by Cate Corvin
“You know when you have one of those days where everything lines up perfectly?” I asked. My phone vibrated somewhere in the recesses of my bag, and I took it out, seeing an unfamiliar number on the screen.
“It’s about time you had a lucky day. More energy to write about yours truly!”
I opened my messages, and that bright ball of sunlight in my chest imploded into a vacuum.
Thank you for filling in as the figure model for my night class, Pet. Leave your clothes at the door. They won’t be necessary.
I clicked my phone as Sean appeared to my left, hiding the message from view. My chest felt hollow as a drum.
Spears wanted me to pose nude in front of his entire Friday night art class.
There was no doubt now that he’d heard the flippant comment I’d made to Rachelle my first day here. I’ve always wanted the thrill of being naked in front of a roomful of strangers.
If I could go back in time and slap my past self, present me would’ve had a wired-shut jaw.
It was one thing to be stripped by one of them, another entirely for a classful of students to see me sitting on the art room pedestal in my birthday suit. When they’d made their ground rules for me, there was absolutely no implication I’d be asked to do such a thing.
I kept to myself for the rest of the day, my sunshine now seething rage.
By the time my shift was over and I’d texted Mom that I’d be home late, my rage had cooled to a tight, hard ball of fear sitting at the bottom of my stomach.
I stood outside Gabriel’s door and licked my lips, my mouth dry as the desert.
As soon as I walked in, I’d be expected to strip in front of countless eyes. There was no way I could do this, whether I lost my scholarship or not.
Then I pictured how light Mom had looked this morning. She genuinely believed all our problems were solved.
And as long as I played along, they would be. She’d never need to know as long as the life we had left together was happy.
I steeled myself, pushed open the door, and walked into… darkness.
The entire art room was pitch black except for a single spotlight, illuminating the cloth-draped table where Spears’ live models posed. The man himself was just outside the pool of illumination, leaning back in his chair with a sketchbook open on his lap.
Cut-crystal eyes cut me into little pieces as he looked me up and down. “Thank you for filling in today, Jane. We needed a new muse.”
With the rest of the room shrouded so deeply I couldn’t even see the amphitheater of chairs, it was easier to pretend there was no one else here. It was just me, Professor Spears, and the light.
I focused on that as I stepped out of my shoes and gripped my shirt with trembling fingers, concentrating on breathing. If I didn’t hyperventilate, it’d all be okay. It was just skin, nothing anyone hadn’t seen before.
I yanked my clothes off with the air of someone getting the worst over with, but paused when I got to my underwear.
Spears spun a pencil between his fingers like a baton. “Everything.”
How could no one else see what was happening here? My face was hot as a furnace as I peeled off the last of my flimsy shield against the world and my arms rose to cover myself.
Just you and Spears, mouse. Pretend it’s empty.
If there were chuckles at my reticence, I couldn’t hear them. It was impossible to hear anything over the thump of my own heartbeat in my ears besides the cool, precise tones of Spears’ instructions.
He didn’t keep me waiting long. With a slight smile on those perfect lips, he gestured to the table, rising from his chair.
I crossed the room quickly, goosebumps rising on every inch of exposed skin as the spotlight put every inch of me on full display. My hands were useless against that bright glare.
I carefully climbed up on the table, sitting with my legs cocked to the side and hiding everything important below the waist. Spears stood back and looked at me, then reached out to pull my braced hand from under me.
With his hands cupping my neck, he lowered me to the table until I was laying down, my head to one side and arms resting over my head. My nipples were pebbled and completely exposed for everyone to see.
I closed my eyes, forcing my breath to remain even. Spears touched the crook of my neck before he left me there, and I heard the rustle of a notebook being picked up.
My heart never settled for a single second, the only part that threatened to hammer out of the statue I’d become. I counted the wavering beats that crashed against my eardrums as the minutes slipped away.
I drifted on a cloud, slowly forgetting all the eyes on me as I listened to the music of creation, the scratch and slide of a pencil on paper as Spears sketched.
Even if this was the most horrible and vulnerable thing I’d ever done there was something satisfying in knowing I’d be immortalized in art. Somebody’s muse, if only for an hour.
I didn’t realize I’d managed to drift into a light sleep until light fingers brushed over my ribs. My eyes snapped open. The brightness of the spotlight framed Professor Spears like a halo, which suited his angelic Michelangelo features. Only I knew how dark the mind behind that face was.
“Welcome back, Pet.” I sat up, taking in the total silence of the room now that the incessant thrum of my heart had settled.
“Is class dismissed already?” It was still impossible to see into the darkness with my retinas burned by the light.
Spears helped me sit up, and my legs dangled off the edge of the table.
“There was no class tonight. I needed a muse, and you provided.”
My limbs froze in the process of sliding to the floor. “What…” No longer caring that I was stark naked, I strode out past the glare of the spotlight and almost walked right into the closest desk.
My eyes slowly adjusted to the pitch-black room.
Nobody was there.
I rounded on Spears, my heart drumming again. “You let me think I was naked in front of your students. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life!”
The sharp edges of my nails dug into my palms when I clenched my fists. No matter how beautiful Spears was, he might have been the most twisted of them all.
He picked up his sketchbook and pencil and laid them on the table, taking me in with hooded eyes. “What do you have to be embarrassed about?”
I opened my mouth as the list of a million flaws flashed through my mind, but then I closed it. He didn’t want to hear my flaws because he apparently didn’t see them. I could’ve told him it was the vulnerability alone that had been horrifying, but… hadn’t it also been a little thrilling?
Their mind games and power plays were making me as crazy and sick as they were.
“Nothing.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Not now that I knew he was the only one who’d been in here, anyway.
Spears crossed the short distance between us, his hand hovering over the curve of my cheek. He brushed a stray curl behind my ear. “Now you understand.”
I gazed up at him, not understanding at all. I had plenty to be embarrassed about, even if he didn’t give a damn about it.
His gaze dropped to my lips, but before I could imagine what it would be like to kiss someone with such an icy exterior, he’d turned away to gather my clothes. “Come with me, Jane.”
I followed him to his office, and he closed the door behind me and allowed me to dress in peaceful silence. It never failed to strike me how the silences I shared with the three of them were never uncomfortable, but comforting.
They peeled me away layer by layer every time they exercised their power over me, but instead of being whittled away into nothing, I was taking a new form, even if I couldn’t see what it might be yet. They were marble sculptors chipping away piece by piece, revealing the shape beneath the formless mass they’d started with.
As I dressed, I had more time to examine the slew of paintings and sketches on his of
fice walls. Several sketches that were so photorealistic I wondered if they weren’t sepia photographs hung over the actual desk, but there was a smaller set of sketches below them on the bookshelf.
I wandered a little closer as I buttoned my shirt. The edges of the paper were worn and shredded on these ones, and the pencil strokes were harsh and rough. From the shaky lines and imprecise, exaggerated forms, they looked like a child’s sketches. I wanted to pick them up, but the propriety of a gesture like that was too much for me to risk it.
The thought of that made my throat tighten. There was a portrait of a woman with cruel eyes and a hard face, and the next was that same woman in a nun’s habit. A sketch of a window set in a cracked wall rested beside her. “What are these?”
Gabriel looked up from studying the sketchbook on his desk and followed my gaze. His brilliant eyes darkened when he looked them over, and I suppressed a shiver when he came to stand at my shoulder and picked up the sketch of the nun.
He handed it to me. The paper was even thinner than it looked, barely thicker than tissue. I handled it like it would disintegrate in my hands if I touched it too roughly, peering at the fainter lines under the rough sketch. Someone had drawn and erased, drawn and erased until the background was gray with old marks, the ghosts of sketches past.
“They’re a reminder of where I came from, that everything can be taken away except art. Art will always survive. It lives up here.”
He touched his temple with a faint smile, and I looked back down at the nun. “You drew these.”
“I did.”
“Who is she?” Where had he been that he’d drawn such bleak, desperate things?
Gabriel examined the nun’s hard face with a hard, cold hate. “She was my first muse.”
I carefully replaced the sketch on the shelf. Whoever she was, she was the subject of almost all the worn sketches here. Once I looked harder, there was even a faint shadow in the drawing of the window that could’ve been the nun sitting off to the side, watching from the shadows.
“You don’t seem to have liked her very much.” I regretted the inane comment as soon as it left my mouth. Of course he didn’t like her; there was contempt and hatred in every line of these drawings, even if I hadn’t seen the emotion itself in Gabriel’s eyes.
The corners of his mouth tightened. “A muse isn’t always necessarily beautiful. Sometimes, the hatred itself is the inspiration.”
He turned away from the sketches, effectively shutting down any more questions, but that tiny peek into Gabriel Spears’ past was maddening.
“What sort of muse am I, then?”
I was almost afraid to hear the answer. He must’ve been in a depressing slump if someone like a Plain Jane could inspire anything in him. It was a good thing he couldn’t hear my thoughts either, because he seemed to think there was something I should understand about myself, even if I couldn’t see what it was.
My breath caught when he approached, slowly backing me up against the wall. Gabriel planted a hand on either side of my head, searching my eyes like he was looking for something.
If he found it, he didn’t let on. Being this close to such a perfect face was almost painful, my stomach flipping just from the heat of his body touching mine, and seeing just a glimpse of the ice king’s life made me want to prospect for more.
“The first time I saw you, you were the muse of potentiality. Head bowed like you were trying to hide and Bourdillon had threatened to crush you. I wondered what might be hiding inside the little mouse.”
Oh, if only he knew.
“I’d already read your paper, remember. It stood out among all the soulless applications. Once we met in person, I was surprised to find you so… timid. How could someone who put that much heart into their words try so hard to blend into the shadows?” His thumb ran over my chin and tilted my face up to look him in the eye. No matter how much I wanted to merge into the wall, there was no hiding here. “Hiding yourself should be criminal. If it takes betrayal and subterfuge to bring you out of your shell, then I can’t say any of us are sorry to have made you our Pet.”
He leaned in and brushed a kiss over my lips, as light as a feather, but every atom in my body was laser-focused on the modicum of sensation.
“You’ve passed through potential and become an awakening. What comes next depends on you. I don’t know what sort of muse you are, Jane. You’re going to be the one who tells me.”
He was completely unapologetic for what they’d put me through, and his words did strike a chord somewhere deep inside. I didn’t want to be a static object to be recorded once and immortalized in that one form. I wanted to change into what I wanted to be, not what I thought I should be.
Gabriel released me, breaking the spell. “I won’t keep you from your family tonight, Pet. But rest assured, we’re not done here.”
I caught a glimpse of another sketch on his desk next to the one he’d just drawn, but before I could get a closer look, he opened the door. He touched my hair as I passed, winding a curl around his finger before letting me go.
To my surprise, he followed me out. I didn’t get a chance to collect myself before he’d grabbed my bag and led me out into the Hall of Art.
“Aren’t you worried about getting caught?” I pitched my voice low, hoping it didn’t carry down the echoing length of the corridor. “Aren’t there security cameras here?” They were so laissez-faire about being seen with me at night.
Gabriel glanced at me sideways, an almost friendly expression on his perfect features. It seemed that every time he opened up to me alone, another drop of ice thawed from the glacier around him.
“So they could record everyone’s sordid misdeeds? No. Bourdillon doesn’t permit security cameras. Believe me,” he said, leaning in close. I tried to keep myself from leaning closer and failed. “We aren’t the only ones with secrets, and the rich like to keep their dangerous games in the dark.”
He spoke about ‘the rich’ like they were a different class from him, even though no one received tenure here who wasn’t from a wealthy family. Once again, the sketch of the window flashed into my mind.
“If you say so,” I muttered, following him to the parking lot. “Why do you all insist on giving me rides, anyway?”
It was odd to talk to him like a normal human being, although I guessed ‘odd’ summed up the entirety of my relationship with the three of them.
He opened the door on a midnight blue Mercedes S-Class, one of the more subdued cars I usually saw here. “Because we take care of you, Pet. This is part of the arrangement.”
Before I slid into the car, his eyes flashed away from my face and out towards the woods, narrowing ever so slightly.
I recalled Rhett’s odd turn of conversation the night I’d met him in the library. He’d been so insistent on giving me his number, just in case I needed him…
“Or is it more than that?” I asked as we accelerated out of the lot. “Rhett was worried about me locking my door, and none of you ever let me walk home if it can be helped.”
With Gabriel driving, I finally had a moment to just look at him without his gaze piercing right through me. There were callouses on the knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel, and a stray lock of black hair had fallen across his forehead. Even with these imperfections, he was still flawless.
He glanced at me and I looked away quickly.
“There was an incident around here about two years ago,” he said, his grip tightening on the wheel. “A woman was stalked and attacked in her home. It’s discouraged to walk out here alone at night. Especially for women.”
My chest felt hollow against the thud of my heart. I’d had no idea that Bourdillon had been the scene of an incident, which had been an awful crime if I was reading between the lines correctly.
I was sure I was. There was no reason for Rhett to have been so insistent otherwise.
“Don’t worry yourself, Jane.” Gabriel reached out and stroked my cheek, and the familiarity of the gesture had
me tightening my hands in my lap to stop myself from returning it. No matter how much he’d opened up to me tonight, he was still unreadable and shrouded in secrecy. “You have us.”
I wondered if he’d give me a kiss before I got out the way Vincent had, but he just stroked his fingertips along the back of my hand. “I’ll see you soon, Pet.”
The warmth of his smile and the lingering touch remained long after he’d left, burned into my nerve endings the same way a kiss would be.
Chapter Thirteen
“Why don’t we have those nice friends of yours over for dinner?”
I put the finishing words on my article and looked up at Mom. For a moment I wanted to ask which friends? despite the fact that I’d just been looking at Rachelle’s name, because the only ones on my mind were the ones who were hot and cold by turns.
Mom was chopping vegetables for a roast at the counter. With Dana coming by three times a day to ensure she was cared for as much as possible, some of the slouch had left her shoulders. I hadn’t realized that she’d felt just as guilty as I had.
Guilt that she needed help doing so many small things when I had homework that needed to be done, while I felt guilt for not feeling like I was doing enough to care for her. Guilt that she needed accompaniment in the taxis to Mulholland, and for my part, even more guilt that I was always so late and every minute I spent after hours at school cut into the minutes I had left with her.
Mom had kissed my forehead when I’d come home the previous night and told me not put my life on hold for hers when I’d apologized for being home so late, but I couldn’t leave her behind, and there was still a faint flush of shame when I thought about what I was really doing there; stripping naked, in person and on camera, to ensure we had this help.
But no matter how it happened, I was just grateful we had it.
“Rachelle and Sean,” she prodded.
I saved my article and flashed her a smile. “Sure, I’ll see if they’d like to. Tonight?”
Roses of color had bloomed in Mom’s cheeks, and it wasn’t the fever-sick flush of illness but actual happiness. “If they’ll agree. I’d like to see the company you’ve got here, dear.”
