Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

began to feel ill, and presumably, less and less time before it eventually would kill him.

“I’m getting worse,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Bryde said.

“Why even bother with me, then?”

“Because it is not just you. This mountain city used to be alive with ley energy. Did you see the river we drove beside for dozens of miles, the river this city straddles? It should be flowing with energy. This should be a mountain town of dreamers. But it fades, like the entire world fades. It breathes more and more slowly, and no one is listening to mark the end of its pulse. Few, I suppose. Few are listening.”

Hennessy asked, “Hold up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of kicking ass, taking names, so on, so forth, but if we’re all going to bite it eventually because the world’s dying, why save anyone from the Mods? Is it sport to you?”

“It’s not sport to me.” Bryde kept standing over Ronan. “What do you feel?”

“I can’t do that,” Ronan said. “I’ll never be able to do that. Not while I’m awake.”

“Don’t tell me my business. Not while you’re bleeding black. I have been at this for so much longer than you.” Bryde looked out the big glass windows at the trees at the edge of the parking lot, his eyes narrowed, his profile prickling that thing inside Ronan, that feeling of serendipity, of knowing, not-knowing, knowing, not-knowing, and then Bryde asked, “Do you two want to know what I was doing before you?”

Hennessy and Ronan exchanged a look.

“It wasn’t dreamers I was saving,” Bryde said. “It was ley lines.”

Good, thought Ronan. Deep inside him he felt a certain peace, even alongside the turmoil of the nightwash. Good. This was even better than what he had hoped. Yes, good. Long ago, Ronan had helped to wake the single ley line that ran beneath his forest. He had not known this was what he wanted of Bryde until he said it.

“And what were you saving the ley lines from?” Hennessy asked.

Bryde laughed. It was a laugh like his smile, contained and cunning. “Every plugged-in machine, every flat-black road, every stacked-up suburb, every humming cell. Choked and flattened and drowned and suppressed. Can you imagine a world where you could dream anywhere?”

“God,” Hennessy said.

Ronan pressed his ear into his shoulder as he felt the nightwash trickle down his neck. “Why aren’t we doing that?”

“You,” Bryde answered simply. “It’s not a game for the reckless. It’s not a game for those who go to sleep and bring everything they see back with them. It is a game that requires control, and right now you two have precious little of it. Look at your face. Feel your guts turning to grime, Ronan? Your game is this: Stop sucking. That is hard enough for you right now.”

“Hey,” Hennessy said. “I love a good roast, but come on now.”

Bryde waved a hand. “Why do you think we stopped here? When you two dream, there are consequences for every other dreamer who is living a little too far away from a ley line. Do you think you’ve killed anyone with your casual dreaming? Do you think you’ve pulled the ley line out from beneath a dreamer who needed it more than you? Has anyone died in nightwash because of some plaything you pulled from a dream?”

It was too easy to imagine. All the enormous things Ronan had dreamt over the years. All the living creatures, all the noisy machines. An entire forest. A brother. He couldn’t quite bear to think too hard about it. Not now, not with the nightwash eating away at him. Guilt was never too far away anyway.

“You can’t hide away from the consequences of who you are,” Bryde said. “Don’t laugh at me, Hennessy. How much power do you think it required to pull out all those girls with your face? You cannot do this carelessly. You’re not children anymore.”

Nightwash trickled out of Ronan’s nostril. Hennessy threw her remaining fries back over the counter. They didn’t look at each other.

“You’re right,” Ronan said finally. “Now I really do feel shittier.”

“Good,” Bryde replied. “Lesson over.”

As best the FBI could tell, Nathan Farooq-Lane had killed twenty-three people.

The twenty-three victims had no connection to each other, at least not as far as the investigators had managed to work out. Clarisse Match, grocery clerk and single mother. Wes Gerfers, retired dentist and amateur poet. Tim Mistovich, grad student and internet troll. So on, so forth. They were from all different walks of life. Different professions. Different generations. The only thing they had in common was that they’d all twenty-three been found with an open pair of scissors somewhere at the crime scene.

Twenty-three was a bad number.

But it wasn’t the worst number, in Carmen Farooq-Lane’s opinion. This one was the worst: sixteen. That was the age her brother had been when he’d killed his first victim. He’d been a junior. She’d been a freshman. What had she been doing while he was stalking his first kill? She’d been joining clubs, that’s what. Chess club. Art club. Debate club. Economics club. Mixed martial arts club. Young Citizens for Abolishing Hunger club. If there was a club at their high school, Carmen Farooq-Lane had joined it and was a model member.

You have a bizarre fascination with running in packs, Nathan had told her once as they walked to school together. They need you, Carmen. You don’t need them.

In spring of her freshman year, spring of Nathan’s junior year, the school’s star quarterback Jason Mathai had disappeared. The day after he didn’t come to school, the janitor found four pairs of scissors, one at each of the school’s main entrances. Open, like a cross. Later, investigators would try to understand why there had been four at this first murder when there was only one at each of the others. But of all the puzzles surrounding her brother, this one made sense to Farooq-Lane. This was his