“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.
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.
“You heard him,” Ronan said. “What room have you always wanted to go into? What other rope have you always wanted to step over?”
Declan didn’t fancy touring the museum under these circumstances, but he wanted some space from Bryde to talk to Ronan, so he walked with his brother through the eerie, quiet building. They found themselves standing in the Dutch Room, the green wallpaper looking black in the dim. Two empty frames hung on the wall in front of them, one for each of the brothers.
“What’s the deal here?” Ronan asked.
“I was about to ask the same.”
“The empty frames.”
Any other time, Declan would have had the whole story at the ready, but tonight he simply said, “They were stolen. Twenty years ago. Thirty, maybe. It’s been a vigil since then. This whole place was made by a woman who wanted it to stay the same even after her death, so after the paintings were stolen out of the frames, the museum hung the frames back on the walls to wait, until the—do you care about this? You don’t care about this. Ronan, I’ve been hearing the news. What are you doing?”
“Sounds like you already know.”
“I’m worried,” Declan said, following Ronan as he began to walk again. “Don’t forget there’s a real world you want to come back to. The point was to get to a place you could do that.”
“Was it?”
“Don’t do that. I remember what we talked about. Don’t pretend it was me telling you how to live. Adam. You wanted Adam.”
“Adam,” Ronan said slowly, as if remembering, as if he were a man enchanted himself, and Declan realized he did not know any of the things Bryde could or couldn’t do with his dreams. Perhaps this was not even Ronan at all, perhaps this was a Ronan—no. He was not going to let himself even picture it; that was the way to absolute madness.
“The Barns,” Declan added, voice terse. “You told me you wanted to be a farmer.”
Ronan’s mouth slid to a grin, surprising Declan thoroughly. “You remember that.”
And now Declan himself was confused, because he didn’t think Ronan looked nearly as enchanted as he had thought he did a moment before. Now he looked sharp and alive, eyes bright and mirthful. “This isn’t about me. It’s about people like me. And it’s not about Matthew. It’s about people like Matthew. They don’t get to live, but they will. Is that really all this meeting is about? I thought Matthew was having
a meltdown. I thought you needed weapons. I thought you needed dreams to build your empire. Cash. Cars. Girls.”
“It’s a family meeting to make sure you know where you’re going to be in three years,” Declan said. “Long-term goals.”
“Oh, God, it was a meeting for Declanisms? The more things change, blah de fucking la.”
“What is your plan doing for other people? Are you breaking the world?”
Ronan laughed merrily. “I hope so.”
He had led them back around to the Spanish Cloister. Declan did not generally think of Ronan as a particularly timely person, but Bryde had told him to be efficient, and he’d been efficient. He had brought Declan right back here without Declan even thinking about how they were being led back here. It was a very dream thing to do. It was a very adult, strategic thing to do.
Bryde waited in front of El Jaleo, his hands tucked in his pockets, eyes in shadow. His voice was a little knowing, “You could take anything from here right now. You could take this painting to hang in your living room and never have to worry about your brother Matthew again.”
It had already occurred to Declan that anybody with that impossible dream orb of Bryde’s could steal anything they liked from this place. Do anything they liked. Declan had heard Bryde’s hidden threat earlier. The entirety of Declan’s memories could have been destroyed for good, by an unkindly dreamer.
Declan’s hands felt a little shaky.
“This museum’s already had enough taken from it,” Declan said. “Even if I didn’t care about that, I don’t want to walk around with a target on my back. And it fixes very little, as I’m sure you’ve already considered. Matthew can’t wrap that painting around himself and have a normal life. Rob from this place, and for what? A prison of my apartment?”
“Good,” said Bryde. “So you understand what we’re doing, then. You want Matthew to live like anyone else. So do we.”
Declan said, “You could do this without Ronan.”
“No,” Bryde murmured. “I could not.”
There was a sound from somewhere within the museum. Not an alarm, not yet, but movement.
Bryde looked up sharply. To Ronan, he said, “We are nearly out of time. I’ll need to use this last one here, and I won’t be able to get another one until I am out of the city; it’s too loud here.”
Declan couldn’t think of what to say. He had thought the conversation was going to come around in his favor but he was the one going round and round instead. All he could think to blurt to Ronan was “You should see Matthew before you leave Boston. In case …”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Ronan. But he glanced to Bryde to confirm. It was only after Bryde nodded imperceptibly that Ronan repeated, with certainty, “Right.”
Bryde owned his brother completely.
Ten. That was the number of coffees Carmen Farooq-Lane ordered while waiting in the Somerville café. She didn’t want to cheaply hold down this table when another paying customer could have it, but she also didn’t want to float away on a lake of coffee.
She glanced at the time on her phone. Thirty-five minutes had passed since the agreed-upon rendezvous time. When did she give up?
“Just one more, please,” she told the server.
God, but she was nervous. She didn’t know if she was more nervous about the meeting or being found out by the Moderators. She’d resigned right after checking out of the quaint little rental cottage. Just like that. Strip the sheets from the bed, make sure all the dishes were in the dishwasher, turn off all the lights, hide Hennessy’s moonlit sword in a linen closet, quit the only job that seemed important. Lock had accepted the keys to the bullet-ridden rental car and had her sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Of course I’m disappointed, Lock had rumbled, but I respect your decision. Farooq-Lane wasn’t entirely sure she believed him; the Moderators had not been interested in respecting people’s decisions before that point.
He was less gracious about Liliana’s resignation a few minutes after, but Liliana had been insistent. Gentle. Fair. She cited the mishandling of the Rhiannon Martin job and the emotional scarring of her teen self. She noted that the Moderators had not, to that point, seemed to be able to use her visions to make the world a safer place. She reminded them Farooq-Lane’s presence had always been part and parcel of her deal with the Moderators. No, she could not be persuaded to stay long enough to help find another Visionary. Yes, she was sorry to leave them blind, but she wished them luck.
Farooq-Lane hadn’t really thought the Moderators would let them go, but they had.
She dipped into her parents’ bank accounts to buy a car at the closest local dealership, stopped briefly by the rental cottage to retrieve Hennessy’s sword, and then left that part of her life in the rearview mirror.
Boston was their destination. Liliana had just had a vision.
Nine a.m. that morning, Declan Lynch had called to discuss an urgent matter. I would prefer to have this conversation on the most secure line possible, he murmured. It requires the utmost discretion. Coincidentally, she had told him, she was in the Boston area—did he want to meet up in person? She had been intensely grateful that she’d been the one to call him about Ronan Lynch earlier that month. Now he was late.
“Ms. Farooq-Lane?”
Declan Lynch stood by the table. He looked like his brother Ronan, but with the edges sanded off, the memorable bits deleted. He had neat, civilized dress slacks; a neat, civilized wool sweater; neat, civilized facial hair; very nice shoes. There wasn’t a stitch that was out of place in this upscale café full of talkative Tufts students and drowsy medical residents.
“I didn’t see you come in,” she said.
“I came in the back.” She saw him check his surroundings, but only because she was watching him closely. He was very good. Long practice with paranoia. “I’m sorry I’m late. I had to be sure I wasn’t followed.”
She couldn’t really believe it. Here he was. Liliana’s vision had promised it, but the visions were always things for the Moderators to interpret, not her, and they were always for killing Zeds, not attempting anything more nuanced. “Of course. Can I get you a coffee?”
“We should be brief,” Declan said by way of reply. His voice was vague, nasal; he sounded as if he were announcing a meeting agenda. “Unwise to push our luck.”
Eight minutes was how long it took Declan Lynch to say his piece.
“I love my brother,” Declan said. “So know that when I say this next part I’m saying it from a place of fondness: Ronan’s a follower. He’s always needed a hero to follow. When he was a kid, he idolized my father. When he was in school, he idolized his best friend. Now he’s obviously idolizing this Bryde. He doesn’t get ideas on his own. That sounds bad. Remember I said I loved him. I mean it in the best way. I mean it this way: He’s not your problem. Take away Bryde, and Ronan’s just the same as he always was, a kid who’s going to go back to Virginia to play with cars and mud and cowshit. Who was running the show when you saw them together? It was Bryde, wasn’t it? Not my brother. Not Jordan Hennessy. Whose name has been whispered subversively for weeks? Bryde’s.”
She tilted her chin. “We’re in agreement. Bryde’s the target.”
“Are we in agreement? Because I want to be sure you know why I’m sitting at this table.”
A coworker at Alpine Financial had told Farooq-Lane once that, neurologically, most people saw their future selves as a totally different person, and so treated them with less empathy, like a stranger. High achievers, though, saw their present and future self as one person and accordingly made wiser decisions. Farooq-Lane had immediately decided that her job as a financial adviser was to close the gap between these two selves.
She closed the gap for Declan Lynch.
“You’re here to make sure your family gets a chance to have meaningful adult lives,” Farooq-Lane said, with quiet surety. “You’re here to make sure there’s actually a world for them to have those lives in. You’re here becau
se what you saw in Bryde scared you and you want your brother far away from him, because that’s not what your brother stands for and you don’t want his life to be defined by a single decision. You’re here talking to me because you’re aware you don’t have the ability to do this on your own. You’re here because you’re a good brother.”
Declan’s mouth worked. He was slick enough to know she was also being slick, but he didn’t disagree with her.
“My brother isn’t to be harmed,” he said. “I want to see you say it.”
The promise wouldn’t have meant anything if she were with the Moderators, but she wasn’t with the Moderators. “You have my word,” Farooq-Lane said.
Seven Three Park Drive, Boston, MA. That was all that was written on the card Declan slid across the table as he stood up. “That’s where they’re meeting Matthew. Bryde mentioned last night he doesn’t have another of the dreams he uses to confuse people and he can’t get any more until they’re out of the city. Is it true you killed your own brother?”
She was taken completely by surprise.
“You’re not the only one who has access to information,” he said in that bland way.
“My brother was a serial killer,” she said. “He was also a Zed. I didn’t pull the trigger, but yes, I helped find him. Your brother’s not a serial killer. He’s just a Zed.”
Declan Lynch narrowed his eyes. For just the barest second, he did not look at all like he belonged in this nice, civilized café.
“Don’t forget your promise,” he said. “And don’t call my brother that.”
Six. That was the number of scenarios Farooq-Lane ran through as she looked at the Park Drive address on various satellite maps. It belonged to a rose garden in the Emerald Necklace, a series of green parks chained through the Boston area. It was a bad location for an attack. Right in the middle of the city. Right up against the swampy fens that gave Fenway its name. Surrounded by the trees that gave Bryde his information.
But Liliana said Farooq-Lane only needed enough time to draw Jordan Hennessy’s sword.
Mister Impossible Page 25
