Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(79)

Jordan was out of the car immediately, hands linked round the back of her neck, surveying the damage. Hennessy could tell she was horrified, and for some reason, this was great, this was perfect, this was just what Hennessy wanted. This felt much better than Jordan’s vague smile, her wild joy.

Hennessy gestured grandly. “The prize is whichever we want. Which one do you fancy?”

Jordan turned to her. “This isn’t a dream!”

“I know,” Hennessy said, “because I could control everything here.”

“Someone could be dead here.” Jordan paced and then jogged across the asphalt, ducking her head to look in at this driver and that. They all gazed at her and past her, expressions swimming.

Hennessy droned, “Asshole dies in a street race, news at eleven.”

“This isn’t a dream!”

“How about the Lambo?” Hennessy asked. “I feel like the Lambo would be the most fun.”

Jordan threw open the door of a sweet little busted-up Porsche as bright as Ronan’s sky blade. The driver was slumped over the wheel, which had crumpled in enough to press him back into his seat. His eyes looked at nothing, but it was hard to say if that was because of Bryde’s dreamt orb or because he was injured.

“I don’t want to steal cars and fuck shit up, Hennessy!” Jordan snapped, rummaging until she found the seat controls. She worked to get the seat back enough to tug the man free. Hennessy didn’t move a muscle as Jordan threw all of her weight to pull him out. “I’ve got a life here. I want to live my life. My real life. Art and growing up and not this.”

“Nice for you,” Hennessy said.

“Why the hell are you being this way?” Jordan demanded. “This is what you came all this way for? The Game?”

Hennessy looked at her as she propped the driver up against the wheel of his car and went to look at the next one. “I wish you were dead.”

This spun Jordan neat as a top. “What did you say?”

“I wish you’d died with the others,” Hennessy said. It was awful, it was terrible, her mouth wouldn’t stop saying it, her expression wouldn’t stop being scathing. “I wish you were all dead so it would just be me and I could do what I wanted. I can feel you dragging me down every second of every day. I’m so fucking tired of you.”

Jordan’s arms hung by her sides. She didn’t look mad or hurt, she just stared, standing there in the middle of all the cars pointed helter skelter.

“You came here to tell me that?”

Hennessy didn’t know what she’d come here to do, but she’d done this now. She understood that she wanted Jordan to hate her. She didn’t know why that would be better than anything else, but she knew with certainty in this moment, that was the goal.

“I wanted to see your face to make sure it was true,” Hennessy said.

She shrugged.

She could feel her shoulders shrugging even though she hadn’t thought about it.

It was like she had manifested something from a dream and was paralyzed, watching herself from above. The thing she had manifested was this awful Hennessy trying her best to make Jordan break and scream for her to leave.

“This is what you came from,” Hennessy said, gesturing to herself, “and you’re using it to become a craft painter and make babies with that white bro? Guess I should’ve given my mother’s memories some credit. They were a safeguard against suburbia.”

Quietly, Jordan asked, “Why do you always do this?”

Because Hennessy always dreamt of the Lace, that was why, because it was always the same dream, always the same.

“Enjoy your nightmare,” she said.





Declan remembered the worst dream he’d ever had.

It was his last year at Aglionby. He was passing his classes. He had dragged Ronan through his classes with the help of Ronan’s friend Gansey. He had bought Christmas gifts for Matthew. He had his internships lined up and the move planned to the town house his dead father had left him. He had done the math on the money left in the will and had worked out how much he needed to make and how much he was allowed to spend each year in order to continue to live in the way he thought would be all right to live. He was dating a girl named Ashleigh, after breaking up with a girl named Ashley. Ashleigh was thinking of going to school in DC to be closer to him. Declan was eyeing a less attentive Ashlee to replace her. He was doing his best to keep the noose of malevolent business associates his father had made for them from tightening before he graduated.

That was not the worst dream. That was the waking world.

The worst dream was this: It was nearly Christmas. There was frost on the colorless grass around the farmhouse at the Barns. Niall had just come back from a December business trip and now he was presenting gifts to his sons, just as he did in real life.

He gave Matthew a puppy that was only alive when Matthew was holding it (“I’m never gonna put it down,” declared dream Matthew).

He gave Ronan a textbook with no words in it (“My favorite kind,” Ronan had said).

He gave Declan a box … and in the box was the ability to dream things into life.

“Your mother said you’d been asking for this,” Niall told him.

Declan woke with a rush of electric adrenaline. Horror pulsed in time with his heart.