Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater (good books for 8th graders .TXT) 📕

going to be so difficult to do this alone. To take from the Moderators the one supernatural tool they had in their arsenal: Liliana. To leave them blind to trust herself instead.

But Farooq-Lane’s voice didn’t waver as she replied, “Save the world.”

A boat ride.

Jordan supposed she could do a boat ride, although she had to admit she was disappointed. It was very civilized. Very pretty. They’d gotten to Boston Harbor an hour or so before dark, as the sky glowed orange behind the Boston skyline of skyscrapers and clock towers. The icy water lapped darkly against tour boats drowsing at the wharf. The sailboats that were still out this late in the year lay gracefully on the water, their plumage lowered and only bones remaining.

As habit, Jordan thought about how she would paint her surroundings, which brush she would use to draw those fine, fine hairs of rigging etched delicately against the sky, but it was a bit of a dull exercise. It was too obvious a scene, chosen by too many artists and photographers over the years. Because it was pretty.

Pretty was good, she told herself. Nice was good.

Just a little disappointing.

“Matthew, actually buckle that life vest. Actually. Buckle. It,” Declan Lynch said. He looked quite at home here on the water, quite at home here in Boston altogether, a handsome Irish American fellow with a head of tamed curls and those narrow, squinted eyes of a Celt. Collared shirt, nice sweater, good jacket, all of a piece with the pretty skyline and the boat and the water. Hennessy would hate him so much, Jordan thought. Congratulations, she’d say, you’ve found Boring White Man #314.

A date in Boston Harbor would only underline Hennessy’s point. Because it was nice. Because it was pretty. Because you could read about it on the tourism site and purchase tickets. Because it was a thing everyone might like.

How romantic. Hennessy’s voice would drip with judgment.

Jordan had to make do with imagining Hennessy’s voice since she hadn’t called. Why hadn’t she called? Jordan knew she was alive and well, because Ronan had called Declan. Well, and because Jordan was still standing.

Silence from Hennessy was as worrisome as words.

“How do you know I wasn’t made to float?” Matthew was saying petulantly.

“Mother Mary,” Declan said with exasperation. “Do we have to do this every day? Just say you want a therapist for your birthday.”

“Do you still call it a birthday if it’s the day you just, like, appeared?” Matthew asked.

Jordan contemplated inserting herself into this discussion but decided it was more about brothers than it was about the dreaming. She knew more about one of these things than the other.

“Everyone just appears at some point, Matthew,” Declan said, removing the last of the lines securing them to the pier. “Jordan, are you tied down?”

She saluted him.

They were off. The engine drowned out the protests of the seagulls overhead and the voices of pedestrians on the wharf they left behind. The water chopped up white and gray and black behind them. The Atlantic Ocean hissed cold winter wind from the darkening horizon. It wasn’t entirely civilized, Jordan supposed. Because the temperature was too wild, and Declan drove the boat a little too fast across the waves for romantic sightseeing.

Why did Jordan care what Hennessy would think anyway?

She didn’t, actually. She just missed her.

While Matthew huddled on the back of the boat with a bag of potato chips, Jordan eventually got tired of the chill and joined Declan at the wheel, behind the relative protection of the windshield.

“Where did you learn to drive a boat?” Jordan asked, voice raised to be heard. It would be easier to talk if he cut the engine, but he seemed intent on a destination, clipping past various wharfs and frequently glancing over his shoulder to get his bearings. “Your father?”

Declan laughed. “A senator I worked for taught me. He said it was a life skill.”

“Zombie apocalypse?”

“Fundraising opportunities.”

“Same difference.”

Declan smiled thinly at the ocean. “It’s that catch-22 of money. People feel better about donating money to people who already have it. Did you find anything out today?”

For weeks, Jordan had been throwing herself against the question of sweetmetals. She’d returned to El Jaleo again and again, trying to understand the rules of it. How far its influence extended, if it varied from day-to-day … how it did what it did. It wasn’t the only Sargent she visited, either. She tracked down as many Sargents as she could, to see if any of them were sweetmetals, too. It wasn’t difficult to find a Sargent in Boston; this had been his city when he was in the States. He’d painted the murals on the ceilings of the MFA and the walls of the public library. Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the Massachusetts Historical Society had portraits of movers and shakers. The Peabody Essex, the Addison, and the Worcester had more portraits, many watercolors, many, many sketches. She saw pieces she’d copied before, like his splendid and somewhat eerie Daughters of Edward Darley Boit at the MFA, and saw many others her fingers itched to copy, like a facile watercolor of alligators at the Worcester. She saw dozens upon dozens of his works.

Several of them gave her the general feeling of a sweetmetal, but only three felt strong enough to actually be useful to a dream in need of energy. El Jaleo, Boit’s daughters, and an only recently discovered painting, a dramatic nude of Thomas McKeller, the Black man Sargent used as his primary model for his MFA murals. The latter had been hidden away in Sargent’s private collection for years, and his real relationship to the man in the painting remained so.

She was no closer to understanding how sweetmetals worked. And if anyone knew anything about them, they weren’t talking to her.

“Several of the Monets are sweetmetals,” Jordan said. “At the MFA.”

“Water lilies?” Declan suggested.

“One of the cathedrals, if you can believe it. The lilies gave me