“Turn your phone down,” Declan said.
“I don’t have a phone anymore,” Matthew whined. “You made me throw it out.” He said it in the most sing-song-younger-brother-annoying way possible. You MADE me THROW it OUT.
Oh, right. But Declan didn’t have a phone anymore, either. He’d just thrown out his burner phone at the rest station and was intending to pick up another one after he got to Boston. He wanted badly to pretend that this was evidence of the return of safe, paranoid Declan, but he knew better. This was just what Foolish Declan did to justify this insane trip north. He was going to get his car back. Right.
“Then what’s ringing?” It was too loud to be coming from the trunk, so it couldn’t have belonged to their secret passenger.
“Dur, there, it’s that,” Matthew said, tapping on the loaner car’s radio display.
“I can’t read that—I’m driving. What does it say?”
“Connected phone has an incoming call.”
“There is no connected phone.”
Matthew’s voice was dubious. “I think you ought to look.”
Declan spared a glance. INCOMING CALL FROM, said the display. And then it displayed something that was not quite a number and not quite a name. The something made Declan’s mind reel and bend in on itself to even glance at it.
He hit the button on the steering wheel to accept the call.
“How are you doing this?” he demanded.
“So you’re not dead,” said a voice through the car’s speakers.
“Ronan!” Matthew said.
Declan felt the usual feeling he got with Ronan: Good news, it was Ronan on the other end of the phone. Bad news, it was Ronan on the other end of the phone.
“How do you like it?” Ronan asked. “I call it the MEGAPHONE, all caps.”
Matthew laughed, but the joke sounded a little forced to Declan. He asked, “Are you all right?”
“Don’t you worry your curly head. I hear Matthew. What’s cooking, shitface? You good?”
“Declan’s driving—how good could I be?” Matthew replied.
Declan persisted, “Why didn’t you call before now? Are you still with Bryde? And Hennessy? What’s Bryde like?”
“You should be getting some miles in, Matthias,” Ronan said, in that aggressively jovial tone he used when he was making Matthew feel like things were normal and blowing off Declan’s concerns. “You’ve got to get your license eventually, bro.”
“Mehhh,” said Matthew. “Maybe.”
“Hey. Hey,” Ronan said. “Where are you going, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be, like, lying low at the Barns?”
“I have an errand in Boston,” Declan said.
Booty call, mouthed Matthew, and Declan shot him a dark look.
Ronan said, “An errand! There are fuckfaces out here!”
“I can’t put off every aspect of life forever,” Declan said. Foolish Declan clapped gleefully. Paranoid Declan rolled his eyes.
“You said you were going to the Barns. I assumed you were staying at the Barns. Now you’ve left the Barns.”
“You sound like D,” Matthew remarked.
Declan told himself not to rub it in, to be the mature one, and then he said, “How does it feel to ask for something reasonable and be completely ignored? How does it feel to know you’ve made plans to keep the family safe and they aren’t keeping to them?”
There was silence for so long that it seemed possible the connection had been broken.
“Ronan?”
“I gotta go,” Ronan said, but he didn’t go.
Declan once again had the curious feeling that their roles had reversed.
“I kept my head down for years,” Declan said. “It wasn’t just you. Sacrifices were made by all of us.”
“Great,” Ronan said. “My gratitude is turned to eleven. Boston. Sounds great. While you’re there, look in on Parrish for me.”
It had already occurred to Declan that he was headed to the same place Ronan’s boyfriend was going to school, but he hadn’t planned on a tête-à-tête. Paranoid Declan wasn’t intending to spend that long in the area. “I thought you had the MEGAPHONE. Call him yourself.”
Ronan said, “Yeah.”
“What’s that mean? Did you guys fight?”
“No,” Ronan said, sounding offended. “I really do have to go. Keep an eye over your shoulder for, like, uh, the bogeyman, I guess. Matthew, eat whatever vegetable the Big D tells you to.”
“Turds,” Matthew said.
“Turds aren’t vegetables,” Ronan replied. “They’re mammals.”
“You never told me what Bryde was like,” Declan said.
“Ha!” Ronan replied.
The phone went dead. The Connecticut traffic charged around them in the middle lane.
Declan tried to figure out if the feeling inside him was the usual unsettled sensation that came from every interaction with Ronan, or if it was above and beyond that. It was time to let Ronan grow up and make his own decisions, surely. Declan didn’t need to parent his relationship with Adam—and in any case, who was Declan to talk about relationships? Ronan didn’t need a father figure. He needed to keep on growing up.
He thought.
Probably.
It was harder than before to tell if this was actually right or if this was just what Declan wanted to tell himself so he could continue on this adventure to Boston.
“He sounds happy,” Matthew observed.
“Yeah,” Declan lied.
“Maybe he can make it to Mass with us next week. Are we going to church while we’re in Boston? Do I still take Communion now that I know I’m not real?”
With a sigh, Declan leaned over and buckled Matthew’s seat belt.
“I heard the thump again,” Matthew said, but without force. “From the trunk.”
“This car might have a bearing going out; these old Jags do that,” Declan said. It was an excuse he’d learned from his father, before he’d gotten old enough to learn that bearings didn’t go out as often as they did for Lynches. This wasn’t even a Jaguar; Matthew wouldn’t notice. Declan didn’t even know why he lied about it; the fib was like bubble wrap, the truth carefully kept pristine and untouched for his collection.
“Oh, sure,” Matthew said. “Bearings.”
Depending on how one thought about it, Declan’s relationship with the criminal underworld was the longest and most stable one he’d had in his life.
Declan had a very complicated relationship with his family.
Everyone likes the sweetmetals,” Jo Fisher said.
“I didn’t say I liked them.”
“Everyone likes them,” Fisher told Jordan. “Everyone always likes them. Always.”
The two of them were in a wine cellar deep beneath a Chestnut Hill mansion just a few miles outside Boston. It had only taken Jordan a few sleepless hours after learning of the existence of sweetmetals to decide she had to know everything there was to know about them.
Because she had to have one.
This was the way to a real future.
Jordan hadn’t wanted to call Barbara’s goon and prove she was interested, but it was the most efficient next step. It seemed obvious Boudicca couldn’t have the only sweetmetals in the world, but she needed to know more about them before she even knew where to look for others. She wasn’t crazy about the power dynamics of the rendezvous—she was meeting them on their turf, and in an underground bunker, no less. But her attempts to negotiate to a more equitable location had been useless.