This phone’s timer had only one setting. Twenty minutes.
Was it her subconscious or Ronan’s that had guessed she might come looking for it at some point? Which one of them hadn’t trusted her? She wondered if she could go back to that life. Everything seemed imaginary with that little sleep. Surely it had been worse than this reality.
Surely.
Hennessy tried not to think about the sound of Jordan’s voice.
She tried not to think of the sound of her voice talking to Declan.
Little ghost. Hennessy was haunting Jordan’s life. She knew which of them was the more vital Jordan Hennessy.
The hideous feeling grew and grew in her. She knew if she went to Ronan and Bryde, they’d whisk her off into a dream full of impossible things, thinking this would remind her of the joy of dreaming. They never considered how it only reminded her of the joy of their dreaming. No, she needed to deal with this herself.
She just wanted to put this feeling down for a few minutes. Everyone else in the world could sleep it off.
Not Hennessy.
It was always the Lace. Always going to be the Lace.
Closing her eyes, Hennessy thought back to that last time she’d seen Jordan. She ignored the little mean voice. She was sure Jordan hadn’t wanted to leave Hennessy. She was sure it had been Hennessy’s idea to send her off with Declan for safekeeping. She was sure Jordan had believed in her.
She was sure.
Shrugging off the sheet, Hennessy climbed off the mattress. She didn’t set the timer. Instead, she asked her phone to show her one of John White Alexander’s paintings. He was one of their favorites. Jordan and Hennessy. Hennessy and Jordan.
She went to the desk covered with art supplies, squeezed some paint out, and picked up one of the brushes.
Then she began to do one thing, at least, that she knew she was good at: forging someone else’s brilliance.
Ronan woke with a start.
He was in the top bunk in the room he was sharing with Bryde. It was still dark.
He rolled over quietly to see if Bryde was sleeping.
The lower bunk was empty, the blankets tossed aside. Ronan grabbed his jeans from where they were tossed at the end of his bunk, his jacket from the plastic unicorn head on the wall, and his boots from beside the door.
He stepped quietly into the dark hallway.
Bryde crouched there over a collapsed form. Matthew. One of Matthew’s hands was palm up, and in it was a little figurine of a hawk. He was obviously dead.
“What did you do?” Ronan snarled.
“Correlation is not causation, Ronan Lynch,” Bryde said. Adam appeared briefly at the end of the hall and, just as quick, was gone.
“What did you do?”
Bryde said, “Wake up.”
Ronan woke with a start.
He was in the top bunk in the room he was sharing with Bryde. It was still dark.
He rolled over quietly to see if Bryde was sleeping.
The lower bunk was empty, the blankets tossed aside. Ronan grabbed his jeans from where they were tossed at the end of his bunk, his jacket from the plastic unicorn head on the wall, and his boots from beside the door.
He stepped quietly into the dark hallway.
Bryde crouched there over a collapsed form. Matthew. One of Matthew’s hands was palm up, and in it was a little figurine of a hawk. He was obviously dead.
“What did you do?” Ronan snarled.
“Correlation is not causation, Ronan Lynch,” Bryde said. Adam appeared briefly at the end of the hall and, just as quick, was gone.
“What did you do?”
Bryde said, “Wake up.”
Ronan woke with a start.
He was in the top bunk in the room he was sharing with Bryde. It was still dark.
He rolled over quietly to see if Bryde was sleeping.
Bryde was already standing by the bunk, eye to eye with Ronan, somehow less like himself, frighteningly close.
He didn’t smile, but he was all teeth. He said, “Whose dream is this?”
Ronan woke with a start.
He was in the top bunk in the room he was sharing with Bryde. Full white winter daylight streamed in the window. It was quiet, but nonetheless Ronan had that feeling one sometimes has on waking, the feeling of having been woken by a sound. In this case, a scream.
He lay there in bed for a few seconds, listening, waiting, and now it sounded instead like a very intense conversation was happening deeper in the house. He listened to it long enough to feel he was awake, or at the very least, that this dream was going to be different from the previous ones. He got dressed and headed out.
There was no one on the first floor, where school supplies spread across the dining room table, so Ronan descended to the basement.
It took him a moment to absorb the full picture.
There was a painting of a woman in a swirling blue dress completely covering twelve of the stacked boxes. Not dreamt. Done with real paint, some of it still a little dark and damp. The desk tucked beside the boxes held bottles of cheap school paints and paper plates with childish smiley faces drawn on them—Hennessy must have been painting with the children. The cheap school colors didn’t seem like they should combine to the sophisticated work on the boxes, but this wasn’t magic, this was Hennessy. This was what she was good at. What she was great at.
Hennessy stood in front of her cardboard mosaic, one hand pressed up against the roses tattooed round her throat, looking at the ground. There was vomit on the ground in front of her.
Bryde was there, blood all up and down one arm with no sign of where it was coming from. He stood silent as Angelica screamed in his face.
The children were all crying.
Katie was curled up small, her arms linked around her leg braces, whimpering. Yesenia was sobbing and occasionally babbling, hoarse when she did. Stephen was trying to look stoic as he watched Angelica let Bryde have it, but his mouth was crumpled and his chin dimpling in a way that reminded Ronan uncomfortably of when Matthew was upset. Wilson and Ana clung to Angelica, faces buried in their mother’s shirt. There was blood on her clothing, too.
“What the hell,” Ronan said, but his words were lost in the cacophony.
“Accidents happen,” Bryde said. “And surely you can tell by looking at her she didn’t mean to do it.”
“It doesn’t matter that it is an accident,” Angelica barked back. “Traffic collisions are accidents—that doesn’t mean I send my children to play in the street!”
“I was only a minute behind her in the dream,” Bryde pointed out. “They were never in danger.”
Angelica swept her arm over the children. “You and I have a very different definition of danger! I saw those things—that thing. I saw it. It …” Her anger had to disappear for a moment as she choked down a horrified half sob.
Hennessy looked up at Ronan, her expression quite calm. But when she blinked, two tears immediately broke free and raced down her cheeks.
Then Ronan got it.
She’d taken out the Lace.
Bryde had dispatched it somehow, but Ronan knew that didn’t really matter in the relative scheme of things. The injury of the Lace wasn’t whatever sparring had caused that blood. It was the mere existence of the Lace. It was that before you saw the Lace, you didn’t know something like the Lace could exist. Especially if you hadn’t known, before that minute, that anything could hate you that much. Especially if you hadn’t known, before that minute, that you could hate yourself that much.