Depending on where you began the story, it was about Joseph Kavinsky.
It would come as a surprise to most people that Kavinsky loved Henrietta. It was a demanding, utilitarian kind of love, but a real one. Possibly the realest thing in his life, even if it wasn't a solid entity that he could cup his hands around and hold — or crush.
Then again, Kavinsky had long ago discarded the misconception that solid went hand in hand with real. The handful of black pills in a red container in his left pocket were solid. The Mitsubishi, humming beneath his feet and around him like a pleased tom cat, was solid. Prokopenko, passed out in the back seat (he'd swallowed a few black pills too many, and Kavinsky wasn't letting him ride shotgun and risk having the fucker projectile vomit all over the windshield) was solid. His mother, back at home and knocked out by a different set of narcotics, was likewise all flesh and bones and sinews and darkened, bloodshot eyes, and solid, solid, solid.
And they were dreams: the pills, the car, Proko. All of them, dreams.
Or a dream of a dream of a dream, in his mother's case. Though that, Kavinsky reasoned, was hardly his fault, was it now? He wouldn't have to remake her over and over again if she weren't set in unmaking herself every few months or so. Mrs. Kavinsky was like a sparrow that, upon finding itself trapped behind a closed window, kept bumping against the glass time after time, never learning, as any intelligent being would, that the same action that had left her bruised and overdosed and dead five times previous was bound to get her the same result every time. At least with dad, dear old dad — putting aside everything else one might say about the man, of which there was a lot, most of it fit to be expressed only with colorful language — Kavinsky had only had to go there once. Dad had been a survivor. Not enough to survive the wrath of his own offspring, but enough that his dreamed up double (which was as perfect a copy as all of Kavinsky's copies tended to be) was doing a decent job of keeping himself in no need of replacement.
The thing about real things, Kavinsky had concluded during one of his more philosophical moods — which he tended to fall into after the longer sessions of dream stealing, when he would lie on his back on a bedding of dreamed up stuff, with the fumes of dreamed up weed trailing out of his nose and mouth as if he were a boy shaped dragon — was that they were unique. No real thing was like another real thing, whereas the stuff of dreams — the stuff of his dreams — always came out perfectly, one might even say uncannily, identical. At least they did now that he had the hang of the whole thing. He'd lost count of how many misshapen Mitsubishis he'd brought back before getting it right, but that had been different. Making his creations varied wasn't the same as fucking up and ending up with something deformed. The former required carefully aimed intent. With the latter, you really only needed to blow it. Kavinsky was great at blowing things; aiming carefully, not so much.
His reputation aside, he didn't consider himself a forger. Forgery demanded a degree of creativity which he was well aware he lacked. His dreams weren't a studio where he, the mad, magical artist, slaved over masterpieces. They were an assembly line. Gobs of dream matter falling into molds, then heated up to firmness so that they could be transported into the real world. Identical pills. Identical Mitsubishis. Identical mothers and fathers.
In the past, he'd cheered himself up (not that he often required the kind of cheering up that drink and drugs and driving couldn't provide) with the thought that at least he, the dreamer, the copier, was unique. He'd believed, and been inordinately proud, of the fact that no one in the world was like Kavinsky. And that was still true, in a sense. There remained only one Kavinsky, the original, the genuine article. But now he knew there was someone else who could do what he did. It was a matter that merited some thought.
So Kavinsky thought about Ronan Lynch.
Ronan Lynch.
His phone rang. He hauled his wandering mind back to the present and brought it to his ear.
"Kavinsky."
"Cheng, here."
Kavinsky closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest. He'd picked up without checking who was calling. It had been a mistake. He wasn't dying to talk to Cheng right now. Either Cheng. The terrifying old bitch, who was Mrs. Cheng or Cheng's mom in Kavinsky's head but got dutifully referred to as Seondeok whenever they spoke (because, he wasn't ashamed to admit, she was a terrifying old bitch), or the son, the prissy gob of shitsnot he went to school with. (Though that wasn't, strictly speaking, accurate. It implied that attending school was something Kavinsky made a habit of.) They were equally unwelcome intrusions on what had been deep thoughts or thoughts that were headed towards the deep end, and a part of Kavinsky wanted to mouth off and hang up. He didn't. He parked the Mitsubishi, veering towards the side of the road so suddenly it made even Proko stir in his drug induced stupor. Kavinsky ignored him.
"Yeah. What is it?"
"My mother wants to know if you have it already." Cheng spoke with the careful, measured tones of someone who had been told to relay a message exactly and didn't feel happy to have been asked to in the first place. He'd never struck Kavinsky as being thrilled that he got to serve as an in-between for his mother's dealings. If Kavinsky had liked Cheng better (he didn't — he tended to instantly and completely loathe anyone in possession of parents who gave a crap. It wasn't jealously, precisely, but the emotion rose from a place just as ugly) he might have pitied him. If Kavinsky weren't annoyed at being forced to think about Henry fucking Cheng when he'd rather be thinking about Ronan Lynch, he might have pitied him. If Kavinsky weren't Kavinsky, he might have pitied him. But it was what it was and he was who he was. And so he said, his voice bored and verging on slurring:
"Still working on it. These things take time, I don't just think up artefacts and poof." In his head, Kavinsky laughed a jackal's laugh at his own private joke. "Tell Mrs. C— Seondeok to sit tight. I'll call her when I have it."
"Well. Can't you hurry it up? This is urgent."
If Cheng — or Cheng's mom, but it all boiled down to the same thing — weren't a customer, and a high-paying, high profile one, Kavinsky would have told him where he could stuff his urgency. But because Kavinsky liked money, and because he wasn't stoned enough to have missed the hint of something more underlining Cheng's request, he pressed the phone tighter against his ear and scrunched up his forehead. Outside the Mitsubishi the sun went down over the town, painting the silhouettes of Henrietta buildings in vaguely apocalyptic streaks of red and gold.
"Why's it so urgent?"
Silence. Kavinsky counted the seconds. For a while it seemed like Cheng had hung up, but no — he could still hear breathing on the other end of the line, though it was faint, held back, hushed.
Finally, Cheng said:
"Did you happen to check your school e-mail account since last night?"
Kavinsky hadn't been aware that he had a school e-mail account.
"No. What's up?"
"They got us a new Latin teacher."
Kavinsky failed to see why that would be reason for concern. He could count the times he'd gone to Latin class using just his thumbs.
"So?"
"So, it's Greenmantle."
"Greenmantle," Kavinsky echoed. At last now he had an inkling of what the bee in Cheng's — both Chengs — bonnet was. "That Greenmantle?"
"That Greenmantle. Yes."
"Right," Kavinsky said, and that was all. He had thoughts. He just wouldn't share.
"Which means," Cheng went on, returning to his usual, repeat-after-mom drone, "that if he is here, in Henrietta, and is planning to stay long enough that he took on a job, then he has to be on the hunt for something. We think it's the Greywaren. We think he knows, or at least suspects, where to find it. You'll have to get your hands on it before he does."
"Right," Kavinsky said again, his thoughts still well kept secrets. He took to the road again, driving one-handed onto the interstate to make it back to Henrietta. Since Cheng couldn't see his face through the phone, he didn't hold back the smile that threatened to spill from his mouth, though he did keep down the hysterical laughter that badly wanted to follow suit. "Right. I'll get right to it."
Kavinsky hung up, having exhausted his tolerance to Cheng's voice and having spotted something in the distance that made his smile stretch further. Something old. Something orange. Something familiar.
The day just kept getting better and better.
The thing about the Chengs was that they were convinced they had a clue of what was going on. For instance, they thought that there was such a thing as a Greywaren — an object, real and solid, that birthed dreams into the world and could be bought and used and possessed. They also thought that there was only the one. And then they were under the impression — and here was where they were not only wrong, but jaw-droppingly wrong — that he'd hand it over.
Kavinsky shook his head to himself, adjusted his sunglasses and pressed his foot down on the gas pedal. He could picture, as if he were seeing it from the outside, the Mitsubishi becoming a white, bright spear, soaring over the asphalt, tires burning, making way towards its target — the Camaro. He slowed down as he got near to check out who was inside: the usual suspects, plus a girl with spiked black hair. Her face stirred recognition, but it took him a moment to place her —Parrish's new squeeze. (Though 'new' wasn't the right word, come to think of it. It implied the existence of old squeezes, which didn't seem like Parrish's style, unless he'd been taking his role as every teacher's pet in unexpectedly interesting directions.) And there was Lynch. Not one of them had looked back and noticed him, but they were about to. He'd see to it.
Kavinsky spun the Mitsubishi in a half circle and changed to another lane, easily catching up with the old heap of a car — he actually had to slow down and fall back so that he wouldn't pass them by too fast — and brought up a hand to flip off the occupants. They went to pains to ignore him, Dick the Third especially. Kavinsky rolled down the window to let him know what he thought of his rich boy ass. Dick the Third didn't seem to appreciate it, but he kept looking straight ahead, eyes trained on the road, every inch the untouchable golden princeling.
Kavinsky was fine with that. Dick the Third wasn't who the insult was meant to bait, and the true target reacted as intended. Lynch tilted his head, showing just enough face and just enough fire in his eyes to let him know that the challenge had been understood and accepted.
Unfortunately, Dick the Third wasn't having it.
The Camaro fell back, and after a second during which Kavinsky's heart believed that it might still give chase in direct opposition to what his brain told him, his impatience got the best of him. He lowered his foot to the gas pedal again, shooting forward until the others were a speck of orange in the rearview mirror. It was for the best that they hadn't taken him up on it, really. He shouldn't be daring Lynch to race him. He wanted to — and as far as Kavinsky was concerned, the things he should do and the things he wanted to do had always been one and the same — but if Cheng wasn't lying about the Greenmantle situation, then he had other, bigger things to worry about first.
Saying that Kavinsky wasn't one of nature's worriers would be understating the obvious. Fear and anxiety were emotions that happened to other people, people whose dreams were just dreams. He wasn't afraid of Cheng's mom — well, he was, but only in the abstract — or Greenmantle, or anyone who might come sniffing around looking for the not so mythical Greywaren. Even if they found out about him, they couldn't touch him — only annoy him. He knew their type. But there was someone else who could do what he did, someone who didn't know quite as much. Another dreamer. Another thief.
Once again, Kavinsky thought about Ronan Lynch.
On one hand, he'd never known anyone like himself. It might be worth it — instructive even, all of Kavinsky's misgivings about anything that smelled of education aside — to engage, check what Lynch knew, see what he could get out of a possible partnership. On the other hand, everyone searching for the Greywaren was, unknowingly, looking for someone with his power, which was also Lynch's power. And although Kavinsky was not, it needed to be stressed, afraid of them in any capacity, he wasn't wild about having them pursue him either. If throwing Lynch at them might stop them breathing down his neck . . .
He turned the car radio on and let the music blast his ears deaf. He'd have to think it all through. There was still time for it. There was no crisis, and they weren't racing.
Yet.