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“I should think it’s obvious that it’s a child,” says Mr. Vanders.
“Are there many children here?”
“It’s a large staff,” he responds. “Most people in life have children.”
“I saw a little girl digging in the garden yesterday,” says Jane.
Mr. Vanders freezes. Astonishment lights his face, then vanishes so quickly that Jane wonders if she imagined it. What could possibly be so significant about a little girl digging in the garden?
Pointing his pen at the exit, he practically commands, “Talk to Mrs. Vanders!”
“Well, geez. I hope she’s a better conversationalist than everyone else in this house,” Jane mutters as she turns away, amazed with the way some of the people she’s encountered here—Mr. Vanders, Ravi, Phoebe, Colin—provoke her most sardonic but also her most honest self. Jane may not be comfortable in this house, but she wonders if maybe this house makes her comfortable in herself. She feels almost as if she’s meeting herself again after a long absence. Aunt Magnolia?
“By the way,” Jane says louder as she reaches the door, “I’m the sultan of subtle.”
“I don’t think there’s a sultan of subtle,” Patrick remarks absently behind her. “It’s more an office for ministers and spies.”
* * *
In the receiving hall, a team of women drag lilac branches around, cutting and arranging them in pots. Jane climbs the steps quickly, trying to reach an altitude where the scent is less overwhelming. Every spring her campus town is choked with the smell of lilacs. It’s impossible to separate that smell from Aunt Magnolia.
She stops on the second level, noticing that someone’s given the suits of armor big bouquets of daffodils to hold in their arms. Jasper is on the opposite landing again. He stands in front of that tall painting of the room with the umbrella, watching Jane, whimpering. Thinking to give him a scratch, she moves onto the bridge above the receiving hall, but then the sound of a camera shutter echoes somewhere above.
Jane knows who it is. Leaning out, she cranes her neck to find Ivy on the bridge above. Her stomach is propped against the railing and she seems to be photographing the receiving hall.
For a split second, Jane considers pretending not to see her. If she doesn’t talk to Ivy, she won’t have to think about whether Ivy’s mixed up in something bad.
Then Ivy lowers her camera and sees Jane. She leans over the railing, smiling. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” says Jane cautiously. “What are you doing?”
“Taking pictures.”
“Of what?”
“Wait there,” Ivy says, then straightens and walks out of Jane’s sight.
A moment later, she steps onto Jane’s bridge. She’s wearing a ratty blue sweater and black leggings and she smells like chlorine again, or maybe like the sea. She looks like the sea. Beautiful, and unconcerned, and full of secrets.
“What are you up to?” she asks Jane.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Vanders,” Jane answers. “Why are you taking pictures of the receiving hall?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m photographing the art,” Ivy says, then opens her mouth to say more, then closes it, looking carefully casual, and Jane knows, immediately, through some instinct that touches the skin of her throat, that whatever’s going on, Ivy is involved.
“Ivy?” she says, with a sinking heart. “What is it?”
“What’s what?” says Ivy. “Look.” She shows the camera to Jane, scrolling through the last dozen or so shots. Every picture contains one or another piece of art in the house, though much of the art is obscured by members of the gala cleaning staff. Jane sees the women arranging lilacs, and the bucket-carrying man who walked through breakfast this morning. Several of the pictures feature this man, the art fading into the background.
“It must be hard to focus on the art when the house is so full of people,” Jane says, fishing again.
“Yeah.”
“Why are you taking pictures of the art?”
“For Mrs. Vanders,” Ivy says in that fake, nonchalant voice. “To help her catalog it.”
“Ivy?” says Jane, dying to ask her if she’s really taking pictures of the art, or if she might, for some reason, be taking pictures of the people.
“Yeah?”
“Nothing,” says Jane, biting back frustration. “It just seems to me like some of the people in this house are acting weird.”
“Really? Like who?”
Like you, with that fake innocent voice, Jane wants to reply. She wonders, what if she told Ivy about seeing Patrick and the Okadas? “Mrs. Vanders, for one,” she says. “She keeps giving me weird looks.”
“She does that to everyone,” says Ivy.
“Right,” says Jane with a touch of sarcasm she can’t hide. “I’m sure everything’s completely normal.”
Now Ivy’s studying Jane with wide-eyed surprise. “Janie?” she says. “Did something happen?”
“Morning, you two,” says a voice behind Jane.
Kiran’s on the landing, about to descend the steps to the receiving hall. “Sorry, Janie,” she says. “Did you get breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, hon,” Kiran says, flashing a quick smile at Ivy. “How are you this morning?”
“Good,” says Ivy distractedly, still watching Jane with puzzlement. “Patrick’s back. He’s probably looking for you.”
“Mm?” says Kiran, inflecting the monosyllable with disinterest. She starts down the steps. Just as her feet touch the hall’s checkerboard floor, Ravi appears at the very top of the stairs.
One after another, the servants in the receiving hall turn to look up at him, then smile. He’s showered, shaved, barefoot, and dressed in black, and up there on his stage, with those white streaks in his hair that make him look older than he is, sophisticated. He’s hard not to smile at. Kiran cranes her neck to him, her face suffused with light. When he sees her, he starts down the steps, singing her name, skipping, rushing. Reaching her, he enfolds her in a hug that makes Jane wish she had a twin brother.
Then Ravi’s eyes take in the entire hall, find Jane and Ivy standing on the bridge.
“I like your friend,” he says to Kiran, loudly enough for Jane to hear.
“Behave yourself, Ravi,” Kiran chides him.
“Hey, Ivy-bean,” Ravi calls up to Ivy, flashing her a grin.
“Hey, Ravi,” Ivy calls down, her smile big and real. She adds, in a tone of mischief, “How’s your girlfriend?”
“Perfectly aware that I’m a sexual magnet,” he says.
Ivy snorts. “Just don’t forget about my powers.” She adds sideways to Jane, “Ravi and I have a joke that I’m a witch.”
“I thought you only used your powers for good,” says Ravi.
“Good is such an enigmatic word,” says Ivy.
“Oh my god!” Ravi says. “Someone’s corrupted you! Hide the grimoires!”
“Let’s take a vote of the house and see who people think is more corruptible, me or you.”
“Oh, hell,” Ravi says. “You know, just because the majority believes it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“Majority? Pah. It’s going to be unanimous.”
“That doesn’t make it true, either.”
“Listen, all I’m saying is, Lucy seems like a nice lady. So don’t forget about my powers.”
“Got it. When my testicles dry up and drop off, I’ll know who—”
“Oh, god,” Kiran interrupts. “Please don’t make me picture your testicles, Ravi.”
“Come see Mum,” says Ravi to Kiran.
“Oh god! You switch from your testicles to our mother?”
“She’s the other woman most likely to threaten my testicles,” says Ravi. “Come have breakfast, then come visit Mum with me.”
“I’m n
ot in the mood for her various realities,” says Kiran. “She makes my head spin.”
“You can’t avoid her forever,” says Ravi. “or Dad either. From the sound of things, you’re avoiding him too.”
“Well,” says Kiran sweetly. “Then you should consider yourself flattered that I’m not avoiding you.”
“I was born irresistible,” says Ravi. “I can’t take credit for it.” Then his eyes slide to a place under the bridge Jane and Ivy are standing on. His face grows quiet. “Hey, man,” he says to someone Jane can’t see. He kisses his sister on the cheek, then passes through one of the doors that lead, among other places, to the banquet hall.
The person Ravi has greeted has fine shoulders Jane recognizes from above. As Patrick walks into the receiving hall toward Kiran, his broad, T-shirted back is to Jane, so she can’t see his expression, but she can see Kiran’s. It’s one with which Jane is becoming well-acquainted: a measured hardness. Kiran’s wall. And she’s right to protect herself, Jane thinks. Patrick lies.
Patrick stops before Kiran. “Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Kiran says, then flicks her eyes toward Jane and Ivy as a signal to Patrick. Patrick glances over his shoulder and sees them on the bridge.
Jane studiously pretends to look elsewhere for a moment, then, as soon as Patrick looks away, returns to watching them.
“So,” Patrick says, turning back to Kiran. “On your way to breakfast?”
