“Twenty thousand is firm.”
The pricing of uncanny objects was always subjective. How much was it worth, the feeling that you owned something that shouldn’t exist, or something that touched a supernatural realm you didn’t otherwise have access to, or something that made you believe that there was more to the world than what you’d been given? The answer was usually a lot. Declan didn’t know how much he could really talk the guy down. But twenty thousand was a big ding out of his carefully hoarded savings. An unwise sum for an already unwise decision. “Four thousand.”
“Nineteen.”
Declan said blandly, “I don’t want to leave this on the table, but I’m not going another round. Fifteen is my final.”
The man relented and accepted the bills. “I’ll get some wrapping paper.”
You’re really doing this, Declan thought. Down the rabbit hole.
Beside Declan, Ronan knelt by the painting. His hand hovered over the woman’s face but didn’t touch the surface. It wasn’t difficult to tell that it meant a lot to him to see Aurora again; Ronan couldn’t lie even with his body language. Somehow, objectively troubling truths about their parents had been unable to mar Ronan’s feelings for them. Declan envied him. His love and his grief both.
The seller returned with the wrapping paper and a fat, tattered ledger.
Declan eyed this second object. “What’s that?”
“I’ll need your name and zip. This piece is registered,” the seller said. “Her sales are tracked.”
This was unusual in a market that was defined by discretion. Tracked objects were dangerous, absurdly valuable, or tied to organized crime of one brand or another.
Declan felt a burst of misgiving. “By who?”
“Boudicca,” the seller said.
The word meant nothing to Declan, but he didn’t like it anyway. He didn’t do strings-attached. “I’ll give you nineteen for it, unregistered.”
The big muscle-bound man shook his head regretfully. “Can’t do that, buddy.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Can’t. Not for Boudicca. Not worth it.”
Declan weighed this. It was bad enough to come to this place where people would know him and buy one of his father’s old dreams. It was something else to come here and be on the record about it. He didn’t like how the guy said Boudicca, either. It sounded like power. It sounded like malice. He didn’t like it one bit.
He’d already given out his business card once that evening and that felt dangerous enough.
“Then that’s a no from me,” Declan said. He held out his hand to get his cash back. “Sorry.”
“Come on,” the guy said. “The deal’s almost closed.”
“Sorry.”
The guy kept holding out the ledger. “It’s not an address. Just name and zip. Easy. You give that at the Starbucks drive-through. You write that on the bathroom wall.”
Declan kept holding his hand out for his money.
In the background, the sounds of the Fairy Market continued. There was some kind of kerfuffle happening on the other side of the room. People scuffling. Voices raised. It was dangerous tonight; it was always dangerous at these places. Declan had known that and he’d come anyway. He’d brought Ronan. He’d edged out on this limb and reached for this painting from his past. He knew better than this.
The Dark Lady stared at him mistrustfully.
“Lynch,” Ronan said abruptly.
Both Declan and the guy looked at Ronan. For a moment, Declan couldn’t decide if Ronan had actually said something, or if Declan had merely imagined it.
“Ronan Lynch, 22740.”
Declan could kill him. He could absolutely kill him.
The man wrote it down. Declan could feel his skin prickling all over when he saw the words in ink. Ronan. Lynch. A truth, given away. A truth, transcribed forever. He hated it. So much softer to lie. So much easier to just put down the painting and what it promised and walk away.
The man lifted the painting of the golden-haired woman into Ronan’s arms.
“Enjoy the ocean.”
Jordan was performing again.
Tonight was not entirely unlike the party at TJ’s, except that the audience was made up of criminals, Jordan was very much hoping Feinman wouldn’t show up, and the stakes were even higher because if their plan failed tonight, she couldn’t think of what a fallback plan might look like.
Jordan was copying John Singer Sargent’s Street in Venice in the middle of the Fairy Market. She’d copied this particular painting many, many times before, but familiarity made it soothing rather than boring, like rewatching a favorite movie. In it, a girl clutched her shawl as she walked briskly down an alley. Two men, loosely depicted in dark colors, stared at her as she passed. The girl’s eyes were cut low to the side, furtively watching them watch her. A couple sat at a café as well, but Jordan hadn’t even noticed them the first few times she’d seen the painting. Just the wary girl, darkly observed, and the city creeping in close.
Like all Sargents, the key to copying it was painting without hesitation. He had broad, free, effortless-looking strokes, and if the artist approached the work with timidity, the resulting copy looked fussy and forced.
Jordan didn’t hesitate.
Not long after she’d set up, Hennessy called. “All eyes on you?”
“Green light go.”
“Got my fortune told. Lady said our house was going to get broken into again.”
Jordan breathed out. “We don’t have a house.”
“Too right, we have a home,” Hennessy said. “I’m gonna go see a man about a dog.”
She hung up.
Jordan turned her attention back to the canvas in front of her. Art, art, think of the art. If she thought of the art, she wouldn’t think about everything that could go wrong. Art was a solid part of Jordan. Not art like take up a brush and let your soul pour out through pigments, but rather art as an object in the trunk of your car, art as a physical proof of cultural identity, art as a commodity. She had scars, stains, and blisters from art. Probably it was inevitable, given her pedigree. Hennessy’s father had collected art, including her mother, and her mother had painted portraits right up until she’d died. Her mother’s portraits had been a little famous before her death and now they were very famous. This was, Jordan discovered, because art always lasted longer when mingled with blood.
“I wish I could say I was surprised,” a familiar voice said.
Feinman. Bernadette Feinman looked even more hectic and dramatic in this environment, adding a long fur coat to the rose-tinted glasses Jordan had seen her in before. She looked like a poised older lady who’d seen some things in the past and was open to seeing more things in the present. She still had her clove cigarette; she smoked it now in a long holder. Jordan appreciated the commitment to the aesthetic even as she felt her heart sink.
“Crumbs,” said Jordan. Rapidly, she tried to think of how the plan would change if Feinman had her thrown out.
“Calm down and paint on,” Feinman said. “I’m not ratting you out. I knew who you were when I turned you down at Tej’s. I knew you could just forge your way in here. Sometimes, you just have to be a conscientious objector. I wanted it on the record that I feel you could do more with yourself.”
“Absolutely. Explore my full potential. A benevolent big E. I appreciate it. One always wants to be more,” Jordan said. “So this is just a neighborly visit?”
Feinman peered at Jordan in a complicated way, as if thinking that Jordan’s reasons for choosing a life of criminality might surface if she looked hard enough. Finally, she just said, “Keep that smile. It’s an original.”
After she had gone, Jordan let out a long, long, long breath of relief. Belatedly, Trinity texted her: I think I saw Feinman headed your way.
Jordan texted back: Hot tip. What’s going on with H?
Trinity: Still mum
No word was good. Or at least it was not bad.
Usually Hen
nessy and Jordan were art forgers.
Tonight they were thieves.
Hennessy had gotten in earlier to suss out where the intended target was. With this many floors and rooms, and with none of the vendors neatly catalogued, that was quite a feat. After she’d discovered where the painting was, Jordan had arrived with her precious wrapped decoy and her painting supplies. She’d set up in the most public place possible to demonstrate her trade. Look at me, her presence shouted. Look at me being Hennessy, sitting here painting a copy of a Sargent, definitely not somewhere else stealing a painting. Look at me and my alibi. It was to be the perfect crime: Jordan had spent weeks working on a flawless copy of the painting they meant to steal, and Hennessy’s job was to swap them while the owner wasn’t looking.
They needed it.
Jordan went back to work. She tried not to think about what Hennessy was doing. She got some commissions. She heard the word Bryde whispered back and forth; she didn’t know what it meant. She smiled for her small, shifting crowd of watchers. Most only paused for a few seconds unless they were placing a commission.
Except for one.
He stayed long enough that Jordan glanced up. Conservative, expensive gray suit. Conservative, expensive black watch. Conservative, expensive silk black tie. All behaving so well in concert that they were utterly forgettable.
“They say ten percent of works in museums are fakes,” he observed.
Jordan glanced up at him. He was young and handsome in a way so in line with cultural expectations that his appearance passed through attraction straight into boredom. His hair was carefully tousled and curled, his facial hair carefully allowed to shadow his chin in an orderly fashion. He had good teeth, good skin. Very blue eyes. He was inoffensive in every way. She said, “And, what, another forty percent misattributed without any malicious intent?”
He replied blandly, “That makes at least half of art appreciation the cultivation of a willing suspension of disbelief.”
“Fun for all ages.”
He laughed. It was a smooth and easy laugh. It did not imply that it was laughing at her. It implied it might be laughing at him, if that was what she wanted. Or it might just be laughing, if she preferred that. He observed, “You’re incredibly good.”
“Yes,” agreed Jordan.
“I can’t draw a stick figure,” he said. “I’ve got no—”
“Don’t be boring,” she interrupted. “Just say you never tried. People are always saying talent when they mean practice.”
“I never tried,” he concurred. “I practiced other skills.”
“Such as? Provide an itemized list.”
He glanced off into the crowd. Not quite skittish, because skittish didn’t seem to be his style. But something else was asking for his attention. “You remind me of my brother.”
“Congratulations,” she said.
“On what?”
“On having such a beautiful brother.”
Now he laughed for real, a considerably less even sound, and he looked away from her as he did, as if he might muffle the truth of it by so doing. This was obviously not a sound he meant to hand out to people. She wondered how deep he was in this world. He didn’t seem to have that edge one required to survive. He seemed more likely to sell annuities or bonds.
She returned to her work. “Can I ask what you’re doing here tonight?”
“No,” he said.
She looked up at him. He smiled that bland smile but didn’t back down from that no. It was a no that wasn’t malicious or rude. It was simply a fact. No. You’re not allowed to know.
Suddenly, she saw how he might survive in this world.
“Declan,” someone said, and his eyes narrowed. It was a far more memorable expression than any he’d worn to that point. He shifted, and as he did, she noticed his shoes. They were also surprising. Excellent, buttery brogues with smart tooling. Not bland. Not forgettable.
“Is that you?” Jordan asked.
Instead of replying, he tucked a business card just behind the edge of her canvas. There was one word above the telephone number, printed in silver: LYNCH.
Lynch.
Now there was a coincidental name. She enjoyed it; it felt like it meant things were going to go right.
“If you want to know more,” he said, “call me.”
“Smooth,” she said. “Well done.”
He smiled his straight-teeth corporate smile at her again.
“Declan.”
He was gone. Other viewers came to take his place, but Jordan found she kept looking at that business card. LYNCH.
Get your head in the game, Jordan, she told herself. Tonight’s about something bigger than that.
The phone rang. It was Hennessy. Jordan’s heart revved way up as she picked it up.
“Someone bought it,” Hennessy said. “Just now.”
“What?”
“Someone bought it. Right before I got there. It’s gone.”
Of all the paintings for sale under this roof. After all this time tracking it. Someone else had gotten to The Dark Lady first.
Jordan’s stomach dropped out. “Do we know who?”
“It’s not like we could roll up and ask that fucking bum nugget,” Hennessy said. “But Brooklyn saw the mark. We’re gonna see if we can find him before he leaves. Then, like, assess the goddamn situation.”
Jordan was already scraping her tubes of paint into her bag and looking around for someone holding a parcel of the correct size. “What’s the buyer look like?”
“Young. Twenties. Dark hair, blue eyes. Brooklyn said he had full on blue eyes.”
Dark hair. Blue eyes. Jordan looked at that business card: LYNCH.
Crumbs.
She jumped to her feet, but Declan Lynch was long gone.
The brothers Lynch were back in the mirrored elevator, the sounds of the library left behind, replaced with the dead-air silence of the descending elevator car. The quiet was punctuated only by the muffled ding of it marking off floors. Ronan’s body still felt revved up from the truth of Bryde, the shock of seeing his mother’s face, the charge of the completed deal, the heat of Declan’s anger. His older brother still looked pissed. More pissed than he’d been in months.
“I can’t believe you,” Declan said. “I brought you here. I trusted you.”
“What’s the big deal?” Ronan demanded. Ding. “People recognized your face all over this place.”
“They didn’t enter my name into a log for some syndicate to monitor,” Declan said.
“Is that what Boudicca is?”
Declan shrugged. “Did you see that guy’s face when he said it? That’s called fear, Ronan, and you might try getting some.”
Declan had no idea.
Ding.
“Did you know it was going to be a painting of Mom?” It was a peculiar likeness. Aurora’s head, on someone else’s body. Aurora would never stand like that, petulant and challenging. Even her face was a little different than Ronan remembered, the features more acute, more spoiling for battle, than Aurora’s had ever been in real life. It was possible it wasn’t a very good portrait, he supposed. But it was also possible there was a side of his mother he hadn’t known.
Before tonight he would’ve denied that possibility, but at the moment, almost anything felt possible.
Declan had begun to peck at his phone, his peculiar thumb and forefinger technique. “I had a guess.”
“What else do you know that you haven’t told me?”
Ding.
The elevator door opened. It was not the ground floor. It was the third floor, the one with the masks. A woman waited on the other side, hands in the pockets of a gray bomber jacket. First Ronan saw the way she stood. Tense, coiled, a predator. Then he saw her hair: golden. Then her eyes: pretty, blue.
Cornflower, sky, baby, indigo, azure, sky.
For the second time that night, Ronan found himself looking directly at his dead mother, only this time she was in the flesh.
His brain was rejecting it—this doesn’t happen when you’re awake, it’s not what you think—
And she was just looking at him, staring at him, her gaze petulant, spoiling for battle, just like the portrait leaned against Declan’s legs. Then she looked at Declan, and she flinched.
None of them moved—not toward, not away—they just looked, looked, looked. Transfixed, like Matthew at the falls. Bespelled, lost. The brothers Lynch and their dead mother.
Then the elevator doors closed on Aurora.
Ronan was startled into action. “The door, Declan—”
Both slammed the door open button, but the elevator ignored them, already on its way down. Ronan mashed the second-floor button just in time, and the doors obediently opened. Ronan bolted into the hallway.
“Ronan—” Declan started, but Ronan was already gone.
He pounded down the hallway, leaping over a woman who’d bent to pick up her dropped bag. He swerved around a couple of men stepping out of a room. He hurdled over a tray, noticing in strange, heightened detail as he flew over it that it was set with an ornate, old-fashioned tea service, complete with a tiered sandwich tray.
He had to get to the third floor before that woman caught another elevator, before she moved.
He skidded to slow just before he got to the exit door at the end of the hall. Don’t be locked, he thought, and it wasn’t, and he was through it and hurling himself up the metal stairs in the stairwell. They clanged and roared like a steam machine as he took them two at a time. Here: the door for the third floor. Don’t be locked, he thought, and this one wasn’t, either, and he was through this, too, running back down the hall toward the elevators where she’d been.
He got there just as the doors dinged shut, closing her away. The arrow pointed down, down, down.
He smashed the door button again, but nothing happened.
Gasping for air, he breathed a swear word. He linked his arms behind his head and tried for air, for reality. Damn, damn. He was getting his breath back but not his heart. It was skipping rope and entertaining itself out of rhythm. His mother. A ghost.
Three doors down, two women emerged from a room and made their way toward the elevators. They were arm in arm, talking in low voices. The sisters. The sisters from the mask room. They looked at him with curiosity, seeming to find his disarray more interesting than distressing.
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