Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

the sea. The dreamt portrait Jordan had once forged and once stolen and once returned.

Declan held out a hand to help her step from the rocking boat onto the pier. “I told you I was going to show you a good time, didn’t I?”

Three exceptionally blond people had emerged from one of the houses—a man, a woman, and a teenager, all of them dressed for the weather, each carrying or dragging a piece of luggage. They started down the pier toward a boat rather larger than the one Declan, Jordan, and Matthew had arrived in, but when the man caught sight of Declan, he stopped.

“Oh, right, Cody—” the man told the teen, voice raised as he rummaged out a set of keys and dangled them. “Take that painting from him and put it just inside, would you? By the other things to go out. Lock the door after you. Lock it. Check it this time, please.”

The teen sulked up to Declan, took the painting of Declan’s mother, and jogged it back to the house as the couple joined Declan, Jordan, and Matthew.

“I’m going to go get this stuff situated,” said the woman, smiling politely but continuing down the pier.

“Be there in a minute,” the man said. He and Declan shook hands, casually, lightly, and then, politely, he shook with Jordan as well. He offered a hand to Matthew, too, but Matthew had turned at just that moment to crouch and look over the edge at the water.

“Sorry for the short notice,” the man continued.

“It was no problem,” Declan said. “Good way to escape the traffic.”

“It seems silly to me this can’t be done over email or phone, but this is tradition and I’m not going to be the first to break it, you know what I mean?” the man said. “What do you want to know?”

Instead of answering, Declan said, “Jordan, Mikkel was on the MFA board for—”

“Fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years,” Declan agreed. “He has dealt with several sweetmetals.”

Jordan looked at Declan instead of at Mikkel.

A boat ride. A fine, pretty boat ride.

“There’s quite a bit of legend around them,” Mikkel went on. “I don’t want to say a secret society because that makes it seem organized, and it really isn’t. It is more that anyone who deals in much art quickly learns to tell what is good art and what isn’t, what is going to make a splash, what isn’t. You get that sense in your head for what is worth your time. And it is not hard to tell after a while of dealing with art, high-end art, that some of them are these sweetmetals. They are special, you know? People like them, they have that something. They sell for much more than you would think, because of that something, so it pays to keep your eye out for it. But they are an open secret. You don’t really talk about them. You wouldn’t advertise something as a sweetmetal. It’s—what’s the word? Gauche. The mystery is part of what makes them what they are. There is just a tradition of not putting anything about them in writing if you can help it, and if you do, burn it, it’s all very Ouija board. What do you want to know?”

Declan held his hand out to Jordan, the universal gesture for After you?

“How are they made?” Jordan asked. “How is it put into them? Do you know?”

Mikkel squinted, as if the question wasn’t exactly logical to him, but then he answered, slowly, “Oh, I see what you are saying. The artist does it. It is something about how they are feeling when they make the art. I thought when I first saw one that it was because the art was special to the world in some way. A real original, you know? But it was explained to me later and this makes more sense. They are special to the artist in some way. They are an original for the artist, something new for them, something personal for them. The subject matter, sometimes, how they felt when they were painting it, others. That is what seems to make some of them into sweetmetals. I do not think it is the artist who does it. It is, like, the spirit of the time. There is a French term for that, isn’t there? There is a French term for everything. Does that answer the question?”

Declan looked to Jordan to see if it did.

“And you don’t know what this is, what the specific bit is about the artist’s process that does it,” she said. “You don’t know anything more specific about this … spirit of the time.”

“All I know is that artists who produce sweetmetals don’t always make sweetmetals,” he said. “They can make two in a row, maybe, and then none for the rest of time. Now, most of them are in private hands … but you know there are a few in the city, right? Open to the public?”

“El Jaleo,” Declan said.

“Yes,” Mikkel said. “Sargent was good at them, but I suppose he was very prolific, too, wasn’t he? Have you ever seen his Madame X?”

Of course she had. Of course. Madame X was Sargent’s self-proclaimed masterpiece, with all its checkered history. It was one of the first Sargents Jordan had ever tried to copy. She and Hennessy had taken turns at it, sometimes even working on the same copy as they did it over and over again. There was a full-length copy of it back in the McLean mansion with a bunch of bullet holes in its head, just like the poor girls who might still be there, too.

Mikkel saw from their expressions they had. “It’s a sweetmetal, too. Off the charts. Whatever those two have in common, that’s what makes a sweetmetal.”

His teen son jogged up to give Mikkel his house keys; he’d locked away the portrait of Declan’s mother safely inside the house.

“Thank you for making the time before your trip,” Declan said.

“Thank you for facilitating,” Mikkel replied. “I’m sure