Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(94)

“I’m the rubber and you’re the glue, Ronan Lynch,” Hennessy replied. “What’s funny is—Bryde’s you, and he’s still more right than you are. You’re still thinking like a non-dreamer. At least I’m thinking like a forger.”

She pointed behind him.

Ronan just had time to look and see that the real Hennessy stood there, holding another silver orb in her fingers. This one was even stronger than the other Hennessy was holding. It was not just the absence of sensation. It was a blanket of nothingness. It was noise-canceling, sound-deadening, pressure-relieving, stain-lifting, subscription-canceling, and his birds were pointed at the wrong Hennessy and the wrong orb and—

Hennessy woke up in the middle of the teahouse.

“Liliana,” said Carmen Farooq-Lane.

“I know,” replied Liliana.

They both looked at the little silver orb cupped in Hennessy’s paralyzed hands. They had not seen it appear. Instead, their minds bent and folded on themselves. One part of their brains tried to tell them the orb had always been there. The other part remembered that it had not.

The rule of dreamt objects is this: If it worked in the dream, it worked in real life.

Hennessy’s orb worked in the dream.

It worked in real life.

The effects upon the unseasonably nice afternoon were immediate.

Dreamt birds dropped out of the sky here and there, pinging off windshields and onto the sidewalk before coming to a rest, sleeping. Dreamt dogs suddenly slept at dog parks, much to their owners’ surprise. Cars veered off the road and into each other, their dreamt drivers suddenly staring into space.

A nanny pushing a pram outside a converted church in downtown Boston found herself pushing a child who could not be woken.

Social media lit up with reports of power outages as wind turbines mysteriously dozed to stillness.

At Logan Airport, a landing aircraft completely missed the runway and careened toward the bay. Air traffic control shouted to an unresponsive pilot before turning its attention to the radio reports of other planes dropping out of the sky across the globe.

In a very stuffy school office, Matthew Lynch put a hand to his burning-hot cheek.

“Are you all right, honey?” asked the school secretary.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and then he fell fast asleep.

In Declan Lynch’s apartment, Declan Lynch watched in astonishment as Lock stopped speaking midsentence and fell to his knees, followed by two of the other Moderators. In the shock, he leapt for the gun beneath the table. Ripping it from its place, he pointed it at one of the three remaining Moderators.

“What’s going on here?” Declan demanded.

But the others, too, swayed against each other. They were asleep before he got his answer.

Their sleep was the answer.

In a Connecticut picnic area, Bryde sat up, shaking leaves off his body and memory-cobwebs from his mind. He reached into the pocket of his gray jacket and looked at the sweetmetal he had stolen off Lock weeks and weeks before. It was not very strong, but it was enough. For now.

He looked then to Ronan Lynch, who still slept, leaves across his face.

“Wake up,” he said, but Ronan did not.

On the sidewalk in front of Declan’s apartment, Jordan stood with her head tilted back, listening to sirens wailing. In front of her, a bird plummeted thoughtlessly to the sidewalk with a surprisingly quiet flomp. She crouched beside it. It was a beautiful little thing, jeweled and impossible. She touched its chest softly. It was not dead. It was fast asleep.

Her heart was beating very, very fast.

She could feel the ley line sucking away from her. Away from everything. It was like feeling the air leaving a room. It was like that day all those weeks ago when Hennessy had dreamt an entire ocean into the room and she’d suddenly found herself inhabiting a world that wasn’t meant to support her. One couldn’t argue with an ocean. Either you had an oxygen tank or you didn’t.

At the end of the sidewalk, the door to the apartment building burst open. Declan stood in it, his jacket half-pulled on, his keys dangling in his hand. She didn’t need to be told that he had been coming to look for her. She could see it in his body language, in his face.

“Jordan,” he said. “You’re—”

She could see another bird falling from the sky, a larger one, at the end of the street. It set off the car alarm when it hit the windshield.

With wonder, she said to Declan, “I’m awake.”

She was very, very awake.

It really was a nice day.