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Call Down The Hawk Exclusive Excerpt
Call Down The Hawk Exclusive Excerpt
SCHOLAST IC PRE S S • N E W YO R K
T
his is going to be a story about the Lynch brothers.
There were three of them, and if you didn’t like
one, try another, because the Lynch brother others
found too sour or too sweet might be just to your taste. The
Lynch brothers, the orphans Lynch. All of them had been made
by dreams, one way or another. They were handsome devils,
down to the last one.
They looked after themselves. Their mother, Aurora, had
died the way some dreams did, gruesomely, blamelessly, unex-
pectedly. Their father, Niall, had been killed or murdered,
depending on how human you considered him. Were there other
Lynches? It seemed unlikely. Lynches appeared to be very good
at dying.
Dreams are not the safest thing to build a life on.
Because the Lynch brothers had been in danger for so much of
their lives, they’d each developed methods of mitigating threats.
Declan, the eldest, courted safety by being as dull as possible.
He was very good at it. In all things— school, extracurriculars,
dating—he invariably chose the dullest option. He had a real
gift for it; some forms of boring suggest that the wearer, deep
down inside, might actually be a person of whimsy and nuance,
but Declan made certain to practice a form of boring that sug-
gested that, deep down inside, there was an even more boring
version of him. Declan was not invisible, because invisible had
C
reatures of all kinds had begun to fall asleep.
The cat was the most dramatic. It was a beautiful
animal, if you liked cats, with a dainty face and long,
cottony fur, the kind that seemed like it would melt away into
liquid sugar. It was a calico, which under normal circumstances
would mean it was certainly not an it, but rather a she. Calico
had to be inherited from two X chromosomes. Perhaps that rule
didn’t apply here, though, in this comely rural cottage nearly no
one knew about. Forces other than science held domain in this
place. The calico might not even be a cat at all. It was c at-shaped,
but so were some birthday cakes.
It had watched them kill him.
Caomhán Browne had been his name. Was still his name,
really. Like good boots, identities outlived those who wore them.
They had been told he was dangerous, but he’d thrown every-
thing but what they’d feared at them. A tiny end table. A plump
and faded floral recliner. A stack of design magazines. A f lat-
screen television of modest size. He’d actually stabbed Ramsay
with the crucifix from the hallway wall, which Ramsay found
funny even during the act of it. Holy smokes, he’d said.
One of the women wore lambskin dress-for-success heeled
boots and there was now an unbelievable amount of blood on
them. One of the men was prone to migraines, and he could feel
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R
onan Lynch was about to end the world.
His world, anyway. He was ending one and starting
another. At the beginning of this road trip would be
one Ronan Lynch, and at the end, there would be another.
“Here’s the situation,” Declan said. This was a classic Declan
way to start a conversation. Other hits included Let’s focus on the
real action item and This is what it’s going to take to close this deal and In
the interest of clearing the air. “I would have no problem with you driv-
ing my car if you would keep it under ninety.”
“And I’d have no problem with riding in your car if you’d
keep it over geriatric,” Ronan replied.
It was early November; the trees were handsome; the sky was
clear; excitement was in the air. The three brothers debated in a
Goodwill parking lot; those entering and leaving stared. They
were an e ye-catchingly mismatched threesome: Ronan, with his
ominous boots and ominous expression; Declan, with his per-
fectly controlled curls and dutiful gray suit; Matthew, with his
outstandingly ugly checked pants and cheerfully blue puffer coat.
Ronan continued, “There are stains that spread faster than
you drive. If you drive, it’ll take fourteen years to get there.
Seventeen. Forty. One hundred. We’ll be driving to your funeral
by the end.”
The Lynch brothers were on the first road trip they’d been
on since their parents died. They’d made it fifteen minutes from
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T
here was a voice in Ronan’s dream.
At night, we used to see stars. You could see by starlight back then, after
the sun went down. Hundreds of headlights chained together in the sky,
good enough to eat, good enough to write legends about, good enough to
launch men at.
The voice was unavoidable and natural, like air, like weather.
Does any part of you still look at the sky and hurt?
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We used to hear the stars, too. When people stopped talking, there was
silence. Now you could shut every mouth on the planet and there’d
still be a hum. Air-conditioning groaning from the vent beside you.
Semi trucks hissing on a highway miles away. A plane complaining ten
thousand feet above you.
But the dream was perfectly silent, except for the voice.
Ronan hadn’t thought about how long it had been since he’d
experienced perfect silence until that moment. He wasn’t sure
he had experienced perfect silence before that moment. It was
peaceful, not dead. Like putting down a weight he hadn’t
realized he was carrying, the weight of noise, the weight of every-
one else.
Magic. It’s a cheap word now. Put a quarter in the slot and get a magic
trick for you and your friends. Most people don’t remember what it
is. It is not cutting a person in half and pulling a rabbit out. It is not
sliding a card from your sleeve. It’s not are you watching closely?
If you’ve ever looked into a fire and been unable to look away, it’s that. If
you’ve ever looked at the mountains and found you’re not breathing, it’s
that. If you’ve ever looked at the moon and felt tears in your eyes, it’s that.
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The world’s killing you, but They’ll kill you faster. Capital‑T They. Them.
You don’t know Them yet, but you will.
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There are two sides to the battle in front of us, and on one side is Black
Friday discount, Wi‑Fi hotspot, this year’s model, subscription only,
now with more stretch, noise-canceling-noise-creating headphones, one
car to every green, this lane ends.
You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.
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W
ake up, Waaaaaashington, DC! Authorities should
be notified,” laughed TJ Sharma, the host of the
party. “Someone tell them a young woman with
superpowers is on the loose.”
All eyes in the DC‑suburb McMansion were on Jordan, a
young woman with eyes like a miracle and a smile like a nuclear
accident. The other partygoers wore relaxed casual; Jordan didn’t
believe in either relaxing or being casual. She wore a leather jacket
and lace bustier, her natural hair pulled into an enormous kinky
ponytail. The floral tattoos on her neck and fingers glowed
bright against her dark skin and her enthusiasm glowed bright
against the suburban night.
“Shhh, shhh,” Jordan said. “Superpowers are like chil-
dren, mate —”
“Two-point-five for every American family?” TJ asked.
“Better seen than heard,” Jordan corrected.
In the background, a nineties band whined frantically about
their youth. The microwave dinged—more cheap popcorn. The
party’s mood was equally ironic and nostalgic; TJ had joked
the theme was delayed development. There was a punch bowl full
of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and SpongeBob played on the flat screen
next to a pile of PS2 games. The partygoers were all mostly whiter
than her, older than her, safer than her. She didn’t know what they’d
be doing at this party if she wasn’t performing for them.
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A
dam Parrish.
This was how it had begun: Ronan had been in the
passenger seat of Richard Campbell Gansey III’s bright
orange ’73 Camaro, hanging out the window because walls
couldn’t hold him. Little historic Henrietta, Virginia, curled
close, trees and streetlights alike leaning in as if to catch the
conversation down below. What a pair the two of them were.
Gansey, searching desperately for meaning, Ronan, sure that he
wouldn’t find any. Voted most and least likely to succeed, respec-
tively, at Aglionby Academy, their shared high school. Those
days, Gansey was the hunter and Ronan the hawkish best friend
kept hooded and belled to prevent him tearing himself to shreds
with his own talons.
This was how it had begun: a student walking his bike up
the last hill into town, clearly headed the same place they were.
He wore the Aglionby uniform, although as they grew closer
Ronan saw it was threadbare in a way school uniforms couldn’t
manage in a single year’s use—secondhand. His sleeves were
pushed up and his forearms were wiry, the thin muscles picked
out in stark relief. Ronan’s attention stuck on his hands. Lovely
boyish hands with prominent knuckles, gaunt and long like his
unfamiliar face.
“Who’s that?” Gansey had asked, and Ronan hadn’t
answered, just kept hanging out the window. As they passed,
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I
t looked as if the apocalypse was still a go.
Carmen F arooq-
Lane stood in one of London
Heathrow’s infernally busy terminals, her head tilted back to
look at the gate announcements. People flowed around her in the
stop-start way humans did in airports and train stations, their
journeys more stream of consciousness than logic. Most people
didn’t care for airports; they were in survival mode. Id mode.
They became the purest, most unfiltered versions of themselves.
Panicked, rambling, erratic. But Farooq-Lane liked them. She
liked schedules, systems, things in their place, holidays with spe-
cific celebratory rituals, games where people took turns. Before
the Moderators, airports had represented the pleasant thrill of
plans coming to fruition. New places seen. New foods eaten, new
people met.
She was good at airports.
Now she was a vision of professional loveliness as she waited,
poised in a diffuse spotlight, her pale linen suit impeccable; her
small, expensive, wheeled suitcase spotless; her long, dark hair
pulled into a softly braided updo; her absurdly long eyelashes
lowered over her dark eyes. Her boots were new; she’d bought
them from an airport store and thrown out the bloodstained
pair in the ladies’ room. She looked flawless.
Inside her, however, a smaller Carmen Farooq-Lane screamed
and beat against the doors.
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T
he voice was back.
You want proof this is an actual encounter and not just a bit of sub-
conscious mindfuckery.
What is real? Listen: You fall asleep, dream of feathers, and wake with
a raven in your hands, and you’re still asking What is real?
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You are bigger than that, bigger than what is real. You have been
raised among wolves and now you’ve forgotten you have thumbs. Real
was a word invented for other people. Scrub it from your vocabulary.
I don’t want to hear you say it again. If you dream a fiction and wake
with that fiction in your hands, it becomes fact.
Still you long for what reality means to everyone else, even if it makes
your world smaller. Maybe because it makes your world smaller.
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There’s a game children play with chalk and asphalt. Snail—that’s what
it’s called. Chalk a spiral on the ground, a snail’s shell, and section it
into ever-shrinking squares. Toss a pebble; wherever it lands, that box
is off-limits. Now jump on one foot in a tightening spiral, careful not
to land in the box with the pebble. You see how the game gets harder the
more pebbles are thrown. The tighter the spiral twists. The goal is to get
to the middle without falling over.
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First box—
Let’s deal with that, first. An object lesson in real or not. I’m doing sums
in my head, you want me to demonstrate my work on the margin. Fine.
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He woke up.
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I
t was morning.
Ronan could hear all sorts of morning sounds. An elec-
tric shaver humming across the hall, music nattering away
in another room, feet slap-shuffling up and down aged stairs.
Outside he heard asthmatic leaf blowers, percussive car doors,
garrulous students, grumbling delivery trucks, petulant horns.
He’d spent the night in Cambridge.
Ronan looked at himself from above.
It was as if he was an angel haunting his own body. A spirit.
Ghost of Christmas Past. Whatever it was that floated above
you and watched you sleep. Ronan Lynch’s thoughts gazed down
upon Ronan Lynch’s body.
He saw a young man in the narrow dorm bed below, motion-
less but nonetheless looking as if he spoiled for a fight. Between
his brows, two knitted lines formed the universal symbol for I’ll
fuck you up. His eyes were open, looking at nothing. Adam was
slotted between him and the wall, mouth parted with abandon,
hair wild against the pillow.
They were completely covered with monsters.
Their bodies were weighted with peculiar creatures that
looked sort of like horseshoe crabs at first blush. A closer look
revealed that instead of hard shells, they had dramatic masks,
with little mouths snapping open and shut hungrily on their
backs. Perfectly shaped cow teeth filled each mouth.
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