Mister Impossible - Maggie Stiefvater (ereader manga TXT) 📗

boys. He didn’t hate her. He hated that he’d been naïve enough to ever be fooled by her.

And Ronan. Ronan should’ve been the easiest to hate, because Ronan was built for acrimony. He despised people and assumed they despised him, too. He was stubborn, narrow-minded, completely unable to see compromise or nuance. He’d fought Declan before, which was unremarkable; he’d fought everyone. The world against Ronan Lynch, that was his motto. As if the world cared. Niall had, Declan supposed. That was Ronan’s worst sin: idolizing their father. Grow up. But Declan couldn’t hate Ronan for this; now that Declan didn’t have to parent Ronan, he no longer had to constantly compete with a ghost.

Which left Matthew. In person, it seemed impossible to consider hating the youngest Lynch, but on paper, it seemed impossible to not. Out of all of the Lynches, he was the family member who’d taken the most from Declan. Niall had made Declan a liar. Aurora had made him an orphan. Ronan had made him a nag and then, later, a fugitive. But Matthew had taken Declan’s youth. Declan fed him and read to him, drove him to school events and picked him up from friend visits. The orphans Lynch. But at least Ronan grew up and out, toward independence. Matthew didn’t even want to get a driver’s license. And could he live alone, really? He was a dream with a head full of clouds, a dream whose feet kept walking him over waterfalls. Goodbye, distant colleges in interesting places. Goodbye, internship offers from Niall Lynch’s well-connected clients. Goodbye, carefree, single adult life.

Goodbye, whatever Declan Lynch would have grown up to be.

Declan should have hated Matthew.

But he couldn’t. Not jolly, carefree Matthew. Not the innocent chubby kid who tumbled into Declan’s gloomy childhood. Not Matthew, the angelic—

“Not gonna, fartmonger,” Matthew said. “Can’t make me.”

“It wasn’t a request. Buckle your seat belt, we are in a moving vehicle,” Declan said.

“If I died,” Matthew shot back, “couldn’t you just ask Ronan to dream a replacement me?”

“If I did, I’d ask him to dream one who always buckled his seat belt. Do you really want to die in Connecticut?”

The two brothers were in a loaner car one of Niall’s past associates had hooked Declan up with in exchange for the transport of the skittish foreign national currently riding in the trunk with a bottle of water and some potato chips. (Declan didn’t know why the man needed to be moved secretly from DC to Boston, nor did he even consider asking.) Declan had just stopped long enough to make sure the hired muscle he’d arranged to watch their backs in Boston remembered where and when to find them. Then he called the second hired muscle he’d gotten to watch the first hired muscle in case the first one got attacked or compromised in some way. Then he talked to the third hired muscle he’d gotten just in case the first two went wrong. Fail-safes. He believed in fail-safes. You’re a twitchy guy, the third muscle had said. Then, thoughtfully, You looking for a job?

“Maybe I am the replacement,” Matthew continued mulishly.

Declan allowed himself one quarter of one half of a picosecond to imagine what it would be like to make the journey to Boston on his own, feeling guilty for all parts of the picosecond.

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