“It’d take multiple sittings. It might be ugly along the way before it’s all said and done.”

“I trust your expertise.”

She tapped her fingertips together absently. She didn’t look at him. “You know at the end of the day, it’s still a portrait, right? Just a copy of your face. No matter how well it turns out, that’s never changing. Just a copy.”

Declan said, “I’m perfecting my understanding of art more every day.”

Jordan frowned then—or at least she stopped smiling, which for her was as good as a frown. “What would you say if I told you I’d found a way to keep dreams awake?”

“I would wait for the punch line.”

“What if I told you this painting would keep Matthew awake if something happened to Ronan? That it had dream energy in it?”

Declan didn’t answer right away, because a trio of women entered the room, along with a docent. The four of them took an agonizing amount of time looking at the painting and taking photos in front of it and then asking the docent questions about the landscaping before they all trooped into the next room.

He glanced to be sure they were out of earshot, then glanced to see that Matthew was still sitting on the bench in the courtyard, looking at the flowers. Finally, he said, “I don’t think I’d say anything. I’d listen.”

And he did, quietly, as she pressed one of her hands into his shoulder to lean close and whisper everything she’d learned about the sweetmetals into his ear. She whispered how she’d realized that they were all art, and she whispered that perhaps this was why she felt so at home in museums. She whispered that this might be why she had been so drawn to John Singer Sargent in particular, and she whispered that she had decided to go to the most famous Sargent in Boston to see if it was a sweetmetal.

“And it is,” Declan said.

They looked at the painting in question. Neither said anything for a space. They just listened to the sound of both of them breathing and looking at the painting.

Jordan asked, “If you were me, what would you do next?”

He whispered: “Steal it.”

She laughed with delight, and he memorized the sound.

“It’s a shame you have mixed feelings about crime, Pozzi,” Jordan said, “because I’m pretty sure you were made for it. But don’t you think the Gardner’s been looted enough?”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I think … I think I’m gonna find out how they were made,” Jordan said. “And if I can, I’m gonna try to make one.”

She looked at him. He looked at her.