A hero. It was an unfamiliar concept. Ronan had been the villain for so long, if he had been anything. The one in trouble, the one written up on the slip, the one being chased, the one being accused. And before that he had been the young dreamer. Secret. Forever. Now he was a hero to a family of young dreamers who would never have to feel alone.

Both Bryde and Ronan jumped as they heard a trilling sound. It was Ronan’s dreamt phone. He’d nearly forgotten he still had it; he hadn’t used it since that first call to Declan.

And it was Declan now. There was no way to identify the caller visually, of course, since the dreamt phone just looked like a tunnel piercing. But nevertheless, something about the ring strongly implied that it was Declan.

It was a jarring interruption. Declan belonged to another world, a different timeline, but with a glance at Bryde, Ronan tapped his finger against his ear to answer it. “Deklo.”

“Good, it worked.”

Ronan said, “How did you do it?”

“I had to get back the car I was in when you called before and find your call in the previous calls in its log. I couldn’t type in that gibberish, of course, that showed up as your number, but I could just ask it to return your call.”

“Wait, what car were you in before?”

Declan didn’t bother answering this. “I want you to come to Mass this weekend.”

It took Ronan a moment to parse the request. It was a quite ordinary one, one Declan had made countless times over the past several years, resulting in Ronan rolling his eyes and leaving very early in the morning in order to make it to eleven o’clock Mass with his brothers on the other side of the state. Now it felt like someone else’s memories. A dream.

It occurred to Ronan that something bad might have happened. “What’s going on? Is Matthew okay?”

“Family meeting,” Declan said, a Declanism that never failed to rankle. Family meeting meant Declan shaking his finger at one of the other Lynch brothers.

“About what?”

“About the future.”

“Are you fucking serious about Mass? That’s in two days.”

“I have faith in you.”

“A lot of people are on our tail.”

“You tell us the church, the location, we’ll be there.”

Bryde was waiting, eyebrow raised.

“My brothers want to see me,” Ronan told him. It was making his pulse jack up for some reason, the thought of it, or the thought of telling Bryde about it. He couldn’t tell which. “This weekend.”

Declan asked, “Who are you talking to? Is that Bryde?”

“We have a date with Ilidorin,” Bryde said in a low voice.

“I have to think about it,” Ronan told the phone. “I’m not close to Boston.”