Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

within it. It was not enough to drown out the complex’s sound, which was still everywhere. Inside her. Inescapable. Unrelenting. It required no human hands to do its work; it was in there powering that sound all by itself, working away at Bryde without feeling or pause.

Humans were so good at pollution. The best.

Suddenly, a massive hole appeared in the dark glass lobby doors of the closest building. Ronan had driven right in. For just a moment, Burrito was visible in the reflection of the remaining glass, and then it winked out of view. Crashing sounded from within the building.

Minutes passed.

Although it was impossible to see what was happening, it was nonetheless obvious that something was happening, because the terrible sound had gotten a little quieter, replaced now by security alarms. Bryde had stopped screaming and instead was simply hunched, eyes closed in pain, hands still over ears.

Hennessy missed the moment of Burrito emerging from the first building, but she saw the moment it crashed into the second. That shivering glass, that brief reflection. Again, as Ronan did his work inside the building, the terrible sound went down another notch, replaced by yet more ordinary howling of alarms. She wondered if they were hooked up to anything. She wondered if she’d need to bedazzle any security forces with one of Bryde’s silver orbs. She examined her conscience to see if she would be willing to rummage in Bryde’s jacket to retrieve one of the orbs while he stood there. Hennessy ordinarily had no problem violating people’s personal space, but with Bryde, it felt wrong. This, she thought, was probably related to Bryde’s secrets.

By the time Ronan and Burrito crashed into the third building, Bryde had lowered his hands from his ears and simply stood, staring dead-eyed and haggard off into the distance.

Then the terrible sound was gone and so were the alarms, so Ronan must have destroyed those, too. There was only the sound of an unmanned business park several miles away from an ugly town. Distant trucks. Faraway heating and air-conditioning units. Tractors and birds.

This time the ley’s surge was so powerful that it nearly knocked Hennessy right off her feet.

It was less that she was physically struck and more like the ground beneath her feet suddenly seemed unimportant. She was a part of a huge, ancient thing that was slowly stretching, slowly coming back to life, and she suddenly thought she understood in a very real way why the Moderators were doing everything in their power to catch them.

Bryde looked nearly like himself as the sound of Burrito’s engine drew near. The car was still hard to see, but Hennessy guessed that Ronan hadn’t lost a mirror. Burrito was strong. Ronan was strong. Hennessy was strong. They were all very, very strong.

And getting stronger all the time.

The ley line was singing through her even louder than that server farm had, only it was worse, because she knew this feeling meant she could manifest so, so much of the Lace.

Bryde said, in a low voice, “Have you guessed my secret, Hennessy?”

Hennessy studied Bryde. Again, she thought about how unusual a person he was. He was a little like the car, hard to look at. Hard to see. Or maybe she was just thinking that now that she’d seen him screaming, it was hard to look at him the same way. She said, “Is this a game?”

He closed his eyes. He was still hurting a little, she could tell. In a stiff voice, he said, “It’s all a big game. We’re pieces.” Then he opened his eyes again. “You asked for a rest. We are nearly to the end.”

“I didn’t ask for a break,” Hennessy said.

Her secret was this: She was tired of trying.

Madame X. Madame X. Madame X.

When Declan slept, he dreamt of her, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, the red-haired beauty who powdered her face and pinked her ears to make herself unforgettable, a painting before she ever showed up on a canvas as John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, her face turned in striking profile, shoulders proud, fingers poised on the table. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, with her suitable but troubled young marriage, her many affairs, the dress strap slid from her shoulder to subtly imply she lived two lives: a proper, daylight existence and a stolen, shadow existence that was a reaction to the unsuitability of the first. Madame X.

When he woke up, he thought about the circumstances under which she had been painted. When Declan went to sleep, he thought about how she might be similar to El Jaleo. All the hours in between, he thought about how that process might be re-created to make a new sweetmetal. Madame X. Madame X. Madame X.

And by Madame X, he meant Jordan Hennessy.

He couldn’t get enough of her.

Boston suited him. Schedule suited him. Appointments, phone calls, goals—they all suited him. Building an elaborate spiderweb (a proper one, structurally sound on the outermost corners and sticky only in the very middle so that it trapped only the insects he liked to eat and not himself in it) suited him. He was making a plan. It was high stakes and it was dangerous and Jordan was right: He liked it. He liked all of it.

Declan liked the alarm at 6:00 a.m. He liked the cafés that woke up even before he did. He liked the ding of the email that meant his newspaper had arrived in his inbox. He liked the swick of his CharlieCard in the turnstile, he liked the jostle and noise of the T as he read the headlines and swiped to the business section. He liked hearing from a new business contact he’d gotten from one of his father’s old contacts. He liked the assembly of jobs and tasks that got ever more complex as trust built.

Declan liked being buried to his neck in art history. He had begun as Pozzi, and Pozzi