Hennessy didn’t know what she’d come here to do, but she’d done this now. She understood that she wanted Jordan to hate her. She didn’t know why that would be better than anything else, but she knew with certainty in this moment, that was the goal.

“I wanted to see your face to make sure it was true,” Hennessy said.

She shrugged.

She could feel her shoulders shrugging even though she hadn’t thought about it.

It was like she had manifested something from a dream and was paralyzed, watching herself from above. The thing she had manifested was this awful Hennessy trying her best to make Jordan break and scream for her to leave.

“This is what you came from,” Hennessy said, gesturing to herself, “and you’re using it to become a craft painter and make babies with that white bro? Guess I should’ve given my mother’s memories some credit. They were a safeguard against suburbia.”

Quietly, Jordan asked, “Why do you always do this?”

Because Hennessy always dreamt of the Lace, that was why, because it was always the same dream, always the same.

“Enjoy your nightmare,” she said.

Chapter 31

Declan remembered the worst dream he’d ever had.

It was his last year at Aglionby. He was passing his classes. He had dragged Ronan through his classes with the help of Ronan’s friend Gansey. He had bought Christmas gifts for Matthew. He had his internships lined up and the move planned to the town house his dead father had left him. He had done the math on the money left in the will and had worked out how much he needed to make and how much he was allowed to spend each year in order to continue to live in the way he thought would be all right to live. He was dating a girl named Ashleigh, after breaking up with a girl named Ashley. Ashleigh was thinking of going to school in DC to be closer to him. Declan was eyeing a less attentive Ashlee to replace her. He was doing his best to keep the noose of malevolent business associates his father had made for them from tightening before he graduated.

That was not the worst dream. That was the waking world.

The worst dream was this: It was nearly Christmas. There was frost on the colorless grass around the farmhouse at the Barns. Niall had just come back from a December business trip and now he was presenting gifts to his sons, just as he did in real life.

He gave Matthew a puppy that was only alive when Matthew was holding it (“I’m never gonna put it down,” declared dream Matthew).

He gave Ronan a textbook with no words in it (“My favorite kind,” Ronan had said).

He gave Declan a box … and in the box was the ability to dream things into life.