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“Oh,” says a voice at the door, sounding surprised. “Are you Janie?”
Jane looks up into the face of a tall girl who must be Patrick Yellan’s little sister, for she’s got his looks, his coloring, his brilliant blue eyes. Her long, dark hair is pulled back in a messy knot.
“Yes,” says Jane. “Ivy?”
“Yeah,” says the girl. “But, how old are you?”
“Eighteen,” says Jane. “You?”
“Nineteen,” she says. “Kiran told me she was bringing a friend but she didn’t tell me you were my age.” She leans against the door frame, wearing skintight gray jeans and a red hoodie so comfortably that she might have slept in them. She reaches into her hoodie pocket, pulls out a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, and sticks them on her face.
In her gold zigzag shirt and wine-colored cords covered with dog hair, Jane feels awkward suddenly, like some sort of evolutionary anomaly. A blue-footed booby, next to a graceful heron.
“I love your outfit,” Ivy says.
Jane is astonished. “Are you a mind reader?”
“No,” says Ivy, with a quick, wicked grin. “Why?”
“You just read my mind.”
“That sounds disconcerting,” says Ivy. “Hmmm, how about zeppelins?”
“What?”
“Were you thinking about zeppelins?”
“No.”
“Then that should make you more comfortable.”
“What?” says Jane again, so confused that she’s laughing a little.
“Unless you were just thinking about zeppelins.”
“It’s possible I’ve never thought about zeppelins,” says Jane.
“It’s an acceptable Scrabble word,” says Ivy, “even though it’s often a proper name, which isn’t allowed.”
“Zeppelins?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Well, zeppelin, singular, anyway. I put it down once on two triple-word scores. Kiran challenged me, because zeppelins are named after a person, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin or somebody, but it’s in the Scrabble dictionary anyway. It earned me two hundred fifty-seven points. Oh god. I’m sorry. Listen to me.”
“Don’t—”
“No, really,” she says. “I swear I’m not usually afflicted with verbal diarrhea. I also don’t usually brag about my Scrabble scores two minutes after meeting someone.”
“It’s okay,” says Jane, because people who talk so easily make her comfortable, they’re less work, she knows where she stands. “I don’t play much Scrabble, so I don’t know what it means to earn two hundred fifty-seven points. That could be average, for all I know.”
“It’s an amazing fucking score for one word,” Ivy says, then closes her eyes. “Seriously. What is wrong with me.”
“I like it,” says Jane. “I want to hear more of your Scrabble words.”
Ivy shoots her a grateful grin. “I did actually have a reason for coming by,” she says. “I’m the one who got your room ready. I wanted to check if everything’s okay.”
“More than okay,” says Jane. “I mean, there’s a fireplace and hot tub.”
“Not what you’re used to?”
“My last bedroom was about the size of that bed,” Jane says, pointing to it.
“The ‘cupboard under the stairs’?”
“I guess not that bad,” says Jane, smiling at the Harry Potter reference.
“I’m glad,” says Ivy. “You’re sure you don’t need anything?”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me.”
“Hey, it’s my job,” says Ivy. “Tell me what you need.”
“Well,” says Jane. “There are a couple things I could use, but I don’t really need them, and they’re not normal things I would ask you for.”
“Such as?”
“A rotary saw,” says Jane. “A lathe.”
“Uh-huh,” says Ivy, grinning again. “Come with me.”
“You’re going to bring me to a rotary saw and a lathe?” says Jane, tossing the blanket back onto the bed.
“This house has one of everything.”
“Do you know where everything is?”
Ivy considers this thoughtfully as the dog follows them out into the corridor. “I probably know where almost everything is. I’m sure the house is keeping some secrets from me.”
Jane is tall, but Ivy is taller, with legs that go on forever. Their strides are well-matched. The dog clings close to her feet. “Is it true Jasper has a personality disorder?” she asks. “Kiran said so.”
“He can be quirky,” Ivy says. “He won’t do his business if you’re watching him—he glares at you as if you’re being unforgivably rude. And there’s a painting in the blue sitting room he’s obsessed with.”
“What do you mean?”
“He sits there gazing at it, blowing big sighs through his nose.”
“Is it a painting of a dog or something?”
“No, it’s a boring old city by the water, except for the fact that it’s got two moons. And sometimes he disappears for days and we can’t find him. Cook calls him our earthbound misfit. He’s our house mystery too—he appeared one day after one of the galas, a puppy, as if a guest had brought him and left him behind. But no one ever claimed him. So we kept him. Is he bothering you?”
“Nah,” says Jane. “This house,” she adds as Ivy walks her down the hallway toward the atrium at the house’s center. A polar bear rug, complete with head and glassy eyes, sits in the middle of the passageway. It looks like real fur. Wrinkling her nose, Jane makes a path around it, then rubs her ears again, trying to dislodge a noise. The house is humming, or singing, a faint, high-pitched whine of air streaming through pipes somewhere, though really, Jane’s not totally conscious of it. There’s a way in which background noises can enter one’s unconscious self, settle in—even make changes—without tripping any of one’s conscious alarms.
Ivy slows as she nears the center of the house. They are on the highest level, the third, and Ivy takes the branch of the hallway that goes to the left. Jane follows, finding herself on one of the bridgelike balconies she saw from the receiving hall. The bridge overlooks the receiving hall on one side and the courtyard on the other.
Ivy stops at one of the archways overlooking the courtyard. Someone’s left a camera here, perched on the wide balustrade, a fancy one with a big lens. Picking it up, Ivy hangs it around her neck. When Jane steps beside her, breathing through the heady feeling of vertigo, Jasper does too, shoving his head between two balusters.
“Jasper,” Jane says in alarm, reaching for his collar, then realizing he’s not wearing one. “Jasper! Be careful!”
Jasper demonstrates that he cannot possibly fall, by straining with all his strength to push himself through the balusters, failing, then looking up at Jane with an “I told you so” expression. It’s not a comforting demonstration.
“Don’t worry,” Ivy says. “He won’t fall. He’s too big.”
“Yeah,” Jane says, “I see that, but I still wish he’d stay back. Respect the heights, you long-eared bozo!”
At this, Ivy lets out a single, small laugh. “Quixotic,” she says.
“What?”
She shakes her head at herself. “Sorry. It just occurred to me that if I’d been able to play the word quixotic in that spot instead of the word zeppelin, I’d have scored even more points. Because of the combined power of the x and the q. They’re valuable letters,” she adds apologetically, “because they’re rare. You make me want to talk. It’s like a compulsion. I could go get a muzzle.”
“I told you, I like it,” says Jane, then notices, suddenly, the words on Ivy’s camera strap: I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself.
It’s a reference to the TV show Doctor Who. “Are you a sci-fi fan?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” says Ivy. “I like sci-f
i and fantasy generally.”
“Who’s your favorite Doctor?”
“Eh, I like the companions better,” says Ivy. “The Doctor’s all tragic and broody and last of his kind, and I get the appeal of that, but I like Donna Noble and Rose Tyler. And Amy and Rory, and Clara Oswald, and Martha Jones. No one ever likes Martha Jones but I like Martha Jones. She’s an asskicker.”
Jane nods. “I get that.”
“Were you going to say something about the house?” says Ivy. “Before?”
“The decorative stuff,” Jane says. “The art. Isn’t it kind of . . . random?”
Ivy leans an elbow on the balustrade. “Yeah, it’s definitely random,” she says. “Officially random, really. A hundred-some years ago, when the very first Octavian Thrash was building this house, he, um, how should I put it, he . . . acquired parts of other houses, from all over the world.”
“Acquired?” says Jane. “What do you mean? Like, the way Russia acquired Crimea?”
