Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(80)
He looked around in dread but his dorm room was just as he’d left it when he slept. There was nothing in it that hadn’t been carried with ordinary human hands, that hadn’t been crafted with ordinary human labor. There were no miracles or wonders. Just his unmagical room with the things he needed for his unmagical life.
He had never been so relieved.
Declan was looking at El Jaleo. He was standing there, arms crossed, head tilted to one side, studying it. A little closer than he would normally be. No, a lot closer than he would normally be. He had stepped over the chain that ordinarily warned museum-goers to stay out of the alcove, and he was close enough to see the ridges on brushstrokes, to smell the oldness of all the paint in the closed-in space. It felt quite illicit, and he couldn’t imagine what had come over him. This close, everything looked a little different than he remembered.
It took him a moment to realize that some of his disorientation was not because of proximity; it was because the museum was dark.
The dancer was lit only by a dim security light that came through the window to the right of the painting and reflected off the mirror to the left of it.
The museum was also silent.
The small, close building was never noisy, but right then, it lacked even the murmur of distant people in other rooms, the sound of life. Breath held, or breath gone. Tomblike.
He didn’t know how he’d gotten here.
He didn’t know how he’d gotten here.
Declan looked down at himself. He was dressed in the same clothing he’d been in when he’d left Jordan’s. Jacket, loosened tie. Same clothing the Declan in the portrait had been wearing. Same clothing the Declan who’d kissed Jordan had been wearing. He remembered returning to the apartment. Didn’t he? It was possible he was simply remembering other times he had and all those memories had stacked up to disguise that he was missing one.
This was dream logic, not waking logic.
He felt awake. He was awake, surely. But—
“Neat trick, right?” Ronan asked.
The middle Lynch brother leaned casually in the entrance from the courtyard, shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching him. He had changed since Declan had seen him. Not taller, because Ronan had already been tall, but bigger, somehow. Older. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and he had grizzle that instantly aged him. He was no boy. No student. He was a young man.
“Ronan,” Declan said. He couldn’t think of what else to say, how to say it, and so he just shoved everything he wanted to say into that one word. Ronan.
Ronan said, “The guard will be dazed for a while. The cameras are dazed, too. It’s pretty slick. I tried to get him to name it something. THE BEDAZZLER, all caps, but he’s not that sort. What do you want to see here? You can see anything. Touch anything. No one will know.”
Declan was badly disoriented. “I don’t understand.”
Bryde stepped into the room. He was a neat figure, controlled. Declan instantly recognized the posture. Not ego. Beyond ego. A man who knew precisely what his boundaries were and operated so thoroughly within them that he was untouchable and knew it. He did not have to lift a fist, raise his voice. He was a kind of powerful that other powerful people respected.
He held a small silver orb in between finger and thumb.
“It’s quite expensive,” he said, studying it. “Requires good ley energy, good dream, perfect focus. Razor focus, really. You have to hold what it means to be human in your head, because you don’t want to take that from them. These little baubles have to go off and send the mind in all directions but keep those pieces close enough to gather back. There is no point in a treat if it’s all trick. You may as well shoot someone if you aren’t going to put their minds back. A butcher ruins, a dreamer nudges.”
Declan found himself feeling precisely the same sensation as he had after his worst dream. He longed to wake up back in the apartment and find everything ordinary and correct around him. I don’t trust Bryde, Adam had said, and how could he? Look at him. Listen to him. Feel what he could do.
Declan remembered nothing about getting here. Bryde had taken it from him.
Declan took two steps back, putting himself on the proper side of the chain protecting El Jaleo. Immediately he felt better, giving the painting its space once more.
Bryde pocketed the orb and told Ronan, “I let Hennessy think she stole one, so we’ve got just this one left. So be efficient.”
“Where is she?” Declan asked. “Hennessy, I mean. Is she here?”
“She’s going to see Jordan,” Ronan said, and Declan felt a little pang of uncertainty in his gut. To Bryde, Ronan said, “She was pretty wound up. Do we know that … ?”
“She’ll be back,” Bryde said with absolute certainty. “She knows where she belongs. Go on. Eye on the clock. This won’t last forever.”
He pulled back into the dim courtyard, disappearing among the complicated black shadows of the tropical palms and flowers.
Declan found himself alone with his brother, experiencing the impression of privacy if not the reality. He had not seen him since they’d parted on the banks of the Potomac River, and he realized that part of him had been preparing itself for the idea that he might never see him again. It was a worry that he hadn’t fully felt until now that the danger of it had passed, and he found his knees wobbly with relief. Ronan, his family, his brother. Older, stranger, but still obviously Ronan.