But Bryde just threw open the car door. Crisp cool air flooded in. It was a lovely day. It was the sort of day that caused people to put coats on dogs and take long scenic walks. It was the sort of day it had been when Ronan had last visited Adam at Harvard. It was the sort of day that Ronan would have used to repair fences and siding if he had been back at the Barns.

It was also the sort of day for Ronan and Bryde to sit in the dried leaves behind the car, leaning up against it, unfolding their dream masks. Chainsaw flapped up to a tree above them and waited.

“What do you feel?” Bryde asked.

Strange. It felt strange to do this without Hennessy. After this, Ronan vowed, he’d go back for her. He’d fix this. He’d fix her.

But that wasn’t the kind of feeling Bryde meant. Ronan put his hands onto the ground to feel the ley line, but that made him think too much about how Adam sometimes did that when he was scrying. He draped them over his knees instead as he listened.

The ley line was there. Not overwhelming, but present. Sufficient. He could feel its low, slow pulse trying to sync with his heartbeat, or vice versa. “It’s all right. I’ve never been to the dam. How are we supposed to know how to destroy it?”

“I know what it’s like. I’ll show you in the dream.”

“And you want us to dream something here to destroy it way down there?” But Ronan answered his own question. “It has to be something that can travel.”

“Yes,” Bryde agreed. “Like the dolphins for the transmission line. Like the sundogs you sent to save your brothers.”

His voice had no bitterness. Declan had tried to get them killed, but he didn’t spit the word brothers at Ronan. Instead, his voice, if anything, became softer on that word. Soft on brothers. Hard on sundogs. The entire sundogs episode felt like a very long time ago. Ronan and Hennessy had been in Lindenmere, Ronan’s dreamt forest, trying to banish the Lace from Hennessy’s mind with the help of Bryde, who had been just a voice to them at that point. Bryde had disappeared in a hurry as the Moderators began to move in on other dreamers, and Ronan had received that fraught call from Declan that Matthew was in danger. Ronan still remembered the absolute terror he’d felt as he begged his forest to use the power of the ley line to produce the sundogs. He remembered how he’d sped across the state toward Declan and Matthew, the exact opposite of what he was doing now. And he remembered clearly arriving to find his dreamt sundogs had done what he’d asked. Saved his brothers’ lives.

The exact opposite of what Declan had just tried to do.