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 not 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?”
“Yes,” says Kiran.
“Say hi to your fancy boyfriend for me,” he says.
“Patrick,” Kiran says. “Stop it.”
“Imagine if I could say that to you,” Patrick says, “and you did what I asked. ‘Kiran, stop it.’”
“I’m not having this conversation here.”
“All right,” Patrick says sharply, then spins around and strides away into the east wing.
Kiran looks after him, fists closed hard. Her brittle mask is slipping. Suddenly she bursts across the checkerboard floor after him, her heels slapping on marble, like gunshots. She passes out of sight.
Jasper, still on the second-story landing, starts hopping and yipping in front of that tall painting. It’s like he’s channeling a rabid kangaroo.
“What is going on in this weirdo house?” Jane ask Ivy.
“Why, whatever do you mean?” says Ivy. Her tone is tongue-in-cheek.
“Do Kiran and Patrick have some sort of history?” says Jane.
“Sort of,” Ivy says. “I mean, they love each other. But it’s messy. At the moment, I’d say they have fundamental incompatibilities.”
“You mean, like, that Kiran has a boyfriend?”
“No,” says Ivy, her voice inflected with a kind of certainty. “I think the issues are mainly on Patrick’s side.”
“You mean because he sneaks around and lies,” says Jane.
Ivy’s alarm is physical, her body tensing and her eyes rushing to Jane’s. Then she starts talking, filling the silence, as if to keep Jane from saying anything else. “I think Kiran’s with Colin because she’s trying to move on, actually. He’s kind to her—he looks out for her. Like, once, before Colin and Kiran started dating, Octavian was criticizing Kiran at dinner for being sad and mopey and unemployed. Colin looked right at him and told Octavian there was no shame in being sad or mopey or unemployed, if that’s what you happened to be. He said it in this completely reasonable voice that sort of made you feel like you’d be an asshole to argue. Octavian shoved his pipe in his mouth and left the table.”
“Huh,” says Jane, trying to focus on the conversation, rather than on her misery. “I take it most people don’t talk to Octavian like that?”
“Octavian can be hard on Kiran and Ravi,” says Ivy. “Colin found the way to put him in his place without actually being rude. Kiran’s never been able to do that for herself.”
“And what about Ravi and Lucy? How did they ever end up together?”
“They’ve sort of had a thing since they met, maybe two or three years ago,” says Ivy. “They’re really close, then they fight, then they’re close again. It’s hard to tell how serious it is.”
“He doesn’t seem like a guy who’s serious about anyone.”
“Oh, he always puts on that act.”
“Is it an act?”
“I guess I can’t be sure,” says Ivy. “But I don’t think he’d actually cheat. Ravi is pretty loyal.”
“Isn’t he young for her?”
“Yeah,” says Ivy. “He’s twenty-two, and emotionally he’s about twelve. She’s thirty.”
“Does Ravi like older women?”
“Ravi is attracted to everyone,” Ivy says, “panoptically.”
Jane doesn’t know that word. “Panoptically?”
“All-inclusively,” Ivy says with a grin.
Jane gets being attracted to different kinds of people. To men and women, to people of different shapes and sizes, looks, personalities; she gets not having one type. But there are certainly qualities she prefers. Like, for example, the knowledge of big words she doesn’t know; that’s an attractive quality. “Really, everyone?” Jane says. “Everyone alive?”
“Well. He’s not a pedophile. And he’s not into incest,” Ivy says. “And he knows I’d castrate him if he ever came near me. But he has this way of seeing what’s beautiful about everyone.”
“Is he even attracted to, like, Mrs. Vanders?”
“I’m hoping his feeling for her is more of a mother-son thing,” Ivy says with a chuckle. “Beyond that, I’m not going to think about it.”
“Well, what about your brother?”
Ivy purses her lips. “In the case of Patrick, we have to make a distinction between attraction and intention. I mean, Ravi has principles. He wouldn’t consider Patrick that way, not seriously. Not that it would ever happen anyway, because Patrick is straight. But regardless, Ravi wouldn’t go there, because Ravi thinks Kiran should be with Patrick.”
There’s a lot to file away here, and questions Jane wants to ask but can’t, quite, because they’re not really relevant. Like, is Ivy straight? And why is she so easy to talk to? Even when she keeps switching over, intentionally, to a different, insincere version of herself?
“Ivy?” Jane starts.
Then, when Ivy responds with an appreciative Hm?, she sighs and says, “Never mind.”
“Is that a jellyfish?” says Ivy. “Showing under your sleeve?”
“Yes,” Jane says, growing warm, and suddenly shy.
“Can I see it?”
Carefully, Jane rolls her sleeve up to her shoulder. The jellyfish’s long, detailed arms and tentacles, then its golden body, come into view, anchored on her skin.