Call Down the Hawk Read online

  Jordan said, “We need to tell you a story.”

  Parsifal Bauer had reached peak Parsifalness.

  He did not like the apples they had for breakfast. They tasted like nothing, he said. Sandy? she asked. No, he replied. Even sand had a flavor. Did he want her to send for more? No, he said, he had lost his appetite. He did not want to read BMW vehicle registrations on Farooq-Lane’s laptop anymore. The screen was making his eyes tired. Couldn’t he have it in another format? His clothing irritated him. He thought it was the detergent the hotel used when she’d had them do their laundry. He needed it to be washed again, with detergent sourced from elsewhere. Something without dyes, possibly. No, he could not go out with her to pick out new detergent. He was held prisoner in a bathrobe, all other clothing dirty or marred by the hotel’s washing.

  “This Spring Fresh detergent can be delivered in an hour,” Farooq-Lane suggested, tapping through her phone. Guilelessly.

  “The fragrance is not the issue,” Parsifal replied tersely. “Just without dyes.”

  Detergent was secured. Clothing was sent off again. The hotel’s fan was noisy. Could they switch rooms?

  Now Farooq-Lane understood. She was being punished for calling in the old Zed.

  Lock called. “Good work. What are you doing now?”

  She glared at Parsifal, who sat on the end of his sofa bed in his bathrobe and shoes, face expressionless behind his glasses.

  “Waiting for inspiration.” It annoyed her too badly to look at him, so she put in her earbuds and went to stand by the window, looking down at the city below.

  “Nikolenko or Ramsay will be coming to debrief you about that Zed you’ve found,” said Lock.

  “Oh, not Ramsay,” Farooq-Lane said. She didn’t really want Nikolenko, either, but she knew which she’d prefer of the two.

  “Whoever I can pull off the trail over here,” Lock said, not seeming to hear her reluctance. “Also I think we’re getting some agency help soon, so maybe I’ll be able to send both. I’ve got my eye on a Zed here that seems promising. Ask Bauer to keep an eye on his visions. We want to make sure—”

  Something jerked one of her earbuds out of her ear. Farooq-Lane jumped a mile.

  “I cannot wear clothing that smells like this,” Parsifal said.

  “Parsifal,” she snapped. Lock was still talking. “Hold on, I’m …”

  “I can’t wear this,” Parsifal continued.

  This was beyond the pale. “I’m on the phone.”

  “I can hear you’re busy,” Lock said. “Ramsay will let you know when he’s in town.”

  With annoyance, Farooq-Lane hung up and faced Parsifal. He didn’t smell like anything unusual. Possibly like shampoo and fresh laundry. “You are being absolutely impossible today.”

  “Did you tell them to not kill her?”

  She was losing her temper. She could feel it leaving her. Very soon it would be leaving for good. “You heard exactly what I said. How much power do you think I have in this situation, anyway? You and I both knew that not every Zed we brought to them was going to be the one. Why are you slamming on the brakes now?”

  She didn’t even know how much of what she was saying she really believed. She felt like she was being forced to be the devil’s advocate, and that made her angry, too. What did she believe? She believed something bad was coming to the world, and she believed she knew where it was coming from, generally. She believed most people didn’t get a chance to make a difference. She believed that she did. She believed that she didn’t know what else she would be doing now if she wasn’t doing this.

  She believed deep down inside that wasn’t really enough to believe in, and that made her even angrier.

  Parsifal was very agitated now, twisting his long, knobby hands around each other. He was rolling his shoulders, too, aggravated with his clothing in every way. She remembered Ramsay telling her once that you couldn’t trust the Visionaries, not really. They were more on the Zeds’ side than the humans’, he said, because they had more in common at the end of the day. Plus they spent all day dreaming of the Zeds. Couldn’t trust them. She hadn’t given it much thought then, but she remembered it now, as Parsifal rubbed his hands over his arms as if he was cold and worked his fingers into many shapes.

  “The easiest way to save her is to find the Zed who’s actually going to end the world. You can’t do that here in your bathrobe. You can either have another vision, or you can come with me in the car and look for things from your last one.”

  He didn’t agree with her. He just didn’t disagree.

  In the car, they battled again over opera. Parsifal wanted the window rolled down because of the smell of the laundry detergent. He was hungry. None of this looked familiar to him. He was going to be sick. He didn’t like the crackers she got him to settle his stomach. She’d gotten the BMW vehicle registrations printed out, but none of the names rang a bell and it was making him sick to read them while they were moving. He didn’t want to look out the window for a little bit. These houses still didn’t look familiar. No, circling the burned-down hotel again was not going to help. He needed to buy a new shirt. He needed one that was not going to prickle his skin like this one. No, he could not just ignore it. He—

  “I’ve had it,” Farooq-Lane said. “You’re a terrorist.”

  She pulled into a florist’s empty parking lot and wrenched the car into park. He eyed her mulishly.

  “Do you think I want to be doing this?” she demanded. “Don’t you think I wanted life to be different than this?”

  He just sat that way he always did, tall and rigid.

  “My family’s dead, too, you know! And I’m not over here making everyone else’s life impossible!”

  Parsifal’s gaze was heavy on her, and for a minute she thought he might actually say something sympathetic, something un-Parsifalish, but he said, “I’m very tired of you.”

  “You’re very tired of me?”

  “I can’t think with your driving,” he said. “It’s making me sick. I can’t think with you talking to me. If I’m to recognize anything from my vision, it can’t be with you around. It is too much. You’re always so you all the time. You have your drink and your hair and your clothing and your voice and the way you sit with your hand on your leg like that and it’s too much. I’m getting out.”

  “You’re getting out?”

  “I’m walking back to the hotel,” Parsifal said. He pulled the phone charger out of the bottom of his phone. “Yes. This is better. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?”

  “For now. Bis später.” He let himself out of the car. He used all ten fingers to close the car door with extreme quietude, which felt like another passive-aggressive comment on her noisiness.

  Farooq-Lane felt her anger boil.

  She hadn’t been angry at her family’s death. She hadn’t been angry about any of Ramsay’s stupid comments. She hadn’t been angry when Nikolenko treated her like a soft child. She hadn’t been angry when she realized they were going to kill that old Zed for nothing. She hadn’t been angry over flight delays, ruined shoes, bad food, aggressive drivers, anything.

  But she was out of her mind with rage now. She let out a furious sob and laid on the horn. It blared for several long seconds, bringing a staff member momentarily to the large window at the florist’s, and then she released it.

  The staff member shook their head and vanished.

  So did Parsifal.

  This was how the story began: There would be thirteen Hennessys, and then it would be over. Limited edition, signed by the artist, discontinued.

  The thirteenth was the one that would kill her, they told Ronan, and they agreed that seemed fitting. Thirteen was a devilish number for a life lived devilishly. They showed him their throats, their matching tattoos. Count the flowers, they said. Room for thirteen total, they said, thirteen lovely blossoms to create a deadly choker. Room for two more before they died of excess beauty.

  Twelve: name to come. Hennessy u
sed to name them, they told Ronan. After Alba, though, she said they could just pick their own names off baby name sites because she wasn’t their mother.

  Eleven: nameless. Forever nameless. In a way, they said, it was good that Ronan already knew their secret when he arrived, because it spared them having to make up a lie about why there was a dead girl in the bathroom. She’d never had a chance to name herself, or to get frustrated with living the same life as a half-dozen other girls, or to breathe air.

  Ten: Trinity. Sweet Trinity, so down on herself you just wanted to hug her or punch the shit out of her. Hennessy had dreamt her in the driveway. She had been so wasted and had waited so long to dream that she’d left a trail of black from the car she fell out of to the patch of driveway she finally passed out in. Trinity had come into being just a few feet away, already smeared in black.

  Nine: Octavia. Bitter Octo. She’d hated every single one of the other girls. Hennessy had been alone when she dreamt her, nowhere near any of the other girls, in a stolen souped-up Challenger. Ordinarily, the girls told Ronan, Hennessy let them know when she was going to dream, or it was obvious, because of the what-did-you-call-it? Nightwash. But not this night. Without warning she’d gone off the radar, stolen a car, dreamt a copy—actually, it was hard to tell the order of events, it could have been the other way around—and had only been found after several hours by Jordan and June. If Octo had been friendlier with the other girls, they would’ve told her which pills you could mix with alcohol.

  Eight: Jay. Hennessy had hated Jay. When she’d picked the name Jay, Hennessy had demanded she change it. Because it was Hennessy’s mother’s name, sort of, the girls explained to Ronan. We don’t remember her well. Hennessy doesn’t talk much about her. I remember her, one of the girls said. I think. Don’t you have Hennessy’s memories? Ronan asked. Most of them, the girls said. After a massive fight with Hennessy, Jay passed out in the swimming pool and never woke up. Brooklyn thought Hennessy killed her. Jordan said that if Hennessy was capable of killing any of them, she’d be living in a one-bedroom condo with a sugar daddy by now.

  Seven: Brooklyn. It sometimes seemed like the girls were colored by whatever Hennessy was feeling when she dreamt them, though they might’ve been reading too much into it. When Brooklyn came to be, Hennessy was going through a season of joylessly burning her way through partners of every gender, making up for quality with quantity. A trail of exterminated hearts rubbled behind her. Nurture or nature? Brooklyn loved a good make-out session.

  Six: Alba. The girls told Ronan they didn’t know what the dream was that produced the copies. Hennessy had to be in it, obviously, since that was what she always brought back with her. She always has the same dream? he asked. Yes. And she can’t have it without bringing herself back? Yes. That’s why she sleeps in twenty-minute bursts. I thought, he said, that eventually you die if you don’t sleep a full night’s sleep. I think, they said, that is true. But it hadn’t been sleep deprivation that had killed Alba; she’d totaled one of Bill Dower’s cars before they moved out. Official story was that Hennessy had miraculously walked away without a scratch, and in a way, that was true.

  Five: Farrah. Stupid Farrah, the girls told Ronan. Stupid Farrah fell in love and he … well. Didn’t love her back? Ronan suggested, and they’d laughed. Stupid Farrah, the girls said. He was, like, forty-five, and married, and Farrah wasn’t even Farrah to him, she was Hennessy. Nothing about Hennessy attracted real, uncorrupted affection. It was never going to be white horses and satin, even if Farrah was capable of love, which none of them were; had she looked in the mirror?

  Four: Madox. Hennessy had nearly been caught dreaming Madox. They’d still been living at home then. Bob Dower had just gotten his new girlfriend/soon-to-be-new wife and all the girls were pissed about it. They’d been pissed about everything, actually: moving from London to Pennsylvania, going through puberty, being three girls living as one, living as one who was constantly in a bad mood trying to grow boobs on twenty minutes of sleep at a time. Hennessy had gotten the flu, fallen asleep on the couch, bled through her favorite pair of jeans, and manifested Madox in one fell swoop. June had had to smash the urn containing Bob Dower’s father’s ashes in the kitchen to create a diversion. Madox had been born angry; wouldn’t anyone have been?

  Three: June. Poor June. She was marred forever in Hennessy’s mind by being the girl who proved that the copies weren’t a one-time occurrence. It wasn’t like Hennessy hadn’t known, though, deep down. Because after the first time it happened, she’d started setting that timer every time she closed her eyes. It had taken her years to fuck that up, and June was her punishment.

  Two: Jordan. The first would always be a miracle and a curse. The girls didn’t know how long it was after Jay died that Jordan came along, but they knew it was within days. Close enough that Hennessy had asked Jordan to go to the funeral for her, and Jordan had. She didn’t want to go to her own mother’s funeral? Ronan asked. You really don’t get how Hennessy feels about Jay, the girls said. Anyway, of course Jordan would do it. Jordan would do anything for Hennessy, and vice versa. They were basically the same person, after all.

  One: Hennessy. Who was there to say who Jordan Hennessy would have been if she hadn’t split? If Jay hadn’t died? Maybe there was a version of her in art school now. Maybe there was a version who was too good for art school, maybe there was a version of her who had already stormed out of her classes and was grinning from a London studio dripping with celebrities and cameras. Maybe there was a version of her who believed in love, maybe there was a version of her who gave a toss about anything, maybe there was a version of her who slept eight hours a night. Or maybe not. Look at J. H. Hennessy. Sometimes it was better to just pour a glass of vodka on the grave and accept that the heart had always churned poisoned blood. The girls tapped their drinks together and grudgingly agreed.

  Every version of Jordan Hennessy was probably born to die.

  After the girls told him their story, Ronan didn’t say what he was thinking, which was this: Jordan Hennessy was a liar.

  He didn’t know why she was, and he didn’t know exactly how far down the lie went, but he’d spent enough time with Declan to know one. Liar, liar.

  Those copies weren’t killing her.

  Ronan had dreamt a copy of himself before. It had been an accident. It was long after he had begun to get a handle on dreaming but far before he’d begun to get a handle on his life, and he’d been trying for too much at once. The stakes were high: Ronan had been assembling materials to bury the reputation of the man who’d had Niall Lynch killed and make sure that he never came after the Lynch family again. Ronan had a filthy laundry list to check off in the dream: paperwork, photos, and electronics. The photos were detailed. Distasteful. Some of the materials had been more awful to acquire than others. He’d managed to manifest some with just a nudge of his subconscious, a desire to be holding it in his hand already, but the photos were stubbornly blank. He couldn’t make them work without manifesting the hideous scene within the dream, before snapping a photo of it with a phone.

  The images were meant to be awful. Breathtakingly awful. Blackmailing someone of Colin Greenmantle’s clout required more than standard-issue skin pics. They needed to feature body horror and youth. He needed to bring back a body part in an envelope. He needed premeditation documented in texted photos.

  He had to live it to manifest it.

  Ronan had felt as if he would never be clean again.

  Even in the dream he was disgusted with himself, and with that disgust and shame came his old enemies, the night horrors. Ronan’s night horrors were a lot like the things he liked to dream about—they had wings, beaks, claws—but with an important difference: They hated him.

  They’d come for him just as he’d bundled up all his foul evidence in his arms, prepared to wake with it. He’d been faced with a choice: wake without manifesting anything and know that he would have to try this all over again … or give the night horrors somethin
g else to aim for while he woke with the goods.

  He’d asked the dream to make another Ronan. The dream had manifested one so quickly that it was as if it had been waiting for him to ask.

  The night horrors fell upon him.

  Ronan remembered seeing himself attacked from the outside, everything about the copy’s reactions precisely the same as his would have been. The sounds were the same. His body buckled the same. His hands clawed out the same. His face looked at Ronan and understood why he had done it, the same as Ronan would have for another Ronan.

  “Get the fuck out,” the other Ronan had snarled, in Ronan’s voice. “Don’t let it be for noth—”

  Ronan had woken.

  He’d woken with an armful of disgusting photos, paperwork, and electronics. And on the carpet beside him was another Ronan Lynch. Bloody, bent nearly backward, his spine a horror-bridge, a hand pressed to a neck wound that would never close, gasping.

  It had taken him so long to die.

  It had been one of the worst things Ronan had ever seen.

  But it hadn’t taken anything from him physically.

  Dreaming copies shouldn’t be killing Hennessy. So she was either faking that she was dying, or something else was killing her.

  But he didn’t say any of this to her dreams. He just told them he had to talk to Hennessy herself. One of them—he couldn’t tell any of them apart except for Jordan and June—warned: “She’ll just be sleeping or cussing right now.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Ronan said.

  The girls had taken her to one of the mansion’s many bedrooms, selected, presumably, because it had blinds. They were drawn, and the room was the peculiar gray of a blinkered room in full daylight. It was silent when he let himself in. Like every other room he’d seen in the mansion, it was enormous, ridiculous. Because of his time at Aglionby and his friend Gansey, he’d seen plenty of wealth in his high school years, but it had never looked like this. The windows had satin love seats built into their sills. Three zebra rugs added dimension to the floor, which was otherwise covered with high-piled white carpet. White sculptures of voluptuous women poured urns of water into troughs that led into an en suite bathroom; stagnant water was gray and scummy in them.