Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

“And I said Jordan.”

If he had pressed her harder, she would have talked about it, and part of her wanted him to, but instead he just kicked one of the wheels. It occurred to her, in a distant way, that maybe he wanted her to press him about his dream, too. Something must have bothered him enough that he couldn’t prevent all these wheels from driving out of his head, after all. But the idea of holding the weight of his drama on top of her own felt like too much.

So they just silently assembled themselves. Hennessy got her sword. Ronan got his bird. At the door, he turned to survey what he had done. All those wheels. He was an unusual silhouette with the raven crouched on his shoulder, the sword strapped to his back. Hennessy thought he would have made a fairly good portrait subject, if everything about him wasn’t supposed to be secret, which made her think about how, in her dream, she’d thought about how Jordan would’ve thought Bryde an appropriate portrait subject.

“I wonder what she’s up to,” Hennessy said. “What she and your brother are up to.”

Ronan’s voice was dry and disappointed as he turned away. “Bet they’re having a blast.”

Jordan felt a little bad about stealing Declan Lynch’s car.

Not overwhelmingly bad. Not enough to keep her up nights (or rather, mornings, since she was a night owl). Not enough that she wished she could go back and do it differently. Just enough that sometimes she saw a Volvo of the same make and model and had a vague, niggling sensation of wrongness. The opposite of the Volvo brand. The opposite of the Jordan brand.

Really it was this: A few weeks before, she’d left the oldest and youngest Lynch brothers at a rural Virginian rest stop in the middle of the night, their faces lit up by the taillights as she drove their car away. Matthew—surprised, everything perfectly round, round face, round eyes, round mouth—looking, as ever, much younger than his seventeen years. And Declan—unsurprised. Arms crossed. Mouth a straight line. Eyes closing to form an Of course, it’s always something, isn’t it? expression just as he got too small to see in her rearview mirror. But it was a minor betrayal. Jordan had known Declan was resourceful enough to find another transportation method for the rest of the journey to the Barns. And she’d also known the bad guys who’d tried to kill the brothers earlier weren’t in close enough pursuit to put them in any danger in the interim.

Probably.

That probably was what she felt a little bad about. Gambling with other people’s lives was usually more what the Hennessy half of Jordan Hennessy would do. Jordan was the more thoughtful half, usually.

Declan Lynch was on her mind now, even though there was no Volvo in sight, because of the party invite in her hands. Heavy card stock, matte black with a bold white cross painted on it, rounded edges that felt good to press your fingers against. JORDAN HENNESSY AND GUEST, you are invited.

She knew it was a Boudicca party. That was their logo, their colors—that painted blunt cross, that black and white. Boudicca was a ladies-only crime syndicate that offered protection and marketing in exchange for what looked a lot like luxurious servitude. They’d tried previously to recruit both Jordan and Hennessy, thinking they were talking to a single entity, a pretty, high-class art forger. Neither were interested. Jordan already had enough limits on her movement. Hennessy didn’t play well with others.

But Boudicca had “coincidentally” texted Jordan the night she, Declan, and Matthew had fled from the banks of the Potomac River. Opportunity of interest for you in Boston given circumstances, please arrange in-person appointment for more information.

And then she’d stolen the car to check it out.

It was a sort of Hennessy thing to do.

She felt, as noted, a little bad about it.

But it was done now and Jordan was by her lonesome, putting on her lipstick in a discolored bathroom mirror. The whole bathroom was a little unpleasant to look at in a way that turned right around to being pleasant in a shabby way. It was nestled in the corner of a generous space in Fenway Studios, a grand historical building constructed a hundred years earlier to house nearly fifty artists. Old wood floors, twelve-foot windows, fourteen-foot ceilings, vintage radiators slinking along the plaster walls like ribby animals, easels and supplies set up everywhere, speakers that didn’t work with Jordan’s new burner phone but did with the boom box she found in the closet. It was not meant to be a place to live and it was entirely possible her couch surfing violated a city code, but the owner, an artist who blew up nude photographs and painted bigger, more colorful boobs on top of them, wasn’t the type to be fussed about such things. It was only supposed to be until she found a roommate, anyway.

How long did Jordan think she was going to get to do this for?

As long as she could.

Jordan put on her leather jacket and examined the look in the mirror. She didn’t have a lot of choices; she had the clothing she’d fled in, this orange bodice she’d found in a very nice consignment shop in South Boston, and a T-shirt and joggers she’d bought because God knew if this guy came to work in the middle of the night to paint another one of his fucked-up nudes, she wanted to be clothed. And although she’d been doing a little forgery work here and there since arriving in the city, taking deposits, impressing tourists at the holiday fairs with some quick cheap works, she’d been saving that money.

For what? For the future. The future. A foreign concept. Back in DC, she hadn’t had a future. She, and all the other girls, had an expiration date set by Hennessy. When Hennessy died, it was