Then Matthew was through the security system and facing the empty, wooded country road and the mailbox on an ordinary, chilly day in the present. There was a faded wood cabinet behind the mailbox for the delivery drivers to leave parcels in, but there were no parcels today. Instead, there were a few pieces of junk mail (boring) and an art museum postcard addressed to Declan (even more boring).
Lame. His sour mood remained.
He plunged back through the security system.
This time it gave him a memory he didn’t want at all, that was just him having to leave Aurora behind in Ronan’s dreamt forest Cabeswater before it was destroyed. The memory hadn’t been bad when it happened, even though Matthew never liked saying goodbye to her, but it was terrible now because he knew it was the last time he saw her before she died.
She wasn’t your real mother, Matthew told himself. She wasn’t even Declan’s real mother. She was just a dreamt copy.
But it never made him feel any better, so he was swiping a tear away when he emerged in front of Declan again. This infuriated him, too.
“Was that worth it?” Declan asked drily.
Matthew handed over the mail. “No groceries. We’re out of peanut butter.”
“There’s a man in Orange who I think will sell us a Sentra for cash. Then we’ll be able to do some shop …” Declan’s voice trailed off as he turned the postcard over.
“Is it from Ronan?” asked Matthew. It didn’t seem very Ronan-y. The postcard featured a painting of a woman dancing with the words ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, BOSTON, MA, printed over it.
Declan didn’t answer; his cheeks were a little flushed.
“What is it?” Matthew could hear himself sounding a little whingy and was annoyed. Stop being a kid, he told himself.
Declan was smiling. He was trying not to, but he was. He had ironed his voice flat, though, so that if one hadn’t seen his face, one would think it was just a normal day, normal mail. “How do you feel about a trip to Boston?”
Matthew looked at the dreamt fireflies still winking in and out around them. Ronan’s dreams. Just like him.
“Anywhere’s better than here,” Matthew said.
“Finally,” Declan replied, “something we agree on.”
What do you feel?” Bryde asked.
“Shitty,” Ronan replied.
“I said what, not how. Hennessy?”
“I feel nothing,” Hennessy said. “Except the feel of my arteries closing in anticipation. Smell that grease. I love it.”
Bryde shut the car door. “This isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“It’s not going to make me feel worse,” Ronan replied.
“If life’s taught me anything,” Hennessy said, “it’s that you can always feel worse.”
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the three dreamers had left the Museum of Living History. They were parked in front of Benny’s Dairy Bar, a decades-old fast-food joint located somewhere in West Virginia. The sun burned golden over the worn-down mountains surrounding the town. The dreamers’ shadows stretched thin across the faded lot.
Ronan was starving.
Bryde shot an attentive look around at their surroundings as Hennessy shivered and Ronan spat. The sparse parking lot, the decaying town, the quiet road. He was looking for Moderators. Moderators were why they were here instead of bedded down on a ley line; they’d barely left the day before when Bryde had suddenly ordered Hennessy to send Burrito in a completely different direction. He’d gotten information, somehow, in the mysterious way he sometimes did, that Moderators were close. They couldn’t risk leading them to their destination. Safer to stay in the invisible car until the coast was clear.
Which meant they’d spent the past twenty-four hours dozing in the car and driving in circles.
“Get down here,” Ronan said to Chainsaw, who had flapped to a nearby tree.
“Let’s get this exercise over with,” Bryde said. “This entire process is merely for demonstration, so I hope you are in an educational frame of mind.”
Ding! cried the door as the three dreamers entered Benny’s Dairy Bar, where they found booths bolted to the walls, hard tables bolted to the floor, soft locals bolted to seats, thin burgers bolted to hands. Above the counter was a menu board without any pretense or spin: HAMBURGER. CHEESEBURGER. 2 PATTY. 3 PATTY. FRIES. DOUBLE FRY. SOFT SERVE 1. SOFT SERVE 2. Behind the counter, employees wore purple Benny’s T-shirts. Golden oldies played overhead. Something something Mrs. Brown has a lovely daughter something something. It had a vague bleach smell, which might have otherwise turned Ronan off. But not right then. He instead thought only about the other smell: Grease. Salt. Food.
As they stepped in, everyone in the restaurant stared. Six diners. Two standing in line at the counter. One at the pickup area. A cashier. Probably another few employees in the back. Witnesses, that was what they called them, people who would remember a Black girl in a crochet crop top and leather, a dude with a shaved head and a raven now back on his shoulder, and a hawk-nosed man with an expression that suggested he’d never felt fear in his life.
This was why they never stopped at restaurants.
Hennessy held out her hands grandly. “This is a stickup.”
Bryde sighed heavily and fished one of his dreamt silver orbs out of the pocket of his gray jacket. At one of the tables, a teen was already lifting a cell phone to take a video or photo of the newcomers.
Bryde said, very simply, “No.”
With a gentle flick of his wrist, he tossed the orb. He didn’t have many. He said they were “expensive,” and Ronan believed it. Ronan wouldn’t have known the first thing about dreaming them into being—he would have been too afraid to. Because they messed with emotions, and they twisted thoughts, and they erased memories, some more permanently than others. Ronan was uneasy dreaming anything that altered free will; the bewildering security system at the Barns was the furthest he was willing to go. Bryde’s orbs, on the
