Mister Impossible

by Maggie Stiefvater

  He thought.

  Probably.

  It was harder than before to tell if this was actually right or if this was just what Declan wanted to tell himself so he could continue on this adventure to Boston.

  “He sounds happy,” Matthew observed.

  “Yeah,” Declan lied.

  “Maybe he can make it to Mass with us next week. Are we going to church while we’re in Boston? Do I still take Communion now that I know I’m not real?”

  With a sigh, Declan leaned over and buckled Matthew’s seat belt.

  “I heard the thump again,” Matthew said, but without force. “From the trunk.”

  “This car might have a bearing going out; these old Jags do that,” Declan said. It was an excuse he’d learned from his father, before he’d gotten old enough to learn that bearings didn’t go out as often as they did for Lynches. This wasn’t even a Jaguar; Matthew wouldn’t notice. Declan didn’t even know why he lied about it; the fib was like bubble wrap, the truth carefully kept pristine and untouched for his collection.

  “Oh, sure,” Matthew said. “Bearings.”

  Depending on how one thought about it, Declan’s relationship with the criminal underworld was the longest and most stable one he’d had in his life.

  Declan had a very complicated relationship with his family.

  Everyone likes the sweetmetals,” Jo Fisher said.

  “I didn’t say I liked them.”

  “Everyone likes them,” Fisher told Jordan. “Everyone always likes them. Always.”

  The two of them were in a wine cellar deep beneath a Chestnut Hill mansion just a few miles outside Boston. It had only taken Jordan a few sleepless hours after learning of the existence of sweetmetals to decide she had to know everything there was to know about them.

  Because she had to have one.

  This was the way to a real future.

  Jordan hadn’t wanted to call Barbara’s goon and prove she was interested, but it was the most efficient next step. It seemed obvious Boudicca couldn’t have the only sweetmetals in the world, but she needed to know more about them before she even knew where to look for others. She wasn’t crazy about the power dynamics of the rendezvous—she was meeting them on their turf, and in an underground bunker, no less. But her attempts to negotiate to a more equitable location had been useless.

  It’s not you, Boudicca had explained, it’s us. Well, it’s them.

  Apparently, if the sweetmetals were kept any closer to the surface, they started affecting “dependents” in the city.

  Jordan was beginning to wonder just how much of the world had been dreamt.

  “How many of these are there?” she asked. The entire place smelled old, but in a classy way. Not like mold, but like fermentation. In addition to the hundreds of wine bottles sleeping nose-out on either wall, there were also a few oak barrels nested at the end of the hall. “On the planet, I mean?”

  The sweetmetals had been set up in a stylish display down the aisle. Paintings perched on fabric-draped easels, antique jewelry preened on velvet, sculpture assessed the room from atop carved pillars. Tasteful lighting had been installed to better highlight them. If one didn’t know any better, one might mistake this for an eccentric art sale for discerning buyers.

  But the pieces themselves soon corrected that impression. Jordan could feel their collective power radiating toward her. Her body felt awake, alert, ready for action. It was like caffeine. Speed.

  No, it was like being real.

  “In the whole world?” Fisher asked. She sounded as if she thought the question was stupid. Like Jordan was looking at a puppy for sale and asking how many puppies existed elsewhere in general. Jordan had already pegged Fisher as one of those ambitious young women who had to try harder than others to look as if they cared about people’s feelings; it was obvious that Fisher understood what polite looked like but also obvious she couldn’t always be arsed to step up.

  “I don’t have that information with me. It’s not a typical question.” Fisher managed to imply that, by asking, Jordan was indicating she might not be a worthy buyer.

  Jordan let this judgment breeze by. “This collection. When was it put together?”

  “A few weeks ago, in London. It’s already been to Birmingham and Dublin. It’ll go to New York and then DC and Atlanta after that, if they aren’t all sold by then. Those are real bullets in those guns, by the way.”

  “What?” Jordan asked. She glanced at the armed guards by the door. “Oh. How exciting for them.”

  “People sometimes get stupid around the sweetmetals,” Fisher said. “Sometimes they try to take them when our backs are turned. And sometimes when they aren’t.”

  “Then: Project Bullets.”

  “Right. Take your time looking.” Fisher pulled out her phone. “I’m editing contracts.”

  With this cool confession, Jordan had the odd sense Fisher would’ve liked to be her friend, in a different world, in different circumstances, possibly because she’d already killed and eaten all of her others. The two young women were probably about the same age, actually. They’d just taken very different roads to get to the same hole in the ground. “On your phone?”

  “What else would I use?”

  “What else indeed.” Jordan took one of the brochures from the little lion-footed table at the beginning of the display as Fisher retreated into her screen. She admired once again the cohesion of Boudicca’s graphic design (black background, white painted cross on each page, cleanly numbered sweetmetals, sold pieces blacked out with a Sharpie), matching the sweetmetal with the listing as she walked down the aisle. It didn’t take her long to realize they must be listed in general order of value or power, weakest to strongest.

  24. Landscape, with Sheep by Augustus W. Fleming. It was a very good painting. The way the light played across the fields made the viewer feel the painter must have loved those fields very much. It was also enormous—ten feet long—and didn’t give Jordan much of a buzz, which was probably why it was considered the least valuable piece here. No one was going to commute to work with Landscape, with Sheep tucked under their arm.

  23. Self-Portrait by Melissa C. Lang. According to the brochure, Lang’s portrait had been done with cosmetics directly onto an antique mirror with half its frame artistically ripped off. Jordan could feel its effect a little more than the landscape, but it was both very fragile and very ugly.

  13–22. Ten vintage matching silver spoons with handles shaped like swans. Presumably there had once been an entire set of them, and together they must have been quite potent. The brochure informed Jordan that together they now had enough energy to raise a single dozing dependent or individually lend some strength to another weakening sweetmetal. These things didn’t last forever, after all.

  12. The Duchess Urn. The brochure listed two—one from either side of the entrance to a Yorkshire estate. When Jordan asked Fisher what had happened to the other one, she was told it had been stolen by a woman in London and then been recovered ten miles away from London. Both the urn and woman had been broken during the chase.

  11. The Damned Prince by A. Block. This abstract painting was both powerful and handsome, the brochure murmured, suitable for hanging in either a bachelor’s bedchamber or in your front hallway, depending upon who the owner wanted to keep wakeful. Jordan had told herself she would not fret over whether Declan Lynch had gotten her postcard or whether he was going to do something about it, but she was annoyed to find herself imagining what his reaction would have been to this painting, which was much like those he’d kept in the secret art space at his townhome.

  7–10. The stone blue jays. The brochure built a picture of the ideal sweetmetal: something both powerful and portable, something potent enough to keep the wearer wide awake for months or years, and something that could be carried or worn discreetly by its wealthy dependent. The blue jays were very nearly good at both of these things. Each was about the size of a man’s meaty fist, so they could be slipped int
o a generous coat pocket, and each weighed about five pounds. They were very stealable. Jordan wasn’t stupid enough to try anything, but she was a little surprised by how tempting it was.

  5–6. Garnet earrings, 1922. The earrings, badly dated, were not the loveliest of jewelry, but they were still very wearable, and they were potent enough to keep a dependent on their feet, even individually. Because of this, they were sold separately, although Boudicca would, for an additional fee, make ordinary copies available in order to allow the wearer a matching set.

  4. The Afghan collar. Probably it was a dog collar. It was about six inches wide, beautifully and intricately beaded, with leather thong closures. It would fit perfectly on the dreamt sighthound of one’s choice, but it seemed a waste to use it on man’s best friend—it was potent enough to wake dependents hundreds of yards away as it passed through a city. Probably it was destined to be sewn into a corset or back of a jacket, although an adventurous dresser might wear it on a truly elegant throat.

  3. The Mary-Mary-Contrary engagement ring. Jordan found this one either very touching or very depressing. It was a beautiful little ring with an equally beautiful little diamond, and engraved on the inside of the band were the tiny words mary-mary-contrary. It begged several questions: Who was Mary? Was she dead? Had she sold this? Was the wedding called off? Why was this ring no longer attached to a Mary? Fisher did not know and did not care when Jordan asked. Regardless, it packed a potent punch, enough to wake a dependent and an entire host of dependent bridesmaids if needed.

  2. The ink. The little bottle was shaped like a woman and was filled with the darkest green ink. It seethed with the energy that woke dependents from their everlasting sleep. It begged to be gazed into. It made one feel alive, awake, real, even if one had already felt alive, awake, real. Jordan was beginning to feel a little high.

  1. Jordan in White by J. H. Hennessy. The portrait—one of the artist’s last before she died, the brochure noted—wasn’t portable, unlike the other most expensive sweetmetals in the collection, but it didn’t matter. It was a stunner of a piece of art, featuring an intense-eyed child posed in a simple white slip, her kinky hair piled upon her head. And it was incredibly potent. Anyone would be happy to display it prominently in their home to animate an entire dreamt family.

  Jordan stood looking at Jordan in White for a very long time.

  She looked first at the girl, at Jordan, and then she looked at the signature, J. H. Hennessy, and then back at the girl again. Mother painting daughter.

  Although Jordan was supposed to be a direct copy of Hennessy, she’d never thought of J. H. Hennessy as her mother. For a while she’d thought this was because she hadn’t known Jay like Hennessy had. After all, Jordan had only come into being just after Jay died. But slowly she realized that shouldn’t matter; Jordan had all of Hennessy’s other early memories. Hennessy’s mother should have been as fresh as everything else.

  But this painting underlined the unspoken truth. Jordan was missing memories. The Hennessy in the portrait looked wary, skittish, unlike the Hennessy Jordan had always known, but it was obviously her, back when she had been both Jordan and Hennessy. But Jordan had no memory of sitting for the painting, no memory of it existing at all.

  This was something that had been kept from her.

  Jordan felt very strange.

  She didn’t know if this was because she was looking at some of her history, or because it was a sweetmetal, or because she was trying to figure out if Boudicca was playing a mind game with her.

  She’d been staring at it too long; the guards were antsy. They were thinking about Project Bullets.

  Jordan pointed finger guns at them before turning to Fisher. “How are the sweetmetals made?”

  “I don’t understand the question,” Fisher said.

  “Who makes these things into sweetmetals?”

  “Isn’t that the same question?”

  “This painting. Those spoons. Why do they do what they do? They are not just a painting, a spoon, they do other things, that’s why I’m here, don’t leave me feeling I’m talking to myself, mate— Was it put into them? Were they like that from the get?” When she saw Fisher’s exasperated face, Jordan answered her own question. “You don’t know how the sausage is made.”

  Fisher said, “You’re a strange person.”

  Without any hostility, Jordan went on. “All right, then. What’ll these set me back? I assume the price isn’t money. Because money’s too cheap.”

  Fisher shrugged. With the sound of someone repeating someone else’s words, she said, “Our clientele includes those to whom money is no object.”

  “Let me have a guess,” Jordan said. “I do whatever you want for the rest of time, and I get one of these.” She read Fisher’s face. “I get to borrow one of these. And you write me up a little contract on your phone.”

  Fisher shrugged again.

  Jordan studied her, trying to read her. “Is that why you’re here? For one of these, something like one of these?”

  “Nah, some of us choose it.”

  “Ah. I reckon this is the part where you tell me I should make a decision soon, ’cause they’re flying out the door each place they go.”

  Fisher shrugged yet again. “You make my job easy.”

  She watched Jordan very carefully as Jordan walked back along the sweetmetals, feeling everything in her shouting to stay close to them. Probably Fisher thought Jordan was trying to choose which one she’d ask for. Really, Jordan was trying to tell what they had in common. They were all art. Or at least, they were all made by a human. Crafted by a human.

  Their secret hummed inside her.

  “I was supposed to ask you,” Fisher said as she paused at the end of the sweetmetals, “if you were still in touch with Ronan Lynch.”

  Jordan’s heart sailed right up and out of the wine cellar and into the sky.

  Right.

  She should have known it was coming. Boudicca thought there was just one Jordan Hennessy; somehow she’d managed to forget that. Now it seemed like she had two choices. Make up a reason why she was no longer aware of Ronan’s whereabouts after such a dramatic exit or let loose a story about her being a twin with no knowledge of him at all. It was hard to tell on the fly which was a more dangerous truth.

  Or, maybe—

  “Do I look like a phone to you?” Jordan asked.

  “A phone?”

  “If you want to get in touch with someone, that’s the way to do it. A phone, that’s the ticket. I am not a phone. I’m not some white boy’s answering service. Tell me, Fisher, do you like it when people act like you’re the direct line to ol’ Barb?”

  This question landed with glorious effect. Fisher’s mouth worked unpleasantly. The subject of Ronan was abandoned.

  “Who do I call if I’m interested in these?” Jordan asked. “With follow-up questions. You?”

  Fisher looked confused. “You don’t like them?”

  “They’re neat.” Please, please, Jordan’s body said.

  “Most people would do anything to have one.”

  Jordan grinned. “I’m a strange person.”

  If Fisher remembered saying it earlier, she didn’t show it. Instead, she said, “Better make up your mind soon. These days, lots of people are trying to stay awake.”

  I hate Philadelphia. I hate its quaint little streets,” Hennessy said. “I hate Pittsburgh. I hate its gleaming broad rivers. I hate everything between those two places. I-70, how she twists, how she turns, she rises, she falls like an empire. Hate it. Those barns, the Amish ones, you see them in calendars? Liquid loathing. Truck stops? Yes, let’s talk about truck stops, yes. Hate them, too. I hate the cows. Black cows, black-and-white cows, even those brown ones with eyelashes longer than mine. I think I hate them more because of it. Oh. Right, how about this: The song ‘Allentown.’ Breaks me in a rash. I’ve got one now thinking about it.”

  By Ronan’s estimation, Hennessy had been listing all the ways she hated Pennsyl
vania for thirteen miles’ worth of interstate. Not her longest monologue, but perhaps one of her most pointed. There was something kind of hypnotic and satisfying to a proper Hennessy monologue. She had that clipped but sloppy British accent that made everything sound funnier, more performative. And she had a ceaseless push and pull to the way she threw the words together that was kind of like music.

  “I hate the historic downtowns with their plaques and their parallel parking. I hate the pastel suburbs with their antilock brakes and their sprinkler systems. I hate the way the state is spelled. Uhllllllvania. It rhymes with ‘pain yeah!’ When I say it out loud, I can feel how my mouth ends on a vomit shape. I hate the way they call places ‘townships.’ Are they towns? Are they ships? Am I at land? Or at sea? I’m adrift and the anchor is my motherfucking keystone of a heart. Why is it abbreviated TWP? Twip? Twip? Shouldn’t it be the SS Allegheny? That’s a pun. It’s a town. And a ship.”

  Ronan didn’t answer. He just looked out the window at the cold, fine rain bleaching the landscape of color and tried not to think about his brothers driving in Boston.

  “Kennywood!” Hennessy said, with a certain amount of triumph. She let out a puff of breath. In the rearview mirror, Ronan could see that she’d exhaled on the backseat window and was now drawing in the condensation. “I hate that people go to Kennywood and then they tell you about it, as if it’s a thing we now have in common, a personality type, Kennywood. Pennsylvania! Yes, we both bought tickets to this tourist attraction and now we are bonded in a way usually reserved for people who have survived combat zones together. I hate—”

  “Also,” Bryde said mildly, “your father lives here, does he not?”

  Hennessy was momentarily silent. She had to switch gears from monologue to duet. “Let’s talk about your father. Father of the Bryde. Do you keep in touch? Who do you call late at night? Not with a phone, of course. That’s for normies.”

  Bryde smiled faintly. He was a party of one. From mystery to mystery, that was where he was headed. Saving the ley lines.