Inamorata

by Megan Chance

  I told him all I knew of Odilé, ending breathlessly with, “Each of them made a bargain with her—they wanted fame and inspiration and were willing to sacrifice anything to have it. And they do live on forever through a work of genius. A singular work, Hannigan. Think: what did any of them do beyond it? Nothing. That was what they sold to her. Their talent and their skill. Their vision. And she gave them immortality in art. She’s a succubus.”

  “How do you know this?”

  I expected so many other questions. I expected protests and laughter, denials—it was so absurd after all, wasn’t it? But I saw with shock that he understood. And this—his casual acceptance of an impossible truth—surprised me more than anything else about Joseph Hannigan. It had taken me months to come to it. Months to believe it, and even now, sometimes, I woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking no, no. This cannot be true. This cannot be my life. . . .

  But he was looking at me as if the world suddenly made sense in a way it had not before, and I found myself saying softly, “That first year, I followed her because I couldn’t believe she’d gone. I was mad for her even as she left me despairing and half dead. I told you I talked to the artist in Paris . . . well, I spoke to many others. I suspected it then, but I knew it for certain in Barcelona. I don’t know where she comes from, or if there are others, but . . . I saw her in a . . . in a dark little room in Barcelona. She was crawling like a serpent or a . . . a demon about a score of naked men. And they were all dead. Every one of them. She’d sucked their energy from them until they were nothing. She’s like a vampire, but it’s not blood she’s taking. It’s vitality. Creativity. I’ve felt it myself—I know what she can do. You must have felt it too. The speeding of your heart, the lack of breath—”

  Now he looked confused. “No. I’ve never felt that.”

  “Then you will. How long have you been with her? A few days? A week? She’s feeding off you and you don’t even know it. But one day you’ll wake up and you won’t be able to draw. Your fingers won’t know how to hold a pencil. You’ll see nothing to inspire you, nothing worth marking down. She will drain you before you know it—unless she decides to make you the offer. But if she does, that’s the true hell.”

  “Why would it be?”

  “If you take the offer, you’ll paint your masterpiece, and you’ll have the fame you’ve always hoped for, but you’ll never do another thing, no matter that everyone in the world hopes for it. They’ll watch you, waiting for it, and nothing will come. You won’t be as you are now. Everything that makes you Joseph Hannigan will be gone. Your vision . . . gone. Imagine it. You said you could not bear to lose it, but you will. I know what it feels like. For seven years, I’ve felt it—”

  “She made you the offer?” he asked. “But then . . . why have I not heard of you?”

  The words were like a blow, and following them came a swift stab of anger, a resentment I forced myself to swallow. “No. She never did.”

  He gave me a look—how to describe it? Knowing, thoughtful, pitying all at once. Pity. It enraged me. My fingers itched to wipe that look from his face.

  But then it softened. He said, “I’m sorry,” and I heard his sadness and knew that once again he understood something I could not even admit to myself.

  And I knew too that I would not convince him. He wanted too much—I saw it now. That shining, blistering ambition, the same things that had once been in myself, that deep emptiness, that terrible yearning. . . .

  “You’ll start talking to angels the way Schumann did. You’ll drown yourself in a creek like Gros. Or worse, you’ll be a shell of what you were, a joke for English tourists to laugh over, like Canaletto. Which of those futures is yours, Hannigan? Which do you want? And what of Sophie? What will this do to her? I’m begging you, if only for her sake: walk away from Odilé now. You’ve got a bright future. Henry Loneghan will make something of you, and that’s a better bargain to take. It won’t cost you everything in return.”

  He glanced away. “You can’t promise that—or money either. I haven’t the funds to struggle for years. And Sophie . . . Sophie shouldn’t. . . .” He struggled to find the words; I saw a strange bleakness in his eyes. “Sophie’s sacrificed for me too long. It’s not fair for me to keep her. Her gift . . . you understand how special she is. You’re the only one who ever has. You know what she can do.”

  I frowned in confusion.

  “I trust you, Dane. I would not be able to leave her to anyone else.”

  “What are you saying?”

  There was a sound—the opening of the balcony door. He glanced over his shoulder. We were out of sight of the balcony, but I felt her there just as he must have—I saw him go taut, as if he were listening to something only he could hear, some song whispered in the air.

  I grabbed his arm hard, calling him back to me as I said softly, urgently, “I’m thinking of Sophie too. What will happen to her if you’re destroyed? Think of your sister, for God’s sake. Your twin. Think of everything you have before you. Walk away.”

  He pulled away, gently but firmly. “I should be getting back before Odilé misses me.”

  “Don’t go back. Come with me. We’ll go to the Moretta. Sophie’s waiting.”

  His smile was small, his eyes distant. “You go to her. Keep her safe. Love her. Promise me—promise me you will.”

  “Hannigan, for God’s sake, don’t do this.”

  He leaned close, whispering, “You don’t understand. This will make up for everything,” and then, before I could truly grasp what he’d said, he was stepping back to the door, opening it.

  “Hannigan—”

  He went through it. It closed behind him with a thud, the clink of the metal latch falling into place.

  For a moment I stood there, disbelieving, though why I should have been I wasn’t certain. I’d so rarely persuaded anyone, but I’d thought to have a chance with him. I’d thought, because he was my friend, because of Sophie . . . I still didn’t quite believe I hadn’t done it.

  You don’t understand. This will make up for everything. And with despair I realized that for him, more than anyone I’d ever known, Odilé was the answer to a prayer.

  ODILÉ

  I had lived long enough to see that the world was slow in its weaving. Time had no weight and no purpose, the passing of days only a blink. Fate, or karma, or whatever one called the intentions of the universe, stretched through centuries, wounds not healed in a lifetime later mended by those without the history or knowledge to understand what part they played. Symmetry. And because I understood that, I understood that a single painting or composition or poem might change the future. Where its influence might end—if it ever did—was a mystery.

  I had spent lifetimes watching the effects of my choices, and so I knew that Joseph Hannigan was meant to be the very best of them. The world had put him into my hands; I could only guess at its design. But I knew he would be known and lauded for a very long time, and I could hardly wait to put him to work. My appetite was gathering, preparing, both appeased by his talent and waiting for him. Joseph would lose vision and vitality gradually until the bargain was made and I restored him. The sooner he accepted my offer, the sooner he could begin his dance with fame. I did not think it would be difficult to convince him, not after last night. I already felt victorious after my conversation with Sophie. I had seen Joseph’s face when he returned to the gondola, and though I had no idea what had passed between them, I knew I had won. His sister would no longer interfere. When I’d brought him home, he painted with a single-minded concentration as I posed for him, and then he made love to me until I was breathless. I was well-satisfied, and I expected him to be too weak to move.

  But when I woke late the next morning, Joseph was not in bed, nor anywhere in the bedroom. For a moment I thought I had been wrong, that I had failed. He had gone back to her after all. I felt a rush of annoyance . . . and then despair. But when I stepped from the bedroom, there he was, at the easel. He was paintin
g like a madman, not the least bit weakened. His strength was astonishing, bewildering.

  He glanced up as I came out. I could not read his expression—thoughtful, anxious, agitated . . . He was in a curious mood, and I was wary as I said, “How does it go?”

  He swept a piece of muslin over the canvas before I could come close. “Not yet. I don’t want you to see it until it’s done.”

  I was used to the caprices of artists, and so I let it go. He put down the palette and brush and came to me, running his hands down my arms, tangling his fingers in the bracelets. He leaned to kiss me, murmuring, “Do you wear these always?”

  “They’re my latest fancy,” I said, lifting my arm, twisting my wrist so the chains slid against each other, glimmering in the morning light. “I like them. Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” He caught my hand, and slid his fingers through the gold. I knew when he felt the scars marking my wrist. I felt his pause. I knew he recognized what had made them. He was too perceptive not to see. It would be polite to ignore them, to pretend he’d discovered nothing, and I expected him to do just that. But he never failed to surprise me. “How old are these?” he whispered, and again I saw that strange glitter in his eyes. I felt a suppressed excitement—or was it fear?

  It distracted me enough that I answered him honestly. “A year or so.”

  “What happened a year or so ago?”

  I pulled my hand gently from his hold. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does,” he said. “I can’t bear to think you felt such unhappiness.”

  “It was not unhappiness. It was despair. I think you understand something of that yourself.”

  I saw the darkness come into his eyes again, displacing what I’d seen before.

  I spoke quickly, meaning to lead into the bargain I must make. “I want you to tell me something about yourself.”

  His expression veiled. “What do you wish to know?”

  “What kind of child were you?”

  “I don’t know that I was ever a child.”

  I understood that too. I began to wonder if Joseph Hannigan and I might be kindred spirits. But then I asked, “Who was your first lover?” and the veil thickened. I could not read him at all.

  He hesitated; I thought he would not tell me, and I wondered why. But then he said, rather bitterly, “Do you want to know the truth? Or the story I tell myself?”

  I had asked this question a hundred times or more. The answers differed only in their frequency, never in their aspect. A whore. My cousin. A neighbor girl. A pretty grisette. But Joseph Hannigan’s answer was one I’d never heard before. How could I ignore it? “The story you tell yourself.”

  The strange mood I’d felt in him shivered. He glanced at the covered painting. “I was fifteen and deeply in love. She was a princess.”

  His answer had his sister all over it. One of her stories, perhaps—or was it not a story after all? Had she been his lover? The thought was intriguing and distressing too. I felt a little twist of jealousy. Ridiculous. I no longer had anything to fear from her. But I could not keep the snap from my voice when I asked, “And the truth?”

  “The truth?” His face was hard. “The truth is that it was my governess. And I was eleven.”

  It was a relief. This answer I understood. I’d even heard it before. Byron had stood in this very room, with the Venetian sunrise streaming through the window to cast him in a soft, watery glow, in loveliness, and told his own story with a harsh self-deprecation that Joseph Hannigan’s blunt declaration did not hold. “I see.”

  “You don’t sound shocked.”

  “No. I’ve heard such a story once before. But the man who told it had been younger than eleven. And perhaps more precocious.”

  “I was younger when it started,” Joseph said thoughtfully. “She would touch me in the bath. I didn’t think it was strange. I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. Then she began playing with me at bedtime. By the time I was ten, she was suckling me.”

  “Was she very pretty at least?”

  He didn’t look surprised at my question. “Pretty? Not pretty. Not ugly. Nothing to distinguish. She was . . . ordinary. And older. Past child-bearing.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Loved and hated in equal measure,” he said honestly. “She was kind sometimes. And other times . . . truthfully, Sophie bore the worst of it.”

  I tried not to wince at the sound of her name, at the fact that she was again in this room with us, and had been since I’d asked the question. “She did? How so?”

  He went deeply, powerfully quiet. “That’s Sophie’s story to tell, not mine.”

  I felt his implacability, his protectiveness. I thought of the glances that passed between them, an intimacy that bound them, that had compelled me to look at them in the Rialto. The way they complemented each other. Again, I felt that disconcerting little twist.

  There was a part of himself he kept separate—and that too was not like any of the others. After so many hours together, he should be telling me everything, spilling his secrets. He should be speaking of inspiration, of sublime visions, of how he would immortalize me in paint. I was used to adulation, superlatives, passionate avowals. I could not bear his distance or the fact that she was still—impossibly—between us.

  I struggled to hide my dismay and my jealousy and said as lightly as I could, “You are such a mystery to me, Joseph Hannigan.”

  “I think you must be in need of a little mystery. Life must be so boring for you otherwise.”

  There was an edge to his voice. I wished I had not asked the questions, because whatever else they’d done, they put distance between us. I wanted to bring him back to me. I touched his chest, feeling his warm skin through his shirt. Time to lead him where I wished him to go. Time to talk of bargains. “I will tell you the mystery I’d like to know the answer to. I would like to know what makes you see the world as you do.”

  “Does it matter what makes me see that way, or only that I do?”

  “I have spent a lifetime with artists of all kinds,” I told him. “And that is the question that eludes them all. Where such talent comes from is a mystery. Is it a convolution in the brain that causes it? Or is it in the eyes? The heart? What makes the prism through which you see the world? What would you be without it?”

  I wasn’t certain why I’d asked the last question—I never had before. Nor did I know what it was about Joseph Hannigan that made me wonder it. I thought of the darkness I’d seen within him, the vastness of it, the way it seemed to form him, and wondered if it was his talent I’d seen, and what would happen if it were simply gone.

  And I wondered if I would feel sorrow when it was taken from him.

  The thought startled me, no less than the way Joseph was looking, again with the strange, edgy thoughtfulness, as if he saw in me something he had never expected to find.

  “Those stories you tell me,” he said quietly. “The ones about Byron and Canaletto, all the others. Did you ask them those questions too?”

  I was so startled I wondered if I’d heard him correctly. You, he’d said, hadn’t he? Did you ask them?

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” He seemed driven by some deep feeling, a kind of fatal courage. “In all of those tales. You’re the woman. You’re the one who made them the offer.”

  I could not answer. How could he know? And yet, that he did was obvious. My hunger slithered and whispered.

  Carefully, I said, testing, “How could I be?”

  “Don’t pretend. I know already, don’t you see it? I know what you are. I know what you do.”

  I was shaken. “But—”

  “I know a friend of yours. My sister’s . . . lover.” The word was bitten off. I wondered if it was jealousy I heard. Or misery. “Nicholas Dane.”

  “What?”

  “You know him, don’t you? The things he told me aren’t a lie? He’s begged me not to take your offer. He’s told me what you are, what will happen. But I already
knew the truth, didn’t I? You’ve told me. In every one of your stories, you’ve said it. Demon inspiration.”

  Nicholas was Sophie’s lover. How had I not seen this? How had I not known? He would ruin everything. Only days left, and the monster would emerge. In panic, I said, “You mustn’t listen to him—”

  “I don’t care what he says.” Joseph’s gaze was hotly blue, demanding. “I want you to do it. Make me the offer. Please.”

  It was what I wanted, what I had intended. My panic eased and my hunger deepened, whispering, Do what he asks. Choose him. But he seemed so . . . not angry, no not that. Despairing.

  I hesitated. This was all strange. What had Nicholas said? What had he done? I had to think. There were consequences always, and Nicholas’s involvement with the Hannigans was something I hadn’t expected. I should not rush into this. Ah, but there was no more time. My hunger wheedled, He belongs to you. Take him. And I had waited far too long to deny it or to further delay. But I had to ask. “Why?”

  Joseph’s gaze delved deeply into mine, and those prison doors opened wide, revealing the ghosts behind them.

  “I want to release her,” he said, and there was a raw, brutal pain in his voice. “I have to let her go. It’s time. She’s in love with him, but she won’t leave me, and I don’t . . . I don’t have the strength to fight her. Not unless you give me this. Give me your inspiration, Odilé. Take Sophie out of my head. Make it all worth something.”

  I saw the otherworldliness shining from him, shimmering on his skin. I saw his desire and his need and his fear.

  “Do it,” he whispered.

  Make him the offer. Choose him. My hunger reared, snapping, starving, that emptiness inside me reaching, my own darkness tangling with his. The pain of it had me crying out—only his hands on my arms saved me from collapsing. He was pale and glittering and beautiful, and I saw him through my own prism and wanted him as I had never wanted anyone.

  I looked up at him, gasping, “What is it you most desire?”