the room. Niall had probably dreamt it. Certainly the other two chandeliers that hung in the corners, half light fixture, half potted plants, were dream things. Probably everything here was. Only now that Ronan had been away from home could he see how full of dreams it was.