This was his father’s DNA, he was sure of it. Niall had felt no compunction about going on trips and leaving his family behind. Fuck you, he thought. Then: I hate you.

(How he wished that was true.)

Matthew was still going on. “If I were a replacement, I wouldn’t even know, would I?”

“Mary, please strike me deaf until the state line,” Declan said, checking his mirrors, changing lanes, driving safely. He felt Matthew was taking all this a bit far. Declan had put his identity crises on hold multiple times for the greater good. Matthew had only been asked to do it once.

“Did you hear a thump?” Matthew asked. “From the back?”

“No,” Declan said. “Eat your snacks.”

“Why did I have to go through puberty?” Matthew picked back up where he’d left off. “If I had to be a dream, why couldn’t I have superpowers? Why di—”

There was a phone ringing from somewhere in the car, which ordinarily would have annoyed Declan, but in this case relieved him.

“Turn your phone down,” Declan said.

“I don’t have a phone anymore,” Matthew whined. “You made me throw it out.” He said it in the most sing-song-younger-brother-annoying way possible. You MADE me THROW it OUT.

Oh, right. But Declan didn’t have a phone anymore, either. He’d just thrown out his burner phone at the rest station and was intending to pick up another one after he got to Boston. He wanted badly to pretend that this was evidence of the return of safe, paranoid Declan, but he knew better. This was just what Foolish Declan did to justify this insane trip north. He was going to get his car back. Right.

“Then what’s ringing?” It was too loud to be coming from the trunk, so it couldn’t have belonged to their secret passenger.

“Dur, there, it’s that,” Matthew said, tapping on the loaner car’s radio display.

“I can’t read that—I’m driving. What does it say?”

“Connected phone has an incoming call.”

“There is no connected phone.”

Matthew’s voice was dubious. “I think you ought to look.”

Declan spared a glance. INCOMING CALL FROM, said the display. And then it displayed something that was not quite a number and not quite a name. The something made Declan’s mind reel and bend in on itself to even glance at it.

He hit the button on the steering wheel to accept the call.

“How are you doing this?” he demanded.

“So you’re not dead,” said a voice through the car’s speakers.

“Ronan!” Matthew said.

Declan felt the usual feeling he got with Ronan: Good news, it was Ronan on the other end of the phone. Bad news, it was Ronan on the other end of the phone.

“How do you like it?” Ronan asked. “I call it the MEGAPHONE, all caps.”