Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(88)

“Well, it really shows,” she said. She unlocked the car door. “Ready to roll?”

What are you doing here?

Getting into a car with a girl from the Fairy Market.

Just for tonight, he thought. He’d go back to being dull as soon as the sun came up.

When he opened the passenger side door, The Dark Lady looked back at him. The painting rested across the seat so that it would be the first thing he saw; it was meant to shock him. He stood there, the door in his hand. The Dark Lady’s expression was bitter, wary, intense.

He knew at once that this was the real painting. The seething desire leaked from the brushstrokes in a way it hadn’t for the one still hidden in the closet by his kitchen. This was why he had not dreamt of The Dark Lady’s shore these past nights.

“When?” he asked. He shook his head a little. He could figure that part out; he knew the last time he’d had The Dark Lady’s dream.

“We’ve both got things we can’t say,” Jordan said. “That’s just who we are, isn’t it? This was the only one that made me feel ugly to not say it.”

He asked the question he couldn’t guess. “Why did you do it?”

Jordan’s expression was frank. “Here’s the deal: You don’t ask me why I had it, and I won’t ask you about the man who made it. I can’t do any better than that right now. It’s all I got on a”—she looked at the car’s clock, which was clearly wrong—“Friday night at four p.m.”

He could feel his mouth quirking at the absurdity of it all. He felt like laughing. He didn’t know why. If it was because she was funny, or if it was because he was laughing at himself because he was an idiot, or if it was the way her wide grin was so infectious when she made a joke.

“So what I have is a fake,” he said.

“Fake is a strong word. Replica is gentler, don’t you think? Limited edition print, finished by hand?” Jordan said. She was not nearly as apologetic as one might expect in the circumstances. “You can take it back and walk away, no hard feelings. Or you can shove that old bag in the back and come with me for a little while.”

If this was the real painting, that meant there was still backing paper to be pulled from the canvas, still swords to be pulled from stones. He wouldn’t think about that. He was shivering there standing in that open door, though he didn’t know if it was from the cool night, or the lateness of the hour, or the difficulty of the day, or the Dark Lady’s scowl, or Jordan Hennessy’s grin.

What are you doing here, Declan?

“Do you have a preference?” he asked.

Jordan said, “This car’s a two-seater, Mr. Lynch.”

He would be dull again tomorrow, he told himself again.

He maneuvered The Dark Lady into the back and slid into her place.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked.

She put the car into gear with the thoughtless certainty of someone who has been in cars so often they are just another part of their body. “How do you feel about being the first Jordan Hennessy original?”

They drove to Georgetown, which he wasn’t expecting, to go with this wild girl to one of the most cultivated and comely neighborhoods in Washington, DC. Here, historic townhomes crowded like close friends behind mature trees, everything handsome and polite. He longed for a Georgetown town house like he longed for a Senator or Congressman before his name—he longed for it because he liked the look of them, but he also longed for it because he liked the look that followed when people heard that you were a congressman or lived in Georgetown.

Jordan parked along a quiet, dark street and got a bag from the back. “Sorry, it’s a bit of a jog. I hope you have your Crocs.”

Together the two of them walked a few quiet blocks to a neighborhood picturesque even in the middle of the night: warm streetlights, lacy dark leaves before them, gentle brick townhomes, wrought iron, ivy. Jordan sidled between two tall buildings, past parked bicycles and rubbish bins, to a low back garden gate. It had a small padlock. Jordan rested her bag on the other side of the gate, climbed, and then waited for him to climb after her.

Trespassing was not on Declan’s ordinary menu.

He did it anyway.

At the back door, Jordan leaned into a keypad and punched a few digits. The door hummed and unlocked. She stepped inside, gestured for him to follow, and then closed the door behind him.

They stood in a dark hall that was nonetheless incompletely dark in the way of city darkness. The streetlights came in red-gold through the front windows and made big squares of comfortable city night light across the wood floor. The house smelled of lemon verbena and stale old house.

“It’s empty?” he guessed.

“They rent it sometimes,” Jordan replied. “You just have to gander the calendar online to make sure no one’s coming. It’s too spendy for the area, though, so mostly it’s empty.”

He didn’t ask her how she’d gotten the keycode, and she didn’t offer it. She gestured for him to follow her, and he did, moving quietly toward the staircase.

“You don’t live here.”

“No,” she said, “but I gave it a look when we—I was finding a place in the city. And now I just come every so often to paint. Not as much as I used to.”

They were climbing now, one flight, to a second floor that was mostly a single large room that must have been quite bright during the day, because it was quite bright during the night. The streetlight was looking right in the window at them, and its attention was illuminating. The room had a beautiful tattered Persian rug on the floor and a clawfoot desk that looked as if it would walk up for a pet and a biscuit. Easels were set up everywhere. A concrete greyhound sniffed the air. It was very chic and specific.