“I was thinking if they were sweetmetals, the randomness would make sense,” Declan said. “Or at least as much sense as any other explanation. It wouldn’t have been about traditional value or artistic merit. Just energy.”
“But why didn’t they take the dancing lady, then?”
“El Jaleo.”
“That’s what I said. Dancing lady with her arm on backward.”
Declan resented the somewhat accurate description of the painting but let it pass. “I don’t know. Maybe they ran out of time. Maybe it was too big. Maybe they had been told not to.”
“By who?”
“Powerful people are interested in these things,” Declan said. “Powerful people control a lot of them. It’s why we’re working very carefully.”
“Wouldn’t that mean if Jordan made one, she’d be powerful people?” Matthew asked.
Declan looked sharply at his brother. “Yes, I guess it does.” But what he didn’t say out loud was that unguarded power was actually weakness. If you had something someone else wanted and no way to stop them from taking it, you were vulnerable to exploitation. Jordan and her sweetmetal. Ronan and his dreams. It was why the spiderweb was so important, though he wasn’t about to get into that with Matthew. The web was to protect him, not involve him.
Jordan appeared in the narrow doorway then, and as she joined them, Matthew said, “Was that so hard? We had a conversation. It wasn’t just copy pasta.”
“What’s the conversation?” Jordan asked. “Was it a good one? Was it about me? That would be a good one.”
“These guys,” Matthew said. He pointed at an empty frame.
Putting her hands on her hips, she studied it as intently as she would if there had still been a painting in it. “Do you reckon these were sweetmetals? Is that what we’re thinking?”
Matthew leapt gratefully into the conversation as Declan looked at the two of them. He felt so content in that moment, watching the two of them lightly bat around theories, that it turned right back around into uncertainty. He liked this life so well. He liked the people in it so much. It felt as if the other shoe must drop eventually.
“By the way, you’ll never guess who I had a lovely wake-up call from,” Jordan told Declan. “Our good friend Boudicca came in on the tails of my nudey landlord to let me know that their sweetmetals are going fast and they’re waiting to hear from me … and also had I ever thought about getting together a portfolio for a gallery?”
“Bribery is new. What did you tell them?”
“I appreciated their diligence and I was still having a bit of a think if I even really needed one these days. Would they let me know when the last one was on the line?”
This was perhaps what Declan liked the best about all of this, about Jordan Hennessy: She could handle herself. He’d never had anyone in his life who didn’t need him to manage, guard, chastise, protect. He’d never had an equal—he’d never even known he wanted an equal, and now that she was there, he liked it.
“They loved that, of course,” Jordan said, with her usual grin.
No, that was probably what Declan liked the very best about all of this. Never in his life would anyone have accused Declan Lynch of being an optimist, but he had to admit that he was starting to see the perks. Things might be okay, he thought. Jordan and Matthew were dreams, yes, but as long as Hennessy and Ronan were alive, they could live their own lives. And if something happened to Hennessy or Ronan, now Declan knew that sweetmetals existed in the world to wake them up. Even if he couldn’t immediately get his hands on one, he no longer had to fear losing his entire remaining family in one go; he had recourse. Things could be okay. Things were okay. He’d never felt that way before.
He liked it very, very much.
As the three of them pushed out of the museum into the chilly day, his phone rang. He held up a finger to the others to let them know he’d catch up at the car in a minute, and he answered it.
“Hello?”
Adam Parrish said, “We really need to talk about Bryde.”
The city woke up,” Adam said.
“Back that up a moment,” Declan replied. “Explain to me what that means.”
He’d found Adam in line for a celebrity chef’s food truck in Harvard Square, an establishment that served gourmet waffles with savory toppings for fourteen dollars a pop. Adam introduced the other students waiting with him as his good college friends, but Declan was dubious. The way they all stood together with Adam reminded him a little of a computer wallpaper he’d seen at the school office, a big shepherd dog standing with a bunch of ducklings huddled around its legs. Probably the photo was supposed to be cute, but at the time, Declan had thought about how unrewarding and one-directional the effort must be for the dog. This feeling of Declan’s had only been underlined when the friend group discovered the food truck was cash only and began to wail, forcing Adam to patiently count out bills from his wallet in return for waffles and IOUs.
Adam had changed since their time together at Aglionby Academy, Declan thought. Old Adam never had any money. And old Adam would’ve scathingly pointed out the large CASH ONLY sign tacked to the truck rather than come to his wealthy friends’ rescue.
“I thought Cambridge was dead before this,” Adam said, leading Declan briskly through the Harvard campus. They’d left Adam’s ducklings eating in order to speak more privately, and now that he was out of sight of them, Adam ate his fancy waffle on the way, perfunctorily, one bite after another, until it was all gone, without any sign of enjoyment. “No ley energy. That’s why Ronan went straight to nightwash here.”
“What is it you wanted me to see?” Declan asked.
“We’re not there yet. I don’t use it like him, but I can feel the ley line, too. I use it if I scry or read cards.” Glancing behind him, Adam led Declan out of Harvard Yard to Oxford Street. There, he slowed his pace, but Declan could not yet see anything unusual. It was all quaint and scenic: red brick, white trim, black trees, blue skies. “I couldn’t really do any of that after coming here. Like I said, the city was dead. Those tarot readings you saw were just for show. I was just reading people. Parlor tricks. Fake magic. But lately I’ve been feeling these … I don’t know. Pulses. Like power surges. Or heartbeats.”
Declan wasn’t sure he liked the sound of the last bit. Power surges sounded clinical and manageable. Heartbeats sounded living, and living things were unpredictable and hard to control.
“And then something really happened last night,” Adam said. “Look here.”
They faced a more modern building labeled SCIENCE CENTER. Casting a furtive glance up and down the street, Adam crouched beside a concrete bench built into the wall. Reaching beneath it, he scraped out a large handful of debris.
Then he showed it to Declan.
To Declan’s surprise, it was not leaf litter, but beetles. Some were small, ordinary-looking insects, black and unremarkable. Others were huge and spotted, with the portentous grace of elephants. Some had massive forked antlers. Others were brilliantly blue, with galaxies of stars glittering through the color.
Declan did not have to be told they were not native to Cambridge.