The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(80)

A few yards in, Kavinsky stopped. He looked at Ronan. “I know what you are.”

It was like after the crash. After waking from a dream. Ronan was frozen in the sea, staring back at him.

The Mitsubishi charged forward, and the road gave way to a limitless clearing. In the headlights, Ronan saw another white car parked up ahead. As they pulled closer, the lights illuminated a huge spoiler on the trunk, and then revealed a portion of a knife graphic on the side. It was another Mitsubishi. For a moment, Ronan thought that it might be the old one, somehow, its damage miraculously hidden by the poor light. But then the headlights swung to another car parked beside it. This second car was also white with a large spoiler. Another Mitsubishi. A knife graphic peeked around the shadowed side.

Kavinsky pulled forward another few feet. It brought a third car into focus. A white Mitsubishi. They kept creeping forward, field grass rustling against the low bumper. Another Mitsubishi. Another. Another.

“Goldfish,” Kavinsky said.

It wouldn’t be the same.

But these were the same. Dozens upon dozens — now Ronan saw that the Mitsubishis were parked at least two deep — of identical cars. Only they were not quite identical. The longer Ronan looked, the more differences he saw. A bigger wing here. A splattered dragon graphic there. Some had strange headlights that spread across their entire fronts. Some had no lights at all, just blank sheet metal where they should’ve been. Some were slightly taller, some were slightly longer. Some of the cars had only two doors. Some had none.

Kavinsky got to the end of the first uneven row and turned to the next. There had to be more than one hundred of them.

It wasn’t possible.

Ronan’s hands fisted. He said, “I guess I’m not the only one with recurring dreams.”

Because of course these were from Kavinsky’s head. Like the fake licenses, like the leather bands he’d given Ronan, like the incredible substances his friends would travel hours for, like every impossible firework he sent up each year on the Fourth, like every forgery he was known for in Henrietta.

He was a Greywaren.

Kavinsky hauled up the parking brake. They were a white Mitsubishi in a world of white Mitsubishis. Every thought in Ronan’s head was a shard of light, gone before he could hold it.

“I told you, man,” Kavinsky said. “Simple solution.”

Ronan’s voice was low. “Cars. An entire car.”

He hadn’t even imagined it was possible. He had never even thought to try for more than the Camaro’s keys. He’d never thought there was anyone outside of himself and his father.

“No — world,” Kavinsky said. “An entire world.”





After the party had dwindled to nothing, Gansey crept down the back staircase, avoiding his family. He didn’t know where Adam was — he was supposed to stay in Gansey’s old room as guests of his mother occupied all of the other spare bedrooms — and he didn’t go looking for him. Gansey was meant to sleep on the couch, but there would be no sleep for him tonight. So he quietly went outside to the back garden.

With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the concrete fountain. The nuances and wonders of the English garden were many, but most of them were lost after dark. The air was thick with the scent of boxwood, gardenias, and Chinese food. The only flowers he could see were white and drowsy.

His soul felt raw and battered inside him.

What he needed was to sleep, so this day would be over and he could start a new one. What he needed was to be able to turn off his memories, so that he could stop replaying the fight with Adam.

He hates me.

What he wanted was to be home, and home wasn’t here.

He was stretched too thin to consider what was wise or what was not. He called Blue.

“Hello?”

He pressed his eyes closed. Just the sound of her voice, the Henrietta lull to it, made him feel uneven and shattered.

“Hello?” she echoed.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Oh, Gansey! No, you didn’t. I had Nino’s tonight. Is your thing done with?”

Gansey lay down, his cheek against the still sun-hot concrete of the fountain bench, and looked out of the midnight garden at the sodium-vapor paradise that was Washington, D.C. He held his phone to his other ear. His homesickness devoured him. “For now.”

“Sorry for the noise,” Blue said. “It’s a zoo here, like always. And I’m just getting some — uh — yogurt and I’m — there we go. So what do you need?”

He took a deep breath.

What do I need?

He saw Adam’s face again. He replayed his own answers. He didn’t know which of them was wrong.

“Do you think …” he began, “you could tell me what is happening at your house right now?”

“What? Like, what Mom’s doing?”

A large insect buzzed by his ear, coming in like a passenger jet. It kept going, though the flyby was close enough to tickle his skin. “Or Persephone. Or Calla. Or anyone. Just describe it to me.”

“Oh,” she said. Her voice had changed a little. He heard a chair scraping on her side of the phone. “Well, okay.”

And she did. Sometimes she spoke with her mouth full, and sometimes she had to pause to answer someone else, but she took her time with the story and gave each of the women in the house full measure. Gansey blinked, slower. The take-out dinner smell had gone away and all that remained was the heavy, pleasant smell of growing things. That, and Blue’s voice on the other end of the phone.