to that house in Boston while Ronan met up with Adam—
Declan said blandly, “The what?”
“Don’t lie,” Ronan said. “I’m too pissed off for bullshit.”
Declan looked at his younger brother. The more natural brother of the two, but not by much. He had grown up to look exactly like their father. He was missing Niall’s long curls and Niall’s effervescent charm, but the nose, the mouth, the eyebrows, the stance, the simmering restlessness in the eyes, everything else was the same, as if Aurora had had no part in the transaction at all. Ronan was no longer a boy, or a teen. He was turning into a man, or a mature version of whatever he was. A dreamer.
Stop protecting him, Declan told himself. Tell him the truth.
But a lie felt safer.
He knew Ronan was failing alone at the Barns. The farm he adored wasn’t enough for him. His brothers weren’t enough for him. Adam wasn’t really enough for him, either, but Declan knew he hadn’t gotten that far yet. There was something strange and yawning and hungry inside Ronan, and Declan knew that he could either feed it or risk losing Ronan to a far more mundane ending and, by extension, lose his other brother, too. His entire family.
Declan clenched his teeth, and then he gazed at the river as it threw itself over the rocks. “Want to come with me?”
13
Sometimes Hennessy imagined flinging herself off the roof.
She imagined how, for just a collection of seconds, she would be ascending as her initial jump brought her a few feet above the roof level, before the sucking sensation of gravity wrapped itself around her body. Only then would she be officially falling. Nine point eight one meters per second squared, that was the speed of a fall, all other variables taken out of the picture. Air resistance, friction, balanced and unbalanced forces, six other girls leaning over the edge of the roof shouting Hennessy come back.
The French had a term for it. L’appel du vide, the call of the void. The urge even non-suicidal people felt to jump when confronted with a high place. Fifty percent of people thought about hurling themselves from heights, much to their shock. One in two. So it wasn’t only Hennessy who would imagine her body plummeting into the junipers three stories below.
Hennessy stood on the concrete balcony at the McLean mansion’s roof, the toes of her boots poking over the edge, looking at the yard far below. Music spat in the background, something murmuring and sensual and restless. One of the girls sang along with the song even though it was in a language Hennessy didn’t speak—had to be Jordan or June. Conversation spiked and lulled. Glasses and bottles clinked. Somewhere, a gun went off, once, twice, three times, distant and percussive in the house, sounding like distant cue balls on a pool table. It was a trash party. A secret party. A party for people who had so much dirty laundry they could be trusted to not air anyone else’s.
“You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream,” said a voice beside her.
It was Hennessy’s voice, but out of a different body. Not a different body. A distinct body. Hennessy had to look to tell which of the girls it was, and even then, she wasn’t sure. Trinity, maybe. Or Madox. The newer ones were harder to place. They were like looking in a mirror.
The girl eyed Hennessy’s body language and continued, “You jump, I jump, we all jump.”
Everyone at this secret party thought Hennessy’s big reveal was that she was one of the most prolific art forgers on the East Coast. The real secret was this: Hennessy, Jordan, June, Brooklyn, Madox, Trinity. Six girls with one face.
Hennessy had dreamt them all.
Only two of the girls were allowed to be seen at the same time. Twins were understandable. Triplets a little more novel. Quadruplets, quintuplets—any number above three became increasingly noteworthy.
Hennessy’s life was shit-complicated enough. She had no desire to be extorted further by someone who knew the real truth about her.
“This place was landscaped by a drunk Italian Tim Burton fanboy,” Hennessy said, looking down at the intricately hardscaped backyard. It had not been kept up, but the geometry of it had not yet been lost to untamed growth. Frantically intricate planters and boxwood labyrinths and moss growing between delicately tiled paths. Then, to hide that she couldn’t tell which copy the girl beside her was, she asked, “What do you want, bitch?”
“Madox,