Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

“They loved that, of course,” Jordan said, with her usual grin.

No, that was probably what Declan liked the very best about all of this. Never in his life would anyone have accused Declan Lynch of being an optimist, but he had to admit that he was starting to see the perks. Things might be okay, he thought. Jordan and Matthew were dreams, yes, but as long as Hennessy and Ronan were alive, they could live their own lives. And if something happened to Hennessy or Ronan, now Declan knew that sweetmetals existed in the world to wake them up. Even if he couldn’t immediately get his hands on one, he no longer had to fear losing his entire remaining family in one go; he had recourse. Things could be okay. Things were okay. He’d never felt that way before.

He liked it very, very much.

As the three of them pushed out of the museum into the chilly day, his phone rang. He held up a finger to the others to let them know he’d catch up at the car in a minute, and he answered it.

“Hello?”

Adam Parrish said, “We really need to talk about Bryde.”

The city woke up,” Adam said.

“Back that up a moment,” Declan replied. “Explain to me what that means.”

He’d found Adam in line for a celebrity chef’s food truck in Harvard Square, an establishment that served gourmet waffles with savory toppings for fourteen dollars a pop. Adam introduced the other students waiting with him as his good college friends, but Declan was dubious. The way they all stood together with Adam reminded him a little of a computer wallpaper he’d seen at the school office, a big shepherd dog standing with a bunch of ducklings huddled around its legs. Probably the photo was supposed to be cute, but at the time, Declan had thought about how unrewarding and one-directional the effort must be for the dog. This feeling of Declan’s had only been underlined when the friend group discovered the food truck was cash only and began to wail, forcing Adam to patiently count out bills from his wallet in return for waffles and IOUs.

Adam had changed since their time together at Aglionby Academy, Declan thought. Old Adam never had any money. And old Adam would’ve scathingly pointed out the large CASH ONLY sign tacked to the truck rather than come to his wealthy friends’ rescue.

“I thought Cambridge was dead before this,” Adam said, leading Declan briskly through the Harvard campus. They’d left Adam’s ducklings eating in order to speak more privately, and now that he was out of sight of them, Adam ate his fancy waffle on the way, perfunctorily, one bite after another, until it was all gone, without any sign of enjoyment. “No ley energy. That’s why Ronan went straight to nightwash here.”

“What is it you wanted me to see?” Declan asked.

“We’re not there yet. I don’t use it like him, but I can feel the ley line, too. I use it if I scry or read cards.” Glancing behind him, Adam led Declan out of Harvard Yard to Oxford Street. There, he slowed his pace, but Declan could not yet see anything unusual. It was all quaint and scenic: red brick, white trim, black trees, blue skies. “I couldn’t really do any of that after coming here. Like I said, the city was dead. Those tarot readings you saw were just for show. I was just reading people. Parlor tricks. Fake magic. But lately I’ve been feeling these … I don’t know. Pulses. Like power surges. Or heartbeats.”

Declan wasn’t sure he liked the sound of the last bit. Power surges sounded clinical and manageable. Heartbeats sounded living, and living things were unpredictable and hard to control.

“And then something really happened last night,” Adam said. “Look here.”

They faced a more modern building labeled SCIENCE CENTER. Casting a furtive glance up and down the street, Adam crouched beside a concrete bench built into the wall. Reaching beneath it, he scraped out a large handful of debris.

Then he showed it to Declan.

To Declan’s surprise, it was not leaf litter, but beetles. Some were small, ordinary-looking insects, black and unremarkable. Others were huge and spotted, with the portentous grace of elephants. Some had massive forked antlers. Others were brilliantly blue, with galaxies of stars glittering through the color.

Declan did not have to be told they were not native to Cambridge.

“These are the Rockefeller beetles. Some of them. Do you know what those are? There’s one hundred thousand of them on display in the Museum of Natural History just over there.” Adam plucked one from his handful and showed it to Declan. The bullet-shaped beetle was ferociously green. It also had a perfect little hole straight through it when he held it up to the sun. “That’s where the pin would go, to hold it to the mount.”

“Dreams,” Declan said.

Adam nodded grimly.

“Whatever happened, this pulse, it was strong enough to wake up these dreams. Long enough for them to find a way out of their cases in the museum to get over here. Not long enough to keep them awake.”

“How did you find out about this?”

Adam carefully swept the beetles back under the bench. “I was doing readings and I got lost in one of the cards when it surged. After I got myself back, I came out looking for where it was coming from, just in time to see them crawling across the road here.”

Lost himself. Got himself back. There were entire emotional tomes in between those words.

“All right,” Declan said. “So the city woke up. For a while.” He hadn’t told Adam about the sweetmetals, and Paranoid Declan was loath to give away more information, but he asked, carefully, “Why do you think it has anything to do with Ronan? Could it be from a power source an outsider’s bringing in?”

Adam frowned at him, and Declan was nearly certain he