Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(64)
And now it began to spool out in Declan’s mind, a future where dreamers with ambition broke the economy, changed the art world, dreamt escalating weapons. Niall and Ronan’s skill hadn’t been threatening because it had been limited both by ability and by scope—they wanted to live in the world as it was. But someone with absolute power and no checks or balances, Declan thought, someone with ambition …
“This isn’t about just keeping Matthew awake,” Adam said. “This is a bigger plan. This is a strategy.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ronan.”
“Why do you think I said we needed to talk about Bryde?”
Bryde.
“Declan,” Adam said, “the Moderators have special psychics. Visionaries, they call them. They’ve seen the future, and they think Ronan and the others are going to dream the apocalypse. That’s why they’re trying to kill him and Hennessy and Bryde. They think they’re going to end the world.”
Adam went on, his voice low. “There’s something out there. A thing that would end the world if it could, a kind of collective nightmare. I saw it the last time I scryed. A dreamer could bring it back. They wouldn’t even have to be trying to do it on purpose. You’ve seen what Ronan can do. Just one bad dream with enough ley energy to make it real, and then it’s game over. The Moderators have a point, is what I’m trying to say. Think about it. They have a point. And that’s even if there’s no bigger plan than just making the ley lines powerful again.”
For a moment they were quiet. Declan sat on the concrete bench and looked back down the street at Harvard. He thought about how, at the beginning of the semester, Ronan had come here to look for apartments, and Declan had really believed that his loud brother might possibly live a quiet life like that, for Adam’s sake.
“Has he called you?” Declan asked, knowing the answer already, not because of anything Adam had said, but because of all the things he hadn’t.
Adam just looked at him.
“Do you trust Ronan?” Declan asked. His brother was many things, he thought, but murderer he was not. Even at his worst, it was only himself he’d wanted to destroy, and that hadn’t seemed to be the Ronan he heard on the phone. Ronan’s sin was immediacy, not villainy.
Adam looked pensive. “I don’t trust Bryde.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
But Adam just flicked a remaining beetle back under the bench and turned his face into the coming sunset.
Declan understood then that Adam Parrish was allowing him not much closer than he’d let those friends in the waffle truck line. This was still just a corner of the situation. A very different corner than he would share with his Harvard buddies, but still. Need-to-know basis. No more. Actual closeness and truth had been reserved for only one person, and Declan’s relationship to that person was the only reason he was being given even this much of a look at Adam’s concerns.
“What do you want me to do about it?” Declan asked.
Adam said, “Is he taking your calls?”
Growing up, the Lynch family hadn’t talked about the dreaming.
It seemed unfathomable now, that their entire livelihood had been based upon dreams, that two-fifths of them had been dreams, that two-fifths of them had been dreamers, and yet they did not talk about it. Niall Lynch sold dreams on the black market, and Declan took calls from buyers for dreams, and yet they did not talk about it. Aurora was a dream, and Niall had always known that if something happened to him, the children would immediately become orphans of a sleeping mother, and yet they did not talk about it. Ronan accidentally dreamt a brother into being, and had to teach himself how to prevent it from happening again, and yet they did not talk about it.
Ronan had thought there was no one else like him in the world, and it had nearly killed him, and yet they didn’t talk about it.
Looking back now, Ronan tried again and again to understand it from Niall and Aurora’s point of view. Perhaps they thought the children would be less likely to betray the secret if they didn’t have words for it. Perhaps they thought Ronan might grow out of the dreaming if he didn’t pay attention to it. Perhaps they had lost trust in humans so thoroughly that they numbered their sons among the untrustworthy.
He didn’t remember the first time he’d dreamt something into being. He didn’t remember dreaming Matthew. He did remember, however, one of the only times they talked about his dreaming.
Ronan had been young. He didn’t remember if Matthew existed yet. Memories were like dreams that way—they skipped the parts that weren’t interesting to them at the time. He had been playing in the back fields at the Barns, the deep sloping pasture that now contained the pond he and Adam had dug. He was young enough that he wasn’t allowed out alone, so Aurora had been there with him, reading a book under the shade of a tree, laughing to herself every so often.
How idyllic it must have been, he thought now. Young Ronan, tumbling through the waist-high grass. Beautiful Aurora, sprawled in one of her light dresses in the grass, hair golden as Matthew’s or Bryde’s, a book in one hand, the other finding grapes out of the basket she’d brought with them. Overhead, the clouds in the summer blue had been as inviting and drowsy as an afternoon comforter.
Ronan had fallen asleep. He did not remember this; he only remembered the waking. He remembered waking in the grass and being unable to move. Not his legs asleep, but all of him, his mind looking down at his body sprawled in the grass near his beautiful, sweet mother.