“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-fi 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.”