“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?”
Ivy flashes a grin. “Yeah, basically. Some of the houses were being remodeled, or torn down. Octavian bought parts. But in other cases, it’s hard to say how he got his hands on them.”
“Are you saying he stole?”
“Yes,” Ivy says. “Or bought stuff that was stolen. That’s why the pillars don’t match, or the tiles, or anything really. He collected the art the same way, and the furniture. Apparently ships would arrive full of random crap, maybe a door from Turkey, a banister from China. A stained-glass window from Italy, a column from Egypt, a pile of floorboards from some manor kitchen in Scotland. Even the skeleton is made of the miscellaneous crap he collected.”
“So . . . the house is like Frankenstein’s monster?”
“Yup,” she says, “speaking of sci-fi. Or like some kind of cannibal.”
“Will it eat us?”
Her smile again. “It hasn’t eaten anyone yet.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
“Good,” she says.
“Some of the art seems newer.”
“Mrs. Vanders and Ravi do the buying these days. Octavian gives them permission to spend his money.”
“What things do they buy?”
“Valuable stuff. Tasteful stuff. Nothing stolen. Ravi works as an art dealer in New York now, actually, with Kiran’s boyfriend, Colin. It’s like his dream job. I think he cries with happiness every morning on his way to work. Ravi is bananas about art,” she adds, noticing Jane’s puzzled expression. “He’s been known to sleep under the Vermeer. Like, in the corridor, in a sleeping bag.”
Jane is trying to imagine a grown man sleeping on a floor beneath a painting. “I’ll try to remember that, in case I’m ever walking around in the dark.”
“Ha!” says Ivy. “I meant when he was a little kid. He doesn’t do it now. We used to play with some of the art too, like, pretend-play around it. The sculptures, the Brancusi fish. The suits of armor.”
While Jane tries to file all this information away, rainwater pounds on the glass ceiling of the courtyard. “What about the courtyard?” she says, taking in the pink stone, the measured terraces, the hanging nasturtiums. “It isn’t unmatching. It feels balanced.”
“Mm-hm,” says Ivy with a small, crooked smile. “The first Octavian rescued the entire thing from a Venetian palace that was being torn down, and brought it over on a boat in one piece.”
There’s something preposterous about a ship carrying three stories of empty space around the Italian peninsula, through the Mediterranean, and across the Atlantic.
“This house kind of gives me the creeps,” Jane says.
“We’re about to go into the servants’ quarters,” Ivy says. “It’s nice and simple in there, with no dead polar bears.”
“Does that bother you too?”
Ivy gives a rueful shrug. “To me, he’s just Captain Polepants.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what Kiran and Patrick called him when we were little. They thought it was hilarious, because Kiran’s half British, and in the U.K., pants means underpants. Mr. Vanders had a name for him too,” Ivy says, screwing her face up thoughtfully. “Bipolar Bear, I think it was. Because he likes psychology. Funny, right?”
“I guess,” Jane says. “My aunt was a conservationist. She took pictures of polar bears instead of making rugs out of them.”
“Speak of the devil,” Ivy says, looking down to the courtyard below. An elderly man darts across the floor. He’s a tall, dark-skinned black man in black clothing, with a ring of white hair. He carries a small child on one hip, maybe two or three years old. All Jane can see of the child from above is wavy dark hair, tanned skin, flopping arms and legs. “Why?” the toddler yells, squirming. “Why? Why!”
“Kiran never mentioned there’d be so many kids here,” Jane says, remembering the little girl digging in the rain outside her window.
Ivy pauses. “That was Mr. Vanders,” she says. “He’s the butler, and Mrs. Vanders is the housekeeper. They manage a pretty big staff. He’s always in a hurry.”
“Okay,” Jane says, noticing that Ivy’s said nothing about the child, and that her face has gone measured, her voice carefully nonchalant. It’s weird. “You said we’re going into the servants’ quarters?” she adds. “Mrs. Vanders actually told me I’m not allowed there.”
“Mrs. Vanders can bite me,” says Ivy with sudden sharpness.
“What?”
“Sorry.” Ivy looks sheepish. “But she’s not in charge of the house. She just acts like she is. You do whatever you want.”
“Okay.” Jane wants to see the house, every part of it. She also wants to not get yelled at.
“Come on,” Ivy says, pushing away. “If we see her, you can just pretend you don’t know which part of the house we’re in. You can blame me.”
She’s backing away across the bridge while facing Jane, willing Jane to follow her. Then she shoots Jane her wicked grin again, and Jane can’t say no.
* * *
“Every time I step into a new section, I feel like I’m in a different house.”
Jane spins on her heels, examining the unexpectedly serene, unadorned, pale green walls of the forbidden servants’ quarters, in the west wing of the third story. All the doors are set into small, side hallways that branch off the main corridor.
“Wait till you see the bowling alley downstairs,” Ivy says, “and the indoor swimming pool.”
Jane realizes she’s been breathing the faint, rather pleasant scent of chlorine ever since Ivy joined her. “Are you a swimmer?”
“Yeah, when I have time. You can use the pool whenever you want. Tell me if you want me to show you the changing rooms and stuff. That’s my room,” she adds, pointing down a short hallway to a closed door. “Hang on, let me put my camera down.”
“What are you taking pictures of?”
“The art,” she says. “Be right back.” She leaves Jane in the main corridor, where Jasper leans against her legs, sighing. Jane’s clothing has dried, mostly; at any rate, she no longer feels like a soggy, cold stray. She’s exposed out here, though; she imagines Mrs. Vanders peering at her disapprovingly around corners, and she also wishes she could see Ivy’s room. Do the servants have hot tubs and fireplaces too? Is Ivy always on the clock? Does she get to travel to New York like Kiran does? If she’s nineteen, will she go to college? How did she go to high school? For that matter, how did Kiran go to high school?
Ivy emerges.
“Do you have a hot tub in there?”
“I wish,” says Ivy, grinning. “Want to see?”
“Sure.”
Jane and Jasper follow Ivy into a long room with two distinct realms: the bed realm, near the door, and the computer realm, which takes up most of the rest of the space. Jane never knew one person could need so many computers. A jumble of ropes is propped beside one of her keyboards, along
with two of the longest flashlights Jane’s ever seen. Large, precise drawings—blueprints, sort of—cover the walls. Jane realizes, looking closer, that they’re interior maps of a house that are so detailed that they show wallpaper, furniture, carpets, art.
“Did you make these?” asks Jane.
“I guess,” says Ivy. “They’re the house.”
“Wow.” Jane sees familiar things now: the Venetian courtyard, the checkered floor of the receiving hall, the polar bear rug.
Ivy seems embarrassed. “Patrick and I share a bathroom in the hall,” she says. “Mr. and Mrs. Vanders have their own suite, though, and it has a hot tub.”
“You could use my hot tub.”
“Thanks,” says Ivy, pulling the tie out of her messy bun, shaking her hair out, and winding it back up again. The air is touched with the scent of chlorine, and jasmine.
“Marzipan,” Ivy says randomly, giving her hair a final tug.
Jane is used to this by now. “Yeah?”
“Another great word to play in that same spot, because of the position of the z.”
“Are you always thinking up good eight-letter Scrabble words?”
“Nope. Only since you came along.”
“Maybe I’ll be good for your Scrabble game.”
“It’s looking that way. Brains are bizarre,” says Ivy, going back into the corridor and leading Jane and Jasper past more hallways and doors.
“If you grew up here,” says Jane, “how did you go to school?”
“We were all homeschooled,” says Ivy, “by Octavian, and Mr. Vanders, and the first Mrs. Thrash.”
“Was it strange? To be homeschooled, on an isolated island?”
“Probably,” says Ivy with a grin, “but it seemed normal when I was a kid.”
“Will you go to college?”
“I’ve been thinking about it lately,” Ivy says, “a lot. I’ve been saving up, and I took the SATs last time I was in the city. But I haven’t started applying.”
“What will you study?”
“No clue,” she says. “Is that bad? Should I have my whole life plotted out?”