Mister Impossible - Maggie Stiefvater (ereader manga TXT) 📗

Bryde said, “Then we begin where I left off.”

Jordan couldn’t really fathom what it was to be great at art.

Other people told her she was great at art all the time. They gasped over how quickly she could pencil a likeness. The ease with which she mixed pigments. The confidence of her brushstrokes. And it wasn’t that she didn’t understand why they said it. The canvases she turned out were impressive. Her grasp of technique was notable at her age. Her ability to paint what she saw before her at speed was unusual.

But she was simply aping other people’s greatness.

It wasn’t that she was incapable of greatness. It was possible (probable?) she had the aptitude for it. She had a very good grasp of art theory. She knew how to lead the viewer’s eye around a canvas in just the order she intended. She knew how to subtract and add elements to make the eye linger or flit. She knew which colors warmed a subject closer and which cooled objects into the background. She knew how light glowed on glass, on metal, on grass, on cloth. She knew which of her paints were lean and which were fat, she knew how much turpentine to add to get the stroke she wanted, she knew what value problems varnish would and wouldn’t fix. She knew all the fiddly math and science that made art and emotion work on a good canvas. Jordan had the prerequisites to be a great artist.

But she was not a great artist. She was a great technician.

Being in the presence of paintings like El Jaleo and Jordan in White only drove this home. They weren’t great because they were technically perfect. There was something else. Something more. Whether that something could be named—sweetmetal?—she wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that pieces like that all had a way of seeing the world that no one else had noticed before.

That was greatness.

Jordan knew this with every fiber of her being. Every time she forged an Edward Lear, a Henry Ossawa Tanner, a Frederic Remington, a Georgia O’Keeffe, a Homer, she knew. She wore their great hats for a little bit each time she forged them, but that didn’t make her great. The gap between what she did and what those artists did was vast. Before Ronan, she had thought that was how it would remain. She’d figured that she would run out of time long before she’d ever have a chance to see what she was capable of. But now she was in Boston and her heart was still beating and her eyes were still open. With a sweetmetal in hand, she might have more time than she ever hoped for.

Jordan wasn’t great at art, but for the first time, she thought she might get the chance to find out if she could be.

“Thanks for the help,” Jordan said.

“Sure thing,” Matthew Lynch replied. “Thanks for buying my corn dog.”

“Is that what you were eating? I thought it was a sock.”

Matthew rubbed his stomach enthusiastically with one hand and shifted the enormous garment bag on his shoulder with the other. “Everyone needs more socks—that’s what Deklo says.”

The advantages of bringing the youngest Lynch as her assistant were threefold. First of all, she could use an extra set of hands. Not only was it nice to have someone else to move lighting or adjust hair, but clients also paid more for artists who brought assistants. It seemed like it should be more expensive and so it was, one of those psychological self-fulfilling prophecies. Secondly, Declan Lynch had asked if she could keep an eye on Matthew while he ran some errands, presumably of dubious legality or safety, and it was nice to be able to do him a favor to show she appreciated him coming up to Boston. And finally, it hadn’t taken long for Jordan to figure out that Matthew Lynch was a little bit like a sweetmetal, but for humans. People loved him. They didn’t know why they loved him, but they did. Thoroughly, simply, unabashedly. That seemed like a lucky thing to have on a job.

“You’re gonna tell me what I need to do, right?” Matthew asked. “When we’re in there?”

“That’s the plan,” Jordan said. “Should be nice and relaxed. We want them to feel they’ve had a good time. You make ’em happy, they tell their friends about you. And people in places like this have friends …”

“With dollar bill signs for eyes?” Matthew asked. “Wait, no, you’d be the one with the dollar bill signs, ’cause you’re the one getting paid. Or pound notes? Pound note signs?”

He continued prattling on to himself as Jordan texted the client to let her know she was on the doorstep. It was an impressive doorstep, a stone-clad threshold double their height. The grand old stone Boston church had been converted to four massive luxury condos, each as large as most suburban mansions. Tastefully expensive cars sat on the curb. A nanny shot them wary looks as she pushed a stroller down the sidewalk. Matthew waved at the little girl following the nanny; the little girl waved back.

There was a little hum of an electric door lock, and then the door came open.

The woman in the doorway matched the cars on the sidewalk. Tastefully expensive. Her smile was free for all, though. “Hi, I’m Sherry. Jordan Hennessy?”

Jordan grinned back. “And my assistant, Matthew. This is a great location.”

“We love it,” said Sherry. “Still smells like contrition. Come on in.”

They came on in. Jordan was combining business and pleasure, or at least business and personal. As far as Sherry knew, Jordan was just there to get reference photos for a gimmick commission. But Jordan had also discovered that Sherry and her husband, Donald, had probably purchased a sweetmetal through one of Boudicca’s auctions years before. Probably because Jordan wasn’t