Call Down the Hawk

by Maggie Stiefvater

  Every night was divided into twenty-minute segments, her alarm jolting her out of sleep before she could begin to dream. Every day was spent waiting for the black blood to signal that she couldn’t put off dreaming forever.

  She knew it would kill her soon.

  Unless Jordan’s Fairy Market plan worked.

  Instead of answering Jordan’s question, Hennessy said, “You should stretch that linen.”

  If you stared at puzzles long enough, you started solving them even when you hadn’t set your brain on them. This whole time, she’d been looking at that Fairy Market invite and looking at Jordan’s efforts and trying to reconcile the difference. Pull that linen taut, ink it, release it, and the ink would have the same amount of bleed as Breck’s original.

  “Of course,” Jordan said. She shook her head at herself, already rising to find the equipment she’d need. “This is why you should’ve been doing this.”

  She was wrong, of course. Jordan had to do this because she gave a shit. That was the rule: If you gave a shit about the job, the job was yours. Hennessy gave a shit about surviving, of course, but the bottom line was that she just didn’t think this Fairy Market plan was going to launch.

  Jordan seemed to read her mind—easier, of course, when the minds were so similar—because she said, “It’ll work, Hennessy.” At the end of the day, this was the difference between Hennessy and Jordan. While Hennessy imagined flinging herself from a roof and falling, Jordan imagined flinging herself from a roof and flying.

  It had only taken Farooq-Lane a day to discover that Nikolenko had been entirely wrong about Parsifal Bauer. He was not easy, he was passive, which was another thing entirely. He did not do anything he didn’t particularly want to do, but it was often hard to tell he’d managed to avoid it or subvert it. When Farooq-Lane had been young, they’d had a family dog who behaved the same way. Muna, a beautiful sort of shepherd mix with lush tufted black hair around her throat, like a fox. She seemed perfectly pliable until asked to do something she didn’t want to do—go out in the rain, come into a room for company to admire her. Then she would flop to the ground, a boneless rag doll, and have to be dragged, which was never worth it.

  This was Parsifal Bauer.

  For starters, he was an infernally picky eater. Farooq-Lane was an excellent cook (what was cooking but a delicious system?) and believed in good food treated well, but Parsifal Bauer made her look like an indiscriminate hog. He would sooner not eat than consume a meal that violated his secret inner rules. Soups and sauces were treated with distrust, meat could not be left pink in the center, crusts on baked goods could not be tolerated. Carbonated drinks were an outrage. He enjoyed a specific sort of yellow sponge cake but not frosting. Strawberry jam but not strawberries. Getting him to eat at the hotel that first night in Washington, DC, had been an absolute failure. It had been late enough that little was open and Farooq-Lane had felt virtuous to have found sandwiches for them both. Parsifal had not said he wouldn’t eat his, but he looked at the sandwich on the plate until midnight and then midnight thirty and then eventually she gave up on him.

  He had rules for other parts of life, too. He had to sit by a window. He would not be the first through a door. He did not like to be seen without shoes. He would not allow others to carry his bag. He needed to have a pen on his person at all times. He wanted to listen to opera or silence. He had to brush his teeth three times a day. He preferred to not sleep in a full-sized bed. He would not sleep with the windows closed. He would not drink tap water. Bathroom stalls had to have doors that went all the way to the floor if he was to do anything of consequence. He would not go out in public without showering first.

  He was most flexible first thing in the morning, and then he slowly became worse as he grew more tired. By night, he was an impossibility of caged rules and desires, his mood secretive and gloomy. The moods were so intractable and thorough that Farooq-Lane went straight through sympathy to aggravation.

  The first fight they had was when Parsifal discovered they were sharing a room, Moderators’ orders. It was a suite, so he had a pullout bed in the sitting area, and she had a door she could close, but the bathroom was only accessible through Farooq-Lane’s room—impossible!—and he insisted the window be open while he slept. It was freezing, Farooq-Lane pointed out, and she didn’t think either of them getting flu would serve the situation. Parsifal, in the process of piling sofa pillows onto one side of his bed in order to make it seem more like a twin than a full, argued that she could keep the door to her room shut. Farooq-Lane countered that the in-room thermostat would respond to the open window and pump up the heat to intolerable levels. She thought the conversation was over. Decided. They went to bed.

  After her door was closed, he opened the window.

  She roasted. The window was closed by the time she got up, but she knew he’d closed it right before she came out. She confronted him. He was unapologetic, unresponsive. The window was closed now, wasn’t it?

  This was Parsifal Bauer.

  “I am not going,” Parsifal told her, his tall form perched on the edge of his sofa bed with its barricade of pillows.

  It was evening on day four—no, day five, she thought. Day six? When you were traveling, time got mixed up. It stretched and pinched to create unexpected shapes. Farooq-Lane and Parsifal had been together in the hotel for several sweltering nights, battling over secretively open windows and take-out food against a backdrop of generic hotel carpet and deep-cut German opera. Parsifal had not yet had another vision, so she was operating on the data from his last one. It had taken her and the others days of arduous research to discover that his vision was presenting something called the Fairy Market, a rotating black market that only began after dark. It was hard to say what they would find there, but if Parsifal was having a vision about it, it had to involve either a Zed or a Visionary.

  Lock had just sent her an entry pass via courier. There weren’t any other Moderators in the city, but Farooq-Lane had a number to call for backup from local agency staffers if she found something that needed to be acted on immediately. This meant if someone needed to be killed. Something needed to be killed. A Zed.

  “You have to come with,” Farooq-Lane told Parsifal. “That’s not coming from me. That’s coming from above.”

  Parsifal didn’t reply. He merely began to fold his laundry, which she’d just had washed by the hotel.

  “I’m going to be gone for hours,” Farooq-Lane said. She should have been gone already. The night was fully black behind the hotel’s ugly gray drapes. “It’s unacceptable for us to be apart that long. What if you have a vision?”

  He tucked two very long black socks together, fastidiously plucking some lint off one before pressing it flat on top of his already folded clothing. He didn’t bother to argue with her; he simply failed to get up. What was she going to do, drag him?

  Farooq-Lane never lost her temper. As a child, she’d been famous for this unflappability—both her mother and Nathan had wild tempers. Her mother could be trusted to lose her patience over anything that began with the word invoice, while Nathan would be sanguine for days, weeks, before suddenly bursting into surprising fury over triggers no one else could identify. Farooq-Lane, however, could be neither needled nor frustrated. She’d been born with a head for plans. Making them, keeping them, revising them, executing them. As long as there was a plan, a system, she was serene.

  Parsifal Bauer was making her lose her temper.

  “Food,” Farooq-Lane said, hating herself first for not being any more eloquent and then because she had been reduced to bribery. “Come with me and we’ll find whatever food you want.”

  “Nothing will be open,” Parsifal said reasonably.

  “Grocery stores will be,” she said. “Dark chocolate can be had. Seventy percent. Ninety, even. We’ll get more bottled water.”

  He kept folding as if she hadn’t spoken. She could feel her temperature continuing to rise. Was this what Nathan had felt like before he
killed people? This swelling grim urgency?

  She pushed that away.

  “You can wait in the car,” she said. “With your phone. You can text me if you begin to have a vision, and I’ll come out of the hotel.”

  Lock would be steamed by this wretched compromise, but Parsifal didn’t seem to realize what a stretch she was making. He carefully tucked the arms of a sweater with elbow patches into a perfectly geometric shape.

  Farooq-Lane had absolutely no idea how to make a teen boy do anything he didn’t want to do.

  But to her relief, Parsifal was now standing up. Selecting a few of the items of clothing. Heading toward the bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He turned, his expression unfathomable behind his tiny glasses. “If I’m going out, I have to shower first.”

  The door closed behind him. She could hear music begin to play from his phone speaker. Two women richly cooed at each other with the trembling drama only possible in old opera. The shower began to run.

  Farooq-Lane closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  She hoped they found these Zeds soon.

  Ask your brother about the Fairy Market.

  It really existed.

  It really existed, and that meant Bryde did, too.

  They’ll be whispering my name.

  It was black outside, black, black, black, and Ronan’s mood was electric. He and Declan were at the Fairy Market, which Declan knew because Niall Lynch had frequented it and Ronan knew because a stranger had whispered it to him in a dream. Things were changing. His head didn’t know if it was for better or for worse yet, but his heart didn’t care. It was pumping pure night through him.

  The Carter Hotel, the site of the Fairy Market, was a big, older building, perfectly square, with lots of small windows and intricate carving at the roofline, formal and tatty as a grandpa dressed for church. It was the kind of hotel one used as a landmark when giving directions, not a hotel one checked into. The parking lot was full of cars and vans. Lots of vans. Ronan wondered what they’d brought. Guns? Drugs? Dreamers? Was Bryde here tonight?

  “He wouldn’t have been happy I was bringing you to this,” Declan said, glancing in the dark rearview mirror. For what, who knew. “He wouldn’t have wanted anything bad to happen to you.”

  He did not quite emphasize the to you, but it was understood. Nothing bad to happen to you, something bad could happen to me. Sons and fathers, fathers and sons. Of all the things Niall Lynch had dreamt into being, his family was the most marvelous. Of course, he had only technically dreamt part of it—his gentle wife, the boys’ adoring mother, Aurora Lynch. A creature of fairy tales by nearly every measure: the bride with a mysterious past, the woman who’d never been a girl, the lady with the golden hair, the lover with the lovely voice. He hadn’t dreamt his sons, but they couldn’t help but be shaped by his dreams. His dreams both populated and paid for the Barns. His dreams taught the boys secrecy, the importance of being hidden, the value of the unspoken. His dreams made them an island: Niall had no forbearers that were ever spoken of—there was an aunt and an uncle in New York, but even as children, the brothers understood that these were pet names, not true titles—and Aurora of course had no other family. Her pedigree began with Niall Lynch’s imagination, and that wasn’t a thing you could visit at Christmas.

  The Lynch brothers were not Niall Lynch’s dreams, but they grew into the shape of them anyway.

  And who more than Ronan, a son with his father’s face and father’s dreaming?

  “He’s welcome to come back to stop me,” Ronan said.

  “Don’t make it a dare, or he just might,” Declan said as he backed into a spot, scrutinizing his automotive neighbors, assessing their desire and aptitude for opening their doors into the side of his car.

  “We’re at an illegal black market and you’re worried about some Honda opening their door into you?” His brother’s Declanisms never ceased to amaze Ronan; just when he felt he had reached peak Declan, he always dug deep and found another gear.

  “Not that Honda—they keep it clean. Are you carrying anything that might be construed as a weapon? Sometimes they search.”

  “I have this.” Ronan slid what looked like a pocketknife out of his pocket and flicked the button that would normally release the blade. Instead, an explosion of wings and talons surged out. They shredded the air, a flock of terror contained in a small handle.

  “Mother Mary,” Declan snapped. “Don’t ruin my dashboard.”

  Ronan released the button. Immediately, the wings folded back inside. Declan leaned over to brush a speck of feather dust off his dash and then shot his brother a cutting look.

  Outside, the asphalt glistened darkly. Red taillights ignited puddles here and there. The air smelled like shawarma and exhaust. The sky was the dull black of a cloudy night, the storm of the past few days still persisting. On the news they had said this was climate change, this was what storms did now, they moved to a place and camped there, they lavished attention on one place instead of many, until the objects of their affection could no longer stand all the love and washed away. We have flooding, the anchor noted, but think of Ohio, think of their drought, as if thinking would change any of it. It all made Ronan feel itchy. It was worse to think it wasn’t only his personal world that was askew.

  Declan peered up at the old sign with its block letters: CARTER HOTEL. It could have been from this decade, from four decades ago. It felt like they had time-traveled. “The last one I went to with Dad was in Tokyo. First one was LA, I think. Maybe Berlin. Memories are liars.”

  Ronan had to fit this into his recollection of his own childhood. When had Declan nipped off to Tokyo? Was it passed off as a school sports trip? How many times had he been rawly jealous of Declan for being permitted a sleepover when really Declan was yawning and stepping off a plane in Berlin? Ronan knew Declan was made of secrets, but he still managed to be shocked by the reveal of a new one.

  A doorman waited at the entrance. It was a good doorway, intricately carved, a solid portal to adventure, and he was a proper doorman, dressed like a drawing of a doorman, in a suit with gold piping. Younger guy, with a sort of messy, too-red mouth.

  He looked at Ronan expectantly.

  It took Ronan a moment to realize the doorman had assessed the two brothers—Declan in his bland gray suit and clean shoes, Ronan with his tats and boots and murder-crab-scratched face—and thought Ronan was the one leading this show.

  That was a weird feeling.

  Declan silently recaptured the doorman’s attention, offering him a linen handkerchief from his pocket. It had unusual marks printed on it above Declan’s name. The doorman studied the marks for just a moment before returning it to Declan, along with a slender printed card, like a menu, from within his jacket.

  He handed Ronan an unmarked keycard.

  “Ink on your skin means you’re hiding things,” he told Ronan.

  “That’s what breathing means,” Ronan replied.

  The doorman’s face hemorrhaged into a smile, and he opened the door.

  The Carter’s massive lobby was lined with blood-red carpets and lit by dated brass fixtures with long, uneven curls, like rib bones. Ronan could feel the plush of the rug even under his boot soles. It smelled like a burned-out matchstick and lemon. It all had a classy, run-down look, like a place to be aesthetically killed by a really famous poltergeist. It also seemed to be empty. There was no one behind the polished reception desk, and the leather armchairs were unoccupied.

  “Sure this is the right place?”

  “Everyone’s in the rooms,” Declan said. He tilted the printed card so that Ronan could read it with him. Floor and room numbers filled one column. In another were short alphanumeric combinations. “Each of those codes stands for something. Art, animals, weapons, drugs. Services.”

  “Cleaning,” Ronan said. “Accounting. Childcare.”

  “Probably yes, actually,” Declan said, “but not in the way you’
re thinking.” He traced a finger down the card. “I don’t know all the codes as well as I should. But I think it’ll be in an eighty-four room, or a twelve. Maybe a Z-twelve.”

  “What are we looking for?” Ronan asked.

  Declan put the card in his jacket. “You aren’t looking for anything. You’re just looking. And sticking with me. Do you understand? Some of these codes—you go in that room, and you’re not coming out.”

  Everything about this felt false, heightened, unpredictable. Everything about this felt like a dream.

  “Say you copy,” Declan said.

  “I copy, asshole.”

  “Dad would’ve hated this,” Declan breathed again, more to himself than to Ronan.

  “Declan? Declan Lynch?”

  Smoothly, Declan turned on his heel. The lobby was no longer empty. A woman stood behind the reception desk. She was dark-haired and voluptuous, wearing a dress or blouse with a collar that looked like the top of a drawstring tote bag. She made an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with both brothers. Her eyebrows had been drawn into very surprised shapes.

  “Angie,” Declan said. Impossible to tell how he felt about her.

  “It’s been so long, honey,” she said.

  She was staring at Ronan, so Declan led him over and said, “This is my brother.”

  Angie was still making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. Ronan was a champion at staring, but she might have had him beat for sheer intensity. “He looks—”

  “I know,” Declan said.

  “You talk?” Angie asked Ronan.

  Ronan bared his teeth. Her eyebrows continued looking surprised.

  “Where you boys keeping yourselves?” Angie asked. “Your daddy was always telling me to come over for dinner if I was in the area, and here we are. It always sounded like a paradise. The Lynch farm. I feel like I could draw that farmhouse if I had to, he was such a good storyteller.”

  Ronan felt a twinge of betrayal. The Barns was the Lynch family’s secret, not something to be given away over a pint or two. He’d idolized Niall before he died; maybe he didn’t want to know more about this side of him.