Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(37)

The seller returned with the wrapping paper and a fat, tattered ledger.

Declan eyed this second object. “What’s that?”

“I’ll need your name and zip. This piece is registered,” the seller said. “Her sales are tracked.”

This was unusual in a market that was defined by discretion. Tracked objects were dangerous, absurdly valuable, or tied to organized crime of one brand or another.

Declan felt a burst of misgiving. “By who?”

“Boudicca,” the seller said.

The word meant nothing to Declan, but he didn’t like it anyway. He didn’t do strings-attached. “I’ll give you nineteen for it, unregistered.”

The big muscle-bound man shook his head regretfully. “Can’t do that, buddy.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Can’t. Not for Boudicca. Not worth it.”

Declan weighed this. It was bad enough to come to this place where people would know him and buy one of his father’s old dreams. It was something else to come here and be on the record about it. He didn’t like how the guy said Boudicca, either. It sounded like power. It sounded like malice. He didn’t like it one bit.

He’d already given out his business card once that evening and that felt dangerous enough.

“Then that’s a no from me,” Declan said. He held out his hand to get his cash back. “Sorry.”

“Come on,” the guy said. “The deal’s almost closed.”

“Sorry.”

The guy kept holding out the ledger. “It’s not an address. Just name and zip. Easy. You give that at the Starbucks drive-through. You write that on the bathroom wall.”

Declan kept holding his hand out for his money.

In the background, the sounds of the Fairy Market continued. There was some kind of kerfuffle happening on the other side of the room. People scuffling. Voices raised. It was dangerous tonight; it was always dangerous at these places. Declan had known that and he’d come anyway. He’d brought Ronan. He’d edged out on this limb and reached for this painting from his past. He knew better than this.

The Dark Lady stared at him mistrustfully.

“Lynch,” Ronan said abruptly.

Both Declan and the guy looked at Ronan. For a moment, Declan couldn’t decide if Ronan had actually said something, or if Declan had merely imagined it.

“Ronan Lynch, 22740.”

Declan could kill him. He could absolutely kill him.

The man wrote it down. Declan could feel his skin prickling all over when he saw the words in ink. Ronan. Lynch. A truth, given away. A truth, transcribed forever. He hated it. So much softer to lie. So much easier to just put down the painting and what it promised and walk away.

The man lifted the painting of the golden-haired woman into Ronan’s arms.

“Enjoy the ocean.”





20

Jordan was performing again.

Tonight was not entirely unlike the party at TJ’s, except that the audience was made up of criminals, Jordan was very much hoping Feinman wouldn’t show up, and the stakes were even higher because if their plan failed tonight, she couldn’t think of what a fallback plan might look like.

Jordan was copying John Singer Sargent’s Street in Venice in the middle of the Fairy Market. She’d copied this particular painting many, many times before, but familiarity made it soothing rather than boring, like rewatching a favorite movie. In it, a girl clutched her shawl as she walked briskly down an alley. Two men, loosely depicted in dark colors, stared at her as she passed. The girl’s eyes were cut low to the side, furtively watching them watch her. A couple sat at a café as well, but Jordan hadn’t even noticed them the first few times she’d seen the painting. Just the wary girl, darkly observed, and the city creeping in close.

Like all Sargents, the key to copying it was painting without hesitation. He had broad, free, effortless-looking strokes, and if the artist approached the work with timidity, the resulting copy looked fussy and forced.

Jordan didn’t hesitate.

Not long after she’d set up, Hennessy called. “All eyes on you?”

“Green light go.”

“Got my fortune told. Lady said our house was going to get broken into again.”

Jordan breathed out. “We don’t have a house.”

“Too right, we have a home,” Hennessy said. “I’m gonna go see a man about a dog.”

She hung up.

Jordan turned her attention back to the canvas in front of her. Art, art, think of the art. If she thought of the art, she wouldn’t think about everything that could go wrong. Art was a solid part of Jordan. Not art like take up a brush and let your soul pour out through pigments, but rather art as an object in the trunk of your car, art as a physical proof of cultural identity, art as a commodity. She had scars, stains, and blisters from art. Probably it was inevitable, given her pedigree. Hennessy’s father had collected art, including her mother, and her mother had painted portraits right up until she’d died. Her mother’s portraits had been a little famous before her death and now they were very famous. This was, Jordan discovered, because art always lasted longer when mingled with blood.

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” a familiar voice said.

Feinman. Bernadette Feinman looked even more hectic and dramatic in this environment, adding a long fur coat to the rose-tinted glasses Jordan had seen her in before. She looked like a poised older lady who’d seen some things in the past and was open to seeing more things in the present. She still had her clove cigarette; she smoked it now in a long holder. Jordan appreciated the commitment to the aesthetic even as she felt her heart sink.