Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(15)

Barbara made a sweeping gesture with her wineglass and the attendants carried the painting back to the side door.

“Mum?” said the boy again. “Oh, my shoe.”

One of the shoes had fallen from the chair. The boy reached for it just as the door closed behind the attendants. The painting was gone.

With a little sigh, the boy, too, fell from the chair to the floor beside it. The butterflies dropped from the air around him. One of the partygoers came forward long enough to lay the now-sleeping rabbit back in its initial position on the chair.

Jordan’s heart was an elevator with snapped cables.

Dreams.

The dependents were dreams without dreamers. And the sweetmetal—the painting that Jordan, a dream, had found strangely alluring—had temporarily woken them.

Just like that, Jordan realized Boudicca hadn’t invited her here because they knew Jordan Hennessy was an art forger. They’d invited her here because they knew Jordan Hennessy was a dreamer.

They’d invited her here because they knew Jordan Hennessy would have dreams she wanted to keep awake.

The rules of the game had changed.





Matthew Lynch woke to the sound of his oldest brother screaming.

His brother’s old bedroom was down the hall and Matthew’s door was shut, but the sound came in clearly anyway. These old houses were full of nooks and crannies.

Matthew climbed out of bed, saying oof oof oof as the old floorboards chilled the bottoms of his bare feet, and then promptly smashed his head against the slanted ceiling.

Declan was still caterwauling.

Matthew went down the hall to brush his teeth (the movement of the bristles over his gums and teeth made it sound like Declan’s shouts were oscillating) and got a drink of water (Declan’s voice sounded higher when Matthew was swallowing and lower when he wasn’t) and looked at himself in the mirror.

He thought the same thing he had thought every morning for the past several weeks: I don’t look like a dream, do I?

The boy in the mirror was taller than the one who had appeared in the mirror a year ago. When he opened his mouth, he had all the proper teeth. He looked all right. He could be forgiven for having thought he was just like everyone else, all this time. But looking all right and being forgiven didn’t really change the truth, which was that Matthew was not human. He was just human-shaped.

The boy in the mirror frowned.

His face didn’t look used to frowning.

Declan’s screams escalated.

Right.

Matthew shuffled down the hall to his brother’s room.

The scene was the same as it had been every morning for the past several days. There was a pile of mice. Some winged lizard things. A badger with a secretive kind of smile, but just around the eyes. A pair of deer the size of cats. A cat the size of a deer, with hands like a person. A collection of birds of varying sizes and shapes. And possibly the most impressive thing, a rough-coated black boar the size of a minivan.

All of these creatures were piled on top of Declan’s bed, which was where the screaming was coming from.

“Deklo!” Matthew said. “Mmm, cold.”

The room was chilly on account of the open window, which was the work of the hand-cat. Matthew had accidentally caught it in the act before, when he was out walking the hills in a dazed, lost, predawn walk. He’d heard a clank and a clatter and looked up to see the hand-cat swiftly climbing the gutter to the dormer that led to Declan’s room. Without any pause at all, the creature had shimmied the window open. It was both impressive and creepy to watch the hand-cat working its little nails under the edge to get it open. Opposable thumbs really were splendid things.

Declan’s voice was muffled. “Get them out.”

He was difficult to see in the bed because he’d made himself a sheet-blanket cocoon, the edges sealed against the mattress as much as possible to keep the smaller creatures from burrowing against him. They were not put off, though. The hand-cat plucked at the sheet near his face with intense devotion. The cat-sized deer were mewling and pawing (hoofing?) at the legs of the bed. The winged lizard things pounced playfully on Declan’s feet each time they moved beneath the blanket.

“Sometime this century,” Declan’s voice said. “Out.”

They were all dreams.

Since Declan and Matthew had moved out of the Barns, Ronan had apparently dreamt himself quite a menagerie. Although they seemed to have been feeding themselves perfectly adequately while Ronan was gone, they nonetheless quickly decided their morning ritual was to wake Declan for tending. Matthew wouldn’t have minded being woken, but they never came to his window. The dream creatures seemed to have somehow divined that Declan was the person least likely to enjoy them and therefore the most desirable to woo.

“Come on, guys!” Matthew said cheerily. “Let’s get some brekky! Not you!”

This was directed toward the minivan-sized boar, which was too big to fit through either door or window. It had come into the room as a noxious-smelling gas and Matthew had learned that it had to be reduced back to the same form in order to get out.

Matthew clapped and shouted in the boar’s face.

“Come on! Come on!”

Flinching, the boar backed away, but remained persistently solid. Its giant butt smashed into the dresser. Its shoulder swept books from the shelf. Declan’s laptop made an ominous crunching sound beneath its hoof. It was getting used to Matthew, which was the problem. Every day it took more and more effort to startle it.