The Artist's Touch

by E. J. Russell

  He turned his head and pressed a kiss to Luke’s temple and was rewarded with a sigh, Luke’s breath a warm tickle against Stefan’s neck. Stefan shivered at the sensation and chuckled.

  “Well, if you’re certifiable, then so am I, because your eyes were—” Stefan swallowed, not wanting to remember that inky darkness. “And I could swear the bedroom was sweltering when I walked in. I didn’t think much of it because the ventilation in the cabin is so weird that sometimes it feels hot where it should be cold, or freezing right next to the stove.”

  Luke leaned out of their embrace, fixing Stefan with a what-the-hell-dude raised eyebrow glare. “And you weren’t—I don’t know—a little fucking curious about that?”

  Smiling wryly, Stefan smoothed the wrinkles on Luke’s forehead until he lost the scowl. “What’s a little weirdness? I’m just happy to be off the street.”

  “But why aren’t you more freaked out about this?” Luke gestured to himself. “About me? I can’t understand how— Hell, even back at the conservatory, when Rainbow Unicorn, or whatever she was calling herself that week, swore she was receiving inspiration from outer space, you never called bullshit.”

  “Why should I? Who can say what the source of artistic inspiration is? I think people perceive the world in different ways. Isn’t that what being an artist is all about? To interpret the world, its beauty, its wonder, with others?”

  Luke poked Stefan’s shoulder with stiff fingers. “Beauty and wonder is one thing. Okay, maybe two. But how do you interpret dreams that draw blood, and blackout jags that result in forgeries of paintings that nobody’s seen for half a century?”

  Or someone else’s eyes in Luke’s face. Gooseflesh crawled up Stefan’s back. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you believe in . . .” Luke swallowed audibly, his gaze focused on Stefan’s collarbone. “Possession?”

  The hair on Stefan’s neck lifted, joining the gooseflesh. Christ, what would it take to make Luke consider such a question? He denied the uncanny at every turn. Hell, he didn’t even read fiction. But maybe the evidence of the last hours had changed his mind. It had certainly raised more than a few questions for Stefan.

  He ran his hands down Luke’s arms to steal some needed warmth. “It’s never come up. But I wouldn’t reject it out of hand. Is that what you think happened?”

  Luke’s gaze slid to the side. “Maybe.”

  That could explain the eyes. “Well, to anyone who’s studied Bosch, that would hardly be a shocker.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I’m not.” Although from the way Luke vibrated under Stefan’s hands, he was in dire need of a safety valve. “But just look at ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and tell me he wasn’t channeling a fuck-ton of weird shit. Sometimes . . . things can’t be easily explained. Like you.”

  “Me?” Luke drew his head back. “I’m as ordinary as they come.”

  “But you’ve always been a freakishly accurate guesser. Remember when you told that idiot first-year he’d regret sleeping with the life-drawing professor for the sake of a grade?”

  “That didn’t take a genius to figure out.”

  “Maybe not, but nobody knew about the professor’s lingerie kink. But you knew what color—”

  Shifting uneasily, Luke pulled away from Stefan until their bodies weren’t touching. “What, you think I saw it in a dream or some shit? Lucky guesses. That’s all.”

  “And what about—”

  “God, this was years ago. I wish I’d never said anything if you’re going to fixate on it like this.” Luke flung up his hands and turned away. “What can I say? Maybe mediocre artists have intuition too. I’m sure you pick up on stuff about people all the time.”

  “Not me.” Stefan shuddered, backing up until he ran into the door frame. “Not like that.”

  “Stef.” Even raw and rough, Luke’s voice was still tender as he faced Stefan again. “Tell me.”

  Stefan drew a breath, let it out. Drew another. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I get a feeling.”

  Luke grinned half-heartedly. “I get feelings too. Mostly around you.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I get this . . . I don’t know . . . dread, I guess. Like there’s an approaching shitstorm and Auntie Em’s already locked the cellar door.” Stefan swallowed. “It happened before Marius got on the plane to Vegas. I was supposed to go with him, you know.” Luke reached out, gripping his shoulders, and Stefan covered his hands with his own, craving the touch, the reassurance. “But I couldn’t make myself get on the plane. It was like a force field or something that I couldn’t push through.” He closed his eyes, trying to shove the memory away. “Marius laughed when I told him. Claimed I was being a drama queen because I didn’t want to take the commission. So when I tried to keep him from going . . .”

  “He didn’t listen.”

  Stefan shook his head. “It pissed me off, to tell you the truth. Maybe that’s why I didn’t insist more . . . insistently. If I’d tried harder, he wouldn’t have—”

  “Oh, he so would. Marius never listened to a damn thing you said, didn’t you ever realize that?” Luke’s hands tightened, and he gave Stefan a tiny shake. “He was so sure he knew best, that any time you suggested anything about anything, sometimes even your own painting, he waved it away. That’s a big part of what drove me so crazy about him.”

  “Why?” Stefan managed a tremulous smile. “You did it too. We argued all the time.”

  “No. We discussed. Often with great enthusiasm.”

  “With anger you mean?”

  “No. I mean with caring. Passion. But, Stef, at the end of those discussions, half the time—hell, more than half—you won.” Luke cupped the back of Stefan’s neck. “When did you ever win with Marius?”

  “Never. Including the last one, my big exit, my grand gesture. When he told me he’d taken the commission and had gone so far as to cash the check on my behalf, it was the last freaking straw. I told him it was over. I was leaving for good. But he still managed to win that one by leaving first. Permanently.” Stefan’s laugh caught on a sob. “Which was what I’d been afraid of, to begin with.”

  “So that means . . . what?” Luke leaned his forehead against Stefan’s. “You can see the future?”

  “Possibly. Sometimes. Sort of.”

  “And we’ve possibly been possessed, and you’ve implied I can sort of see the past. Tell me, Stef. Why the fuck can’t we figure out how to deal with the present?”

  Stefan’s breath sped up, his heart skittering in his chest. I want to trust him. I have to trust him. Now. “Maybe we can.” He lifted Luke’s hands from his shoulders and laced their fingers together. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  As Luke gimped through the matted weeds behind the cabin in Stefan’s wake, he was wrestling with the unwelcome—and altogether too familiar—emotions that still jostled around in his chest from his fading dreams. Jealousy. Envy. Destructive, misdirected love. Everything he’d wanted to spare Stefan when he’d run all those years ago. I had enough of my own shit, thanks. Didn’t want to share anyone else’s.

  “Surely you have some clue whether you painted or not,” he said, trying his damnedest to keep an open mind about Stefan’s amnesiac artist story.

  Stefan paused with his hand on the studio door handle. “Nope. I just wake up the next day with a monster headache, a butt-load of hope and fear, and one of those, you know, feelings.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Stefan tossed a glare over his shoulder. “Can you explain your nightmares?”

  Not in a way I like. Luke eased the waistband of his pants away from the bandaged laceration on his back. “Well, I figured I was drunk—”

  “Drunk.” Stefan’s tone held a ton of give-me-a-fucking-break. “Yeah. Let’s roll with that.” He opened the door and flipped a switch.

  The solar lights were dim in the cavernous studio, but they cast enough light to reveal the easel in the center of the room, its canvas facing awa
y from the door. The window reflected the bold colors and aggressive style of a classic Arcoletti. Luke glanced at Stefan, who’d stalled inside the threshold, staring at the easel with wide, haunted eyes. He grabbed Luke’s biceps, his fingers like ice through Luke’s borrowed shirt.

  “You look. Please?”

  Luke laid his hand over Stefan’s long enough to share a little warmth. “Absolutely.”

  He circled the easel and faced the painting. Even in the dim light, the colors were vibrant, alive. Pretty fricking ironic considering the artist was dead. Luke glanced at Stefan, who was still hovering near the door as if he was about to bolt.

  “You say you painted this last night?”

  Stefan nodded, arms wrapped across his stomach.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m never sure. But if it had been here yesterday, Thomas would have taken it.”

  Luke touched the lower corner of the picture over the signature. “It’s already dry.”

  “They always are.” Stefan stopped one pace beyond the easel, his gaze fixed on Luke’s face. “Is it his? Arcoletti’s?”

  Luke nodded. “It’s Last Chance Cafe. He described it in one of the Gordon letters. Here.” He pulled Stefan forward, draping an arm across his back and tucking him close to Luke’s side. “Look.”

  The painting was a street scene. Night. Blues bleeding into reds and reds into greens and yellows, as if seen through a rain-drenched window. No cars. No people, except for a slender man in evening dress. Hatless, he stood on the wet sidewalk, his reflection double-distorted in the wavy glass of a cafe window.

  Luke froze. He knew the curve of that skull, the sheen of that golden hair. Knew it as well as he knew his own. Or Stefan’s.

  Luke pointed at the man. “That’s . . .” Luke hunched against the sudden agony in his chest, the memory of a monumental loss. He pressed a hand to his sternum until the phantom pain eased. “That’s Edward. Edward Franklin.”

  Stefan jerked under Luke’s arm. “Franklin? Not Arcoletti?”

  “No. Arcoletti was a big, raw-boned guy. Shaggy brown hair. Leonine.”

  Stefan skimmed the canvas with one finger. “I’ve seen him,” Stefan whispered. “Edward.”

  “You painted him before?”

  “Not a picture. I’ve seen him.” Stefan swallowed. “He’s the man in the road. Last night. When I stopped the car.”

  “Shit. Two ghosts?” Luke muttered, running a hand through his hair. “I’m still not sure I believe in the first one.” But he’d seen Edward’s face—that face—in his dream just now, staring up at him as the light dimmed in his eyes.

  “Ghosts? What are you talking about? What ghosts?” Panic edged Stefan’s tone, and who could blame him?

  “Possession, remember? Ghosts are kind of involved.”

  Stefan nodded, a jerk of his chin. “Oh. Got it. But what do you mean, the first one?”

  “Shhh.” Luke shifted his arm from Stefan’s shoulder to his waist, wanting to give comfort as well as take it. Ghosts. Possession. Goddamn, this shit was freaky. “This was Arcoletti’s studio. William Franklin claims his ghost haunts the place. That he’s . . . ah . . . using you to re-create his lost collection.”

  Stefan sagged against Luke’s side, his shoulders shaking. Luke realized the rusty sound coming out of the man was laughter. “Wonderful.”

  “Yeah, I know. Nuts, right?” But with the supernatural evidence piling up—his dream injury, the canvases Stefan couldn’t remember, the paint that should still be wet but wasn’t—Luke was ready to drop-kick his skepticism all the way to China.

  “But why does he want to re-create the lost collection? What’s the point?”

  “Good question. It can’t be because he wants to benefit Boardman. He hated his family.” Luke shrugged. “He painted them the first time because—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “What?”

  “‘The first time.’ I still don’t . . . I can’t—”

  “Sorry.” Luke rubbed Stefan’s back. “He intended to use them to finance a new life, a new adventure. At least that’s what he told Ruth Gordon in the last letter he wrote to her. Now, though . . .” Luke’s gaze strayed to the painting. “I think he intended to use their sale to take Edward away. Although if that’s the case, and he and Edward are both here, why don’t they take off and stop giving us shit?”

  “Maybe they’re not connecting for some reason.” Stefan’s tone was troubled. “Arcoletti is only half of the equation. What does Edward want? What if his needs aren’t the same?” Stefan pushed himself out of Luke’s embrace. “Can I show you something?” When Luke nodded, Stefan led him to a closet behind a circa 1970 brown plaid sofa. He fished a key out of an empty can on the floor and unlocked the door. “Thomas doesn’t know about these. I never showed him.”

  He pulled a couple of two-by-three canvases out of the closet and propped them against the wall, then returned for two more, then another pair, although he kept the last one in his arms, facing his chest.

  Each one was the same. A tree with a wide, brown trunk and feathery branches that drooped under the weight of water pearled on the needles. On the left side, a gnarled root thrust up like a tortured knee, skin removed, muscles and sinews brown and mummified.

  Luke frowned. I’ve seen this tree. “The painting in the gallery. Edward, Reading. Same tree. Way different mood.” The pain in his back flared, and his fingers went numb. There’s more, and it’s bad. I know it. I feel it. But whatever it is, I don’t want to see. If Stefan was facing his ghosts, though, how could Luke do any less? He clenched his fists and nodded for Stefan to continue.

  Stefan held the last painting facing his chest and jerked his chin at the row of canvases. “These are the first blackout paintings. Scared the piss out of me. Night after night, another painting of the tree, always the same. Until this one.” His knuckles shone white where he clutched the edge of the frame. “After this one, I stopped checking the studio for new paintings.”

  He flipped the picture around and held it against his chest. Same tree. Same branches. Same trunk. But a crimson splatter arced across the bark and a limp hand lay across the root, palm up, the just-visible white cuff and black sleeve smirched with mud and edged with blood.

  Images splashed behind Luke’s eyelids; stark, harshly lit, and disjointed. A bonfire on a rocky river bank. Fire rushing down the hill. Stefan’s face superimposed on Edward’s. Stefan’s head ringed with a halo of flame-like hair. Edward with blood blooming red on his white shirt.

  He caromed off the sofa, backpedaling until he slammed against the wall, gulping air like a goddamn beached mackerel. “Edward. That’s Edward. Arcoletti, he . . . The fire. He couldn’t get away.” He swiped one shaking hand over a forehead suddenly damp with sweat, the memory of nightmare flames heating his skin once more, burning his lungs, threatening him with Arcoletti’s fate. He grabbed Stefan’s wrist and towed him toward the door. “We’re out of here. Now.”

  Stefan hunched in the wobbly ladder-back chair at the dining table, his head in his hands, while Luke stormed around the living room, demanding a reason for the impossible, an explanation for the inexplicable. A cold weight settled in Stefan’s belly, the numbness seeping out along his veins, growing each time Luke tossed out another theory. Another why. Stefan had given up on why long ago. Because why didn’t matter. Only what.

  The what Stefan had to face now? That he wasn’t painting. Not really. He was still as blocked as he’d been since Marius’s plane plowed into that hill.

  Luke stopped pacing and propped his hands on his hips. “What did you do last night? Before the studio?”

  “I was pissed at you, so I had a drink. More than one.”

  “A drink. Of what?”

  “Scotch. Beer wasn’t going to cut it.”

  Luke paled. “Shit. The Scotch.” He grabbed the bottle off the sideboard. “Fifteen-year-old Glenlivet. This is the only thing Arcoletti drank—and he drank a fuck-ton of it. What if this i
s the . . . the conduit that allows him to break through from wherever the hell ghosts reside? It’s . . . it’s . . . What the hell do they call it? Sympathetic magic.” He set the bottle down like it was red hot, wiping his hands on his pants. “Like produces like. Set up the right conditions and bam—he’s got the key that let him into your head.” He carded his hand through his hair. “Hell, that let him into my head.”

  Great. Luke had segued to how. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Shit, Stef, you painting Arcoletti’s lost collection doesn’t make sense. Me getting skewered by a spectral tree stump doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense, but it still fucking happened.”

  Stefan glared at him. “I know that. I mean if it was only the Scotch, why didn’t you paint too? Why didn’t it have the same effect on you as it did on me? There has to be something else, some other . . . other hook that controls how we’re affected.”

  “Whatever. The paranormal investigator charlatans can figure that one out, because I’m not signing on for another experimental Scotch run and neither are you. I thought Franklin was loony with his haunted studio talk, but he was spot-on. Pack your shit. We’re leaving.”

  “Why?” Christ, now he was the one asking that stupid, useless question.

  Luke stared at him as if he were insane. “Because this shit is off-the-charts repulsive. To have that guy in your head—”

  “I never remember it.”

  “Fuck me blind, it’s all come back to me. I wish it hadn’t.” Luke closed his eyes and swiped a hand across his forehead. “He rode my brain as if it were a broken-down nag. Nothing’s worth a repeat of that.”

  The numbness invaded Stefan’s lungs, and he struggled to force in a breath. “When you . . . in the bedroom . . . when we . . . Was that you? Or was that . . . him?” God, sometimes who mattered, too.

  “No.” Luke stumbled on the rug in his rush to get to the table. “That was me. You. Us. Swear to God.”