The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(88)

He clenched his hand around the bomb. He felt the dream shifting, shifting — He exploded awake.

Kavinsky was already back, doing a line of coke off the dash. The light outside was dull and dead, past twilight. His neck and chin were lit like a garden feature by the dash lights below. He wiped his nose. His already keen expression sharpened when he saw Ronan’s dream object.

Ronan was paralyzed as usual, but he could see perfectly well what he’d just produced: a Molotov cocktail identical to those at the substance party — a T-shirt twisted and stuffed into a beer bottle full of gasoline. It looked just as it had in the dream.

Only now it was burning.

The flame, beautiful and voracious, had chewed well down into the glass. The gasoline was slicked up the side, reaching for demolition.

With a wild laugh, Kavinsky hit the window button with his elbow and seized the bomb. He hurled it into the dusk. The bottle only made it two yards before it exploded, shivering glass against the side of the Mitsubishi and in through the open window. The smell was terrific, an aerial battle, and the sound sucked all of the hearing out of Ronan’s ears.

Hanging his arm out the window and looking profoundly unconcerned, Kavinsky shook glass shards off his skin and into the grass. Two seconds later, and he wouldn’t have had any arms to worry about. Ronan wouldn’t have had a face.

“Hey,” Ronan said. “Don’t touch my stuff.”

Kavinsky turned his heavy-lidded eyes to Ronan, eyebrows raised. “Check it.”

He lifted his dream thing: a framed diploma. Joseph Kavinsky, graduated from Aglionby Academy with honors. Ronan hadn’t seen one to know if the creamy paper was correct, or if the wording was accurate. But he recognized the spattered signature from Aglionby correspondence. President Bell’s artistic scrawl was unmistakable.

It was badly against Ronan’s code to be impressed, much less show it, but the accuracy and detail was striking.

“You’re too emotional, Lynch,” Kavinsky said. “It’s okay. I get it. If you had balls, it’d be different.” He tapped his temple. “This is a Walmart. Just go to electronics, swipe some TVs, get out of there. Don’t wallow around in there. This would help.”

He gestured to the powder still dusting the dash. Barely there. A fine memory of powder. Ronan shook his head. He could feel Gansey’s eyes on him.

“Suit yourself.” Kavinsky retrieved another six-pack from the backseat. “Ready to go?”

And they dreamt. They dreamt and dreamt, and the stars wheeled overhead and away and the moon hid in the trees and the sun moved around the car. The car filled with impossible gadgets and stinging plants, singing stones and lacy bras. As the noon boiled down, they climbed out and stripped their sweaty shirts and dreamt in the heat instead. Things too big to be contained in a car. Again and again Ronan punched into the forest in his fraying dreams, snuck between the trees, stole something. He was beginning to understand what Kavinsky meant. The dream was a byproduct in all of this; sleep was irrelevant. The trees were just obstacles, a sort of faulty alarm system. Once he short-circuited that, he could take things from his mind without worrying about the dream itself corrupting them.

The light stretched long and thin, nearly to breaking, and then there was night with its tantalizing reflections off one hundred white cars. Ronan didn’t know if it had been days or if this was the same night as before. How long ago had he wrecked the Pig? When was his last nightmare?

Then it was a morning. He didn’t know if they’d already done a morning, or if this was a brand-new one. The grass was wet and the Mitsubishis’ hoods were beaded sweatily, but it was hard to tell if it had rained or if it was merely dew.

Ronan sat against the rear fender of one of the Mitsubishis, the smooth surface cool against his bare back, and wolfed Twizzlers. They felt as if they floated in alcohol inside him. Kavinsky was inspecting Ronan’s latest piece of work — a chain saw. After he’d satisfied himself it worked by mutilating some of the tires on the other Mitsubishis, he rejoined Ronan and accepted a single Twizzler. He was too high for food to be very interesting as anything besides a concept.

“Well?” Ronan asked.

Chainsawing had blasted little flecks of rubber across Kavinsky’s face and bare chest. He said, “Now you dream the Camaro.”





Now it seemed simple.

Pill. Beer. Dream.

A Camaro sat among the trees of the dream forest: no more difficult to imagine than any of the other dream objects Ronan had pursued. Just larger.

In Out Silently, he put his hand on the door handle. The leaves of the trees shivered above; a bird sobbed distantly.

Orphan Girl watched from the other side of the car. She shook her head. He put his finger to his lips.

Awake.

He opened his eyes on the morning sky, and there it was. A glory-red Camaro. Not perfect, but perfectly imperfect, smudged and scuffed as the Pig. Down to the scratch on the door where Gansey had backed it into an azalea bush.

The first sensation wasn’t joy but relief. He had not ruined things — he had the Pig back, he could return to Monmouth without begging. And then the joy hit. It was worse than Kavinsky’s green pills. He was hurled into the emotion. It pummeled and thrilled him. He’d been so proud of the puzzle box, of the sunglasses, the keys. How stupid he’d been then, like a kid in love with his crayon drawings.