The Masterpiecers (Masterful #1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “Of course I turned them on,” I tell her. “I just don’t see any layers. Is there something I’m not pressing on?”

  Without glancing away from me, she says, “Don’t look for something that isn’t there.”

  I make mistakes when I create quilts and often have to unstitch what I’ve sewn. But maybe Van Gogh doesn’t. Maybe he’s some genius who gets it right from the beginning.

  With the Oculus still on, I walk to the Monet and scrutinize it through the computerized lenses. No layers. I stride over to the Leutze, stumbling into one of the guards. Large hands steady me and then I’m on my way again. I study the scene from top to bottom and side to side. There isn’t a single hesitation, no soldier out of place, no fishtail sticking out from the icy river, no musket covered by a new layer of paint. Could all three be fakes? With the interactive glasses still on, I circle the room, stopping in front of the small terracotta-hued Picasso. I almost zip past it when I spot something that makes me stop and stare: the shadow of another face, a woman’s face. I lift the binoculars. The woman’s face vanishes. I place them back on, and the rough sketch returns.

  What the hell does it mean? That it’s real and the rest are fakes? I pull the Oculus off and cross the room toward Chase who’s studying the Van Gogh with the black light.

  “Here,” I say.

  He takes the binoculars from me. “You okay?”

  “Just confused.”

  He frowns.

  Dominic’s arms are folded against his double-breasted navy suit, head tipped toward Brook in a quiet exchange. When they see me watching them, they fall silent. I return to Larissa who’s rearranging the gauging instruments on the table. Without a word, I grab the measuring tape and head to the Picasso. The width and length match up. I’m still convinced it’s real. I check the signature with the Proscope. I’m expecting solid letters, but most resemble thread ends unraveling. I turn the device off, my earlier conviction smashed to pulp. I add the Picasso to the list of fakes and move to the statues.

  I start with the bronze and measure it. The dimensions check out. Degas’s signature is etched in the square base by the dancer’s feet. I wouldn’t know if it was real or fake though. The plaque says the skirt is made of cotton and satin hair ribbons. Delicately, I run the tips of my fingers through them. Although browned with age, I don’t feel the cool, filmy texture of satin.

  Frowning, I move to the other statue—the white marble one. I need a chair to measure it and ask a guard for one. He returns with a stool and insists on helping me up and holding me as I reach past Medusa’s severed head to Perseus’s winged helmet. Just shy of eight feet tall, as it says on the plaque. As I descend from the stool, I lose my balance. Although the guard bares most of my weight, my hand flails out toward the statue. The second I touch it, I know it’s fake. Although veined like marble, it isn’t cold and silken like stone. It feels like plaster. I scramble back onto the stool and swipe my index finger in the hollow of Medusa’s head. A dusty white residue remains on my skin.

  I take in the room from my vantage point and feel a sense of smugness and pleasure at not having been outsmarted by Dominic and Brook. I spot Chase in front of the Picasso, running his last tests. Has he come to the same conclusion?

  Could we both win?

  I hop down from the stool and amble toward Dominic. “I’m done.”

  “Are you now? You still have plenty of time—”

  “I don’t need more time.”

  “Are you certain? There’s no revising your answer once you give it to us.”

  My certainty momentarily flounders. I feel a presence behind me and don’t need to whirl around to know it’s Chase. I can smell the pine needles in the small space separating our bodies.

  “You have your answer too, Chase?” Brook asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. Ivy, you come with me, Chase, you go with…” Brook’s voice dies off as his eyes settle on the entryway behind us.

  “Hello, finalistes,” comes a sharp, accented voice. “I hope I did not miss the big reveal.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Aster

  “I don’t like spending hours on people who screw me over.” Gill’s twirling something shiny between her fingers. She sees me looking at it and smirks. “Makes me discontent.”

  “What is that?”

  “Oh, this? Something I was offered for my flowery character assessment. Something I sharpened.”

  My palm throbs. I shift my head to the side to glance at it. Blood trickles down my shackled wrist and along the pale skin of my forearm.

  “It’s worth a lot apparently. It’s real gold,” she says. “Slices real well too.” She juts her chin toward my palm. “Now, Aster, I’d like my dreads back, and Mister Kane would like to know what you did with the rest of them.”

  “The rest of what?”

  “He said you would play dumb.”

  How I ever felt anything but alarm toward Gill is beyond me. As her hands move toward my head, I eye the door of the infirmary. It’s sealed shut.

  “Nurse Cee—”

  Gill stuffs a wad of gauze inside my mouth. For some reason I think of Sofia and her prowess for chess, wishing I possessed even an ounce of it. Then I’d be two moves ahead of Gill instead of strapped down and defenseless.

  “While you think, I’m taking my hard work back.” Her breath whistles in my ear as the shiv saws through my hair. At some point, the serrated metal bites into my skin. “Oopsy,” she says, delight lilting her tone.

  She hacks through more dreads. My scalp throbs as something warm oozes down my neck. I’m not sure if it’s blood or perspiration. My lashes become wet.

  “You’ve been a bad girl, Aster. Very bad.”

  The right side of my head feels light and cold now.

  “You’ve hurt a lot of people. Especially me. I should’ve known you would screw me over, but I was hoping…hoping we could become something. But we couldn’t, could we? You were just using me. You never liked me. And I liked you so”—her tongue glides across my jaw—“so much.”

  I gag and spin my head so abruptly that the sharp blade saws into my neck, tearing my flesh. I whimper.

  “Shit,” she says as a cascade of heat gushes down my collarbone. “I think I hit your artery…shit.”

  Instinctively, I lift my hand but the metal cuff holds it back. Gill jumps up and looks around, eyes wide, spooked. She grabs on to stuff then scrambles back toward me.

  “I’m going to get it under control! Don’t worry.”

  She presses a wad of cotton against the gash in my neck. Since I can’t see or touch it, I gauge the state of my wound from the girth of her eyes. It must be bad because the amber irises float on the white.

  “Shit!” She throws the cotton on the floor. It’s so full of blood it doesn’t even arc through the air. It just drops like a rock. She rips one of her sleeves and wraps the fabric around my neck. “Stay with me! Nurse! Guards! Someone!” Her voice sounds like it’s coming from inside a seashell, yet I know she’s yelling from the way her lips contort over her buckteeth.

  “What the hell, Swanson? You said you wanted to make up,” Nurse Celia’s voice trills.

  My ears ring, my palm throbs, and my neck aches, but what I feel most is the temperature warring within and outside of me: cold floods my veins while warmth streams over my skin.

  “Aster! Aster!” Gill’s freckles glow like the cinnamon sprinkles atop Ivy’s favorite donuts. “Stay with me!”

  I become fluffier, my body weightless, my mind empty like a helium balloon drifting toward the sky. The white room grows brighter, louder. Gill’s eyes spin like those pinwheels I loved to blow on when I was a child.

  Her eyes are red now. She’s entirely red, from her thick ropes of hair, to her pale skin that glows as though it were on fire, to her hands that are wet with my blood. She’s red like the dress Ivy wore in my dream. Like the sticky, soiled fabric of my gray jumpsuit. Like our last name.

  Redd.


  Ivy’s suddenly there, small and distant, sitting on Celia’s desk, swinging her legs like she used to on those tire swings. She watches as death heaves me away. She doesn’t move. She just stares, her expression blank, emotionless, like the last time I saw her and tried to hold her hand.

  “I gave up my future so that you could have one,” I tell her, but she doesn’t hear me because the blood makes me sound like I’m gurgling.

  Perhaps my life ending will allow hers to truly begin. One less person to make plans for, one less hospital bill to pay with the loan she took out on her apartment and with the money she made from the sales of her quilts. I hope she’s forgiven me for sending one to The Masterpiecers. I hope she knows it was a coincidence. A sad coincidence.

  The shadow fades as the body steps into the sun.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Ivy

  “How much longer do we have to wait?” I ask Cara, who’s sitting in my tent, bouncing her sneakered feet.

  “Until I get orders to get you to the reception room,” she says.

  “Can you at least get me a magazine?”

  She shakes her head.

  “A book?”

  Again she shakes her head.

  “Ugh,” I grumble, flopping onto my back in the silver gown Amy has laboriously buttoned me into. “This is so boring!”

  “You’re going to mess up your hair,” Cara says.

  “Like I care.”

  “I care. If I bring you down with a lopsided hairdo, I lose my job. I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “It’s your last day,” I say. “And possibly the last year of this show with all that’s happened.”

  Josephine arrived with a lawyer this afternoon. When our assistants took us back to our quarters, making sure there was absolutely no contact between Chase and me, a grim-faced Dominic and a nervous Brook exited the gallery with her. As if this show hasn’t been splashed across the media enough! But more troubling—at least in my opinion—is the fact that Josephine’s new right-hand woman is Lincoln. Should have known those two were kindred spirits. I’m dying to speak to Chase about it, hear what he thinks.

  I drum my fingers, perplexed about the upcoming evening. The anticipation contracts my muscles and spouts blood through my veins at such speed that my heart feels like it’s about to detonate. I roll up and start pacing the room.

  Cara watches me. “I didn’t think Ivy Redd ever got nervous.”

  “I’m anxious, not nervous.”

  “Chase didn’t seem particularly anxious,” she continues.

  Is she trying to get a rise out of me? “Good for him.” I look in the direction of his room. I wonder if his assistant has him locked in there with nothing to do as well. For a second, I think I see the outline of his body through the fabric walls, moving around the room, but it’s just my shadow. Cara’s right, though—Chase was totally self-assured when he left the gallery.

  “We’re a go,” Cara says, readjusting her head mic.

  I inhale so quickly that the air tears through my lungs, making me sputter. Cara unzips my tent and gestures for me to go ahead of her. Instead of walking, I freeze.

  “You wanted out. You got out. Now let’s go,” Cara says, holding up the flap.

  I quickly pat my hair down to make sure the braid swinging between my bare shoulder blades is as sleek as Amy intended it to be and that the gold chain she wove into it is in place. Finally, I step past Cara, into the empty grass hallway lined with the twinkling potted trees. I take them in—I take in everything around me, the makeup stations, the stone stairs, the vertiginous main hall, the Egyptian artifacts—because, whether I win or lose, this is my last night on the show, and probably my last time ever sleeping inside a museum.

  Chase is waiting by the entrance of the Temple room. Sensing my presence, he turns to stare at me. Warmth battles the chill that’s enveloped my body.

  “Any day,” Cara says, tapping her foot again. “There’s only a couple million people waiting.”

  Chase rolls his eyes. I’m tempted to smile, but my lips just quiver limply. As I arrive at his side, he grabs my hand and laces his fingers through mine.

  “Whatever happens, you were great,” he says.

  “Thanks.” My voice is hoarse.

  “And you’re not a phony, Ivy. Your beauty and intelligence might be enhanced by all the makeup and nice clothes, but you weren’t fabricated like some forgery.”

  My brows draw together. “Have you been drinking? Because if you have, then you’ve had way more fun than me.”

  Cara clears her throat. “That’s enough talking,” she says.

  His black pupils throb. “I just hope you know the difference.”

  Surprisingly, all three judges are standing together on the raised platform between the temples, all in glimmering outfits. The guests also have selected glitzier attire for the occasion.

  “Ready?” Chase asks just before we enter the room.

  I glance at him and attempt to smile. I even try to answer, but no words come out of my mouth. He tugs me through the cavernous room underneath a shower of applause and music. Although Dominic is smiling, there is no cheer in his eyes. Josephine, on the other hand, appears truly content, her smile as sharp as the conical studs adorning the collar of her gold lamé dress.

  I pull my hand out of Chase’s the second we’re on the platform. The spotlights trained on us are blinding, yet I can see Lincoln on the outskirts of the circle, her eyes as shiny as her sequin-heavy dress. I look beyond her at the sea of people staring. A wave of nausea arcs through me, so powerful that cold sweat begins trickling down my spine. I curl my fingers and dig my lacquered nails into my palms. Voices hum louder as the clapping dies out, and then the voices evaporate in turn, supplanted by the theme song.

  When the final notes fade, Dominic takes the microphone. “We’ve made it,” he exclaims, pumping his fist in the air victoriously. “After the most tumultuous show, we’ve made it! Through tears brought on by a great human loss, and through the strain of false rumors and bad publicity, we did it.”

  I pull my shoulders back. Chase’s shoulders are also stiff, straining the shiny fabric of his tuxedo.

  “I was afraid of letting down our final contestants, our sponsors who have so graciously funded us, and the network, which has been so very tolerant of our erratic schedule. I thank you…all of you…for your patience and support. I thank our viewers who have spent hours with us on the other side of their television screens, cheering and voting for our contestants. And last but not least, I want to thank the amazing team of people, the assistants, the camera and lighting crew, the museum, the insurance company and their guards, and the stylists without whom none of the magic of these past nine days could’ve been possible.”

  The crowd is still standing, stitched together like the pieces of my quilts, basking us in applause.

  Dominic raises his palm in the air to ask for silence, which comes so swiftly it’s as deafening as the uproar. “And now, for the moment of reckoning…Chase and Ivy have had no contact with each other, or anyone besides their assistants since the last time you’ve seen them.”

  Perhaps I’m imagining this, but his eyes seem to mist over as he looks at me. After what feels like an eternity, he turns back to his adoring audience.

  “So, the way we’re going to do this—so that their answers don’t overlap—is have the finalists write down their responses. Jeb will transcribe them onto the monitors displaying their faces.”

  Just as he says this, every screen lights up, alternately with my face and Chase’s. Keeping his eyes averted from mine, Brook hands me a small tablet and an electronic pen.

  “Go ahead,” Dominic says.

  Fingers shaking, I write my answer:

  They are all fakes.

  Chase is still writing which either means that he’s very slow or that his answer is more elaborate. I tip my head toward one of the screens that is reflecting my own face back to me. My answer hasn’t magica
lly appeared yet, so I drop my gaze back down to the tablet and think so hard my brain begins to hurt. Suddenly, the conversation I had with Chase before entering the Temple room wallops me upside the head. I try smudging my writing with my thumb, but the tablet doesn’t work like that. Too soon, Chase is handing his tablet over to his brother.

  I got what Chase wanted me to get: that there’s a difference between fake and forgery. I glance back down at the short line I wrote, and then back up at Chase’s sharp profile. I can still win. All I need to do is add a few more words, a sentence. Dominic’s instructions were to find the fake, and that’s the Picasso—the only one that was tampered with to give the illusion it was real. The other paintings and statues were all counterfeited: erroneous sizes, too flawless, wrong materials.

  But would I have come to this realization without Chase?

  “Time’s up,” Brook says.

  I’m still clutching the stylus. I place the tip on the tablet, the temptation so great it makes my fingers shake harder. But then I think of Brook and of his offer to represent me. And I think of the man at my table last night and his proposition to buy all of my pieces. And of how art dealing is Chase’s calling and he won’t be able to do it if he doesn’t get into the school. And then I think of Aster and realize that it’s time for me to go home and take care of her.

  Without adding a single word, I transfer the tablet to Brook’s empty right hand. He clicks on both tablets, and our answers materialize on the surrounding screens.

  Mine will be wrong, but it’s okay. These last few days were a dream. And like all dreams, there comes a moment when you must wake up.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Aster

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Ivy

  When Dominic announces Chase is the winner of the third annual Masterpiecers’ competition, I hoist up my brightest smile. Once Brook has patted his back, once Dominic and Josephine have shaken his hand, I walk over to congratulate him, but the crowd moves in, climbing onto the platform, crushing me, and Chase disappears in the sea of tuxedos and rainbow silks. People touch my arms, grab my hands, tell me how impressed they were with my performance. Some even give me their business cards. My breathing becomes shallower, like on the Brooklyn Bridge, and I hasten my search for Chase. He spots me, yet it’s as though a wall separates us because we still can’t reach each other.