Jordan just had a glimpse of her accepting a wired microphone; then a voice that matched the cocktail dress came over the speakers. “Everyone here has a dependent in their lives. Some of you know one, some of you are thinking of introducing one into your lives, others have inherited one, and some of you are one.”
Partygoers glanced around at each other.
Jo Fisher continued. “Boudicca is proud to be able to offer a variety of sweetmetals in different formats this year. As always, these are available by private arrangement. Demand is high, as sweetmetals have been losing their efficacy faster than usual and many of you are replacing empty ones this year. I trust everyone here’s had an opportunity to see that the dependents we’ve brought in to demonstrate the sweetmetals are genuine. Some have asked if these dependents are available; not at this time. They are for demonstration. For demonstration.”
“Let’s bring in a sweetmetal!” Barbara’s voice rose, unamplified. “Be nice, now, let everyone get a look!”
To Jordan’s surprise, people listened. The crowd reassembled, allowing her, for the first time, to see what they were all pressed close to.
The centerpiece of the room was a kid.
He was a lovely little thing, a boy of three or four years old, with fine dark hair, thick eyelashes, a thoughtless pout. He was presented sentimentally in a wingback chair, which sat directly in the middle of the room. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell.
No matter how loud the voices rose around him, he remained asleep.
Scattered around him on the bright brocade fabric were a few other objects. Some butterflies lying limp. A soft, small rabbit, stretched on its side. A pair of shoes.
It was clear he was an exhibit, like the rest of the art.
“This is very exciting, isn’t it!” Barbara said, still shouting without the microphone, sounding like a kindergarten teacher. “It’s a really nice sweetmetal, a very good one for your home, they’re not always good for a living area, but this one is! How L-U-C-K-Y are we all? Let’s all be quiet and look. Here it is!”
A side door opened.
Two women carried a large, framed painting into the room. The subject wasn’t very exciting, just a bucolic landscape dotted with sheep, but the art was nonetheless appealing in some way. It bothered Jordan, actually, that she couldn’t pinpoint why she found it so appealing. She couldn’t stop looking at it. She wanted to get closer, but the crowd and her dignity wouldn’t allow it.
She glanced at the other partygoers to see their reaction to the painting, but their gazes were all firmly focused on the wingback chair in the middle of the room.
“Can I put my shoes on?”
It was a small, high voice. The boy had half sat up in the chair. With one youthful hand, he rubbed his eyes, and with the other, he reached for his shoes. He searched for a familiar face among the women looking at him. “Mum? Is it time for shoes?”
All around him, the previously still butterflies had taken flight. The little rabbit made a small thud as it jumped from the chair to the floor and made haste. The partygoers drew back to allow it to lope softly into their midst.
“Mum?” said the boy.
“As you can see, this particular sweetmetal is effective for multiple dependents at a distance of several yards,” Fisher said into the microphone. “Please inquire for a full list.”
Barbara made a sweeping gesture with her wineglass and the attendants carried the painting back to the side door.
“Mum?” said the boy again. “Oh, my shoe.”
One of the shoes had fallen from the chair. The boy reached for it just as the door closed behind the attendants. The painting was gone.
With a little sigh, the boy, too, fell from the chair to the floor beside it. The butterflies dropped from the air around him. One of the partygoers came forward long enough to lay the now-sleeping rabbit back in its initial position on the chair.
Jordan’s heart was an elevator with snapped cables.
Dreams.
The dependents were dreams without dreamers. And the sweetmetal—the painting that Jordan, a dream, had found strangely alluring—had temporarily woken them.
Just like that, Jordan realized Boudicca hadn’t invited her here because they knew Jordan Hennessy was an art forger. They’d invited her here because they knew Jordan Hennessy was a dreamer.
They’d invited her here because they knew Jordan Hennessy would have dreams she wanted to keep awake.
The rules of the game had changed.
Matthew Lynch woke to the sound of his oldest brother screaming.
His brother’s old bedroom was down the hall and Matthew’s door was shut, but the sound came in clearly anyway. These old houses were full of nooks and crannies.
Matthew climbed out of bed, saying oof oof oof as the old floorboards chilled the bottoms of his bare feet, and then promptly smashed his head against the slanted ceiling.
Declan was still caterwauling.
Matthew went down the hall to brush his teeth (the movement of the bristles over his gums and teeth made it sound like Declan’s shouts were oscillating) and got a drink of water (Declan’s voice sounded higher when Matthew was swallowing and lower when he wasn’t) and looked at himself in the mirror.
He thought the same thing he had thought every morning for the past several weeks: I don’t look like a dream, do I?
The boy in the mirror was taller than the one who had appeared in the mirror a year ago. When he opened his mouth, he had all the proper teeth. He looked all right. He could be forgiven for having thought he was just like everyone else, all this time. But looking all right and being forgiven didn’t really change the truth, which was that Matthew was not human. He was just human-shaped.
The boy in the mirror frowned.
His face didn’t look used to frowning.
Declan’s screams escalated.
Right.
Matthew shuffled down the hall to his brother’s room.
The scene was the same as it had been every morning for the past several days. There was a pile of mice. Some winged lizard things. A badger with a secretive kind of smile, but just around the eyes. A pair of deer the size of cats. A cat the size of a deer, with hands like a person. A collection of birds of varying sizes and shapes. And possibly the most impressive thing, a rough-coated black boar the size of a minivan.
All of these creatures were piled on top of Declan’s bed, which was where the screaming was coming from.
“Deklo!” Matthew said. “Mmm, cold.”
The room was chilly on account of the open window, which was the work of the hand-cat. Matthew had accidentally caught it in the act before, when he was out walking the hills in a dazed, lost, predawn walk. He’d heard a clank and a clatter and looked up to see the hand-cat swiftly climbing the gutter to the dormer that led to Declan’s room. Without any pause at all, the creature had shimmied the window open. It was both impressive and creepy to watch the hand-cat working its little nails under the edge to get it open. Opposable thumbs really were splendid things.
Declan’s voice was muffled. “Get them out.”
He was difficult to see in the bed because he’d made himself a sheet-blanket cocoon, the edges sealed against the mattress as much as possible to keep the smaller creatures from burrowing against him. They were not put off, though. The hand-cat plucked at the sheet near his face with intense devotion. The cat-sized deer were mewling and pawing (hoofing?) at the legs of the bed. The winged lizard things pounced playfully on Declan’s feet each time they moved beneath the blanket.