“Please,” she said. “Just leave me alone.”
“Too late for that, ma belle Izzy.”
Isabelle flinched at the sound of Kathy’s endearment falling so readily from his lips.
“What do you want from me?”
“A piece of your soul. That’s all. One small piece of your soul.”
The way he smiled did more to disassociate him from her John than had the missing bracelet, or the darkness that waited in his eyes. It was a hungry smile and gave his entire features an inhuman cast.
“Who brought you across?” she asked. But she knew. There was no one else it could have been but Rushkin.
“What does it matter? I’m here now to collect the debt.”
Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“Not directly, perhaps, but you owe me. Of this you can be very certain.” But Isabelle was still shaking her head. “I don’t owe you a thing,” she repeated. “Now get away from me before I call for help.”
The mocking smile left his lips, if not his eyes.
“No, no,” he said. “Don’t even think of it. You’d be dead before you opened your mouth.”
Isabelle tried to dart by him, but he moved in close to her, moved quicker than she could have thought possible. With his body shielding the action from the view of anyone watching in the courtyard behind him, his hand shot up to her neck. The fingers felt like steel cables as they pushed her head roughly up against the doorjamb and held it there.
“You don’t really have any choice in the matter,” he told her conversationally, “except whether you come in one piece or not.” The fingers tightened slightly. “Understood?”
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t even move her head, but he could read the defeat in her eyes. When he let her go, she gasped for air, her own hands rising protectively about her throat. The doppelganger put his arm around her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” he asked, all concern now.
Without waiting for her reply, he led her away across the courtyard, through the light scattering of midmorning shoppers, his face turned solicitously toward her, the feral hunger hidden under hooded lids.
But the bruising grip of his hand on her shoulder was a clear reminder of who was in control.
Outside Joli Coeur they were met by a teenage girl. The girl appeared to be colorless, a monochrome study brought to life. The hungry look in her eyes matched that of Isabelle’s captor.
“Mmm,” the girl said. “She looks tasty.”
“She’s not for you.”
“Not for you either, Bitterweed.”
Bitterweed, Isabelle thought on hearing her captor’s name. That made sense. Bitterweed to John’s Sweetgrass. Monster to his angel.
“Maybe not now,” Bitterweed said. “But later ...”
The girl laughed, a dark unpleasant sound that matched the maliciousness in her eyes. “There’ll be no later for this one.”
“Shut up, Scara.”
The girl’s humor merely grew. “Hit a nerve, did we? I think a bit more John Sweetgrass went into your making than you’ll ever admit to. Next thing you’ll be wanting her to fall in love with you.”
“I said shut up.”
“Who ... who are you people?” Isabelle asked.
Her throat was still sore and the words came out in a rasp. The pair turned to her. Her question seemed to have startled them, as though they were surprised that she could speak.
“Sweet dreams,” Scara replied.
“Memories,” Bitterweed countered.
Scara’s lips pulled into a thin, savage smile. “Or maybe nightmares—take your pick.”
They hustled her toward a small black car that stood at the curb. Bitterweed pulled her into the back with him while his companion slid in behind the wheel. She had the motor started and was pulling away from the curb before Bitterweed was able to close his door.
“Watch it,” he told her.
Scara’s dark gaze regarded them from the rearview mirror. She sang softly, the melody nagging at Isabelle’s mind until she placed it as a song by the Australian group Divinyls. They’d been one of Kathy’s favorite bands, although this song had come out long after Kathy had died. Scara tapped her fingers in time on the steering wheel as she wove in and out of the traffic.
“Bless my soul,” she sang, reaching the chorus.
Isabelle shot a glance at the man beside her. What do you want from me? she’d asked him.
A piece of your soul. That’s all. One small piece of your soul.
You owe me.
He felt her glance and turned to meet her gaze. The shock of the alien person inhabiting that oh-so-familiar and much-missed body struck home all over again. She had to look away, out the window. The streets seemed unfamiliar, as though she were being taken through a city in which she’d never lived, never even been before. She realized that she didn’t know where she was, where she was going, what was going to happen to her. All she knew was that they were going to hurt her. They wanted something from her and, once she gave it to them, they were going to hurt her.
She looked up into the rearview mirror to find Scara’s hungry gaze fixed on her. When the girl mimed a kiss at her, Isabelle quickly turned back to the view outside her window.
Oh, John, she thought as she watched buildings she couldn’t recognize speed by. I need you now.
VIII
At first Alan didn’t recognize the black woman who was coming down the steps of his building just as he and Marisa were disembarking from their cab. When she stopped in front of them and called him by name, he immediately replied with a terse “No comment.”
“What?” she said, obviously confused.
Alan looked at her, a sense of familiarity coming to him now, but he still couldn’t place her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were a reporter.”
She shook her head. “I’m Rolanda Hamilton—from the Foundation.”
“Right. I knew that. I’m really sorry. I ... I’m just ...”
“He’s not been having a very good day,” Marisa explained as Alan’s voice trailed off. She held out her hand and introduced herself
“It looks like I’ve come at a bad time,” Rolanda said. “Maybe I should come back later.”
Alan shook his head. He’d had a moment to collect himself by now. “I’ve had better days,” he told her, “but that’s no reason to take it out on you. What can I do for you?”
“This is a little embarrassing, but I have this problem ....”
“Don’t worry about intruding,” Alan said when at first she hesitated, then fell silent. “To tell you the truth, you couldn’t have come at a better time.” Rolanda raised her eyebrows.
“There’s nothing that helps you forget your own troubles like listening to someone else’s,” Alan explained. “So why don’t you come in?”
“I’ll put some water on,” Marisa said as they went into the apartment. “Tea or coffee, Rolanda?” she added.
“Whatever you’re having.”
Marisa went into the kitchen with Rolanda and Alan trailed along in her wake. They each took a chair at the kitchen table. As Marisa bustled about, filling the coffee maker and setting out mugs, Alan turned to their guest.
“So,” he said. “I hope you’re not here to tell me about the plans for some celebration that the Foundation has planned, now that we’ve finally got the okay to go ahead and publish the Mully omnibus.
I’d hate to put a damper on them, but there have been some ... complications.”
Rolanda shook her head. “No, it’s not that at all. Actually, now that I’m here, I really do feel embarrassed. You’re going to think that I’ve completely lost it.”
“Now I’m really intrigued.”
“But—”
“And I promise, I won’t laugh.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
“So,” Alan prompted her when she hesitated again.
Rolanda took a de
ep breath. “It’s just ... do you know a girl named Cosette?”
Everything went still inside Alan. Only in my dreams, he wanted to say, but all that came out was
“Cosette?”
“She’s about fifteen or so, maybe older. Red hair. She—actually, she looks just like that painting by Isabelle Copley that’s hanging in the Foundation’s waiting room. You know, the one with all the roses.”
“The Wild Girl,” Marisa offered from where she was leaning against the counter.
Rolanda nodded. “Cosette looks exactly like the wild girl. She says she was Copley’s model, but of course that’s impossible.”
She looked from Alan to Marisa as though expecting one of them to contradict her, but neither of them made a comment. Alan thought of that early-morning visitation on Isabelle’s island that he had convinced himself had only been a dream. His Cosette had looked exactly the same as Isabelle’s painting as well.
“What about her?” he asked finally when Rolanda didn’t go on. “She says she knows you.”
“I’ve ... met her. Or at least I’ve met someone calling herself Cosette who looks just like the girl in Isabelle’s picture.”
Rolanda appeared relieved at that. “Did you notice anything, well, strange about her?”
“Everything was strange about her.”
“I’m in the dark here,” Marisa said, joining them at the table. “Who are you talking about?”
Alan sighed. “It was when I stayed over at Isabelle’s place the other night.
On Wren Island,” he added, for Rolanda’s benefit. “I woke up just before dawn and she Cosette, that is—was sitting in the windowseat of the guest room just looking at me. We had a mostly one-sided conversation that didn’t make any real sense at all, but before I could get her to clarify anything, she opened the window and took off across the lawn.”
“That’s the only time you’ve met her?” Rolanda asked.
Alan nodded.
“She told me you were her boyfriend.”
“I don’t think anything she says can be taken at face value,” Alan said. “Well, she also told me that her feelings for you weren’t reciprocated.”
“What did Isabelle have to say about her?” Marisa wanted to know. “Nothing,” Alan said. “I never told her about it.”
Both women regarded him with surprise.
“But why not?” Marisa asked.
“I thought I was dreaming. I did ask Isabelle if there was anyone else living on the island and she told me there wasn’t. It was all very weird. Isabelle herself seemed jumpy that morning—I think she’d been up all night drawing—and I was afraid of getting onto the wrong foot with her again.” He turned to Rolanda. “She was going to illustrate the omnibus.”
“Was?” Rolanda asked. “She’s changed her mind?”
“Not exactly. Have you seen the news today?”
Rolanda shook her head.
“Margaret Mully was murdered last night.”
Rolanda’s eyes widened with surprise. “Maybe we should have a celebration,” she said. “I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but that’s one woman the world can certainly do without.”
“You won’t hear any argument from me.”
“But what does Mully’s death have to do with your publishing the omnibus?” Rolanda asked.
“It’s going to complicate things, as in—just to give you one example—what’s her estate going to do in terms of the appeal Mully filed a couple of days ago?”
Rolanda frowned. “So she’s going to stand in our way even after she’s dead. God, how I hate that woman. It’s hard to believe that she could have had a daughter with as big a heart as Kathy’s.”
“And that’s not the only problem,” Alan said. “The police think I killed her.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Very serious,” Marisa said. The coffee maker made an odd burbling noise, indicating that the coffee was ready. “We were just coming back from the precinct when we ran into you,” she added as she rose to fill their mugs.
“Now I know what you meant by ‘No comment,’” Rolanda said.
Alan nodded. “The media was waiting for us when we left the precinct. It was a zoo.”
“Well, if they’d wanted a real story, they should have been at the Foundation this morning,” Rolanda said.
Marisa brought the mugs over to the table, along with the sugar bowl and a carton of milk.
“What happened?” she asked as she poured a generous dollop of milk into her coffee.
“I’ll bet it had something to do with Cosette,” Alan said.
Rolanda nodded. She took a sip of her coffee and then told them about her own experiences with Cosette.
“She said that?” Alan asked. “That Isabelle made her?”
“‘Brought her over’ was the way she put it, but I definitely got the idea that she thinks Isabelle created her by making a painting of her.”
Alan closed his eyes. He could see the small red-haired girl again, perched on the windowsill. Could hear her voice.
I’d suggest that you simply use monochrome studies to illustrate the book ... but I have to admit I’m too selfish and lonely. It’ll be so nice to see a few new faces around here.
It seemed like something right out of one of Kathy’s stories, but as soon as Rolanda had come to that part of her story, Alan had found himself remembering the fire. How all of Isabelle’s paintings had been destroyed. How her art had changed so drastically after the fire. How she couldn’t—or wouldn’t, he amended now—explain why her art had changed so drastically. This even explained why she’d been so adamant that the finished art she did for Kathy’s new book had to always remain in her possession.
At the same time that all those disparate puzzle pieces were coming together for Alan, he saw that Marisa was shaking her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t buy any of this. It’s just not possible.”
“You weren’t there,” Rolanda said. “I saw her draw that Xacto blade across her palm. She didn’t bleed. And then she literally vanished from my room. They’re still talking about how she appeared out of nowhere downstairs in the waiting room.”
“In front of the painting,” Alan said.
Rolanda nodded slowly. “Where I first saw her. Do you think it, I don’t know, draws her to it somehow?”
“It would be her anchor, wouldn’t it? If what she says is true.”
“Oh please,” Marisa said. “You can’t be taking this seriously.”
“I know what I saw,” Rolanda said.
“And I know what I felt,” Alan added. “There was something unnatural about that girl. I felt it right away. That’s why I found it so easy to pass it off as a dream. It just didn’t feel real to me. And what Rolanda’s telling us goes a long way to explaining Isabelle’s strange behavior after the farmhouse burned down and all her art was destroyed.”
“I don’t get it,” Marisa said.
But Rolanda knew. “If the paintings give these ... whatever they are. If it gives them life, then if something happens to the painting, if it should get destroyed—”
‘—then the beings she created with those paintings might die as well. After all, there is a connection between them, like in that Oscar Wilde story.” Rolanda shivered. “This is so weird.”
Marisa looked from her to Alan. “This is so ridiculous. We’re talking real life, not fairy tales.”
“I know how it sounds,” Alan said. “But you haven’t met Cosette. You don’t know what it was like in the old days with Kathy and Isabelle. There was always a kind of magic in the air.”
“It’s called nostalgia,” Marisa said with a smile.
Alan returned her smile. “I know how we can give everything a glow when we look back on the past, but this is different. I feel that it’s true.”
“And I know what I saw,” Rolanda added.
“I don’t have the answers,” Alan said, “but you’ve got to admit that we�
��re dealing with something unusual here.”
“You might not have the answers,” Rolanda said, “but you know someone who does.”
Alan nodded. “Isabelle. We’ll have to ask her.”
“Do you know where she’s staying?” Marisa asked.
“No. But Jilly would know.”
“Jilly Coppercorn?” Rolanda asked.
“We all go back a long way, but Jilly’s the only one who’s really maintained a relationship with Isabelle over the years.”
“Do you have her number?”
Alan nodded. He made the call and five minutes later they were leaving his apartment, on their way to Isabelle’s new studio in Joli Coeur.
IX
It took Cosette forever, and then a little longer still, to find Solemn John. It wasn’t just that John was hard to find, which he was. John was always on the move, as restless as the sky was long and always so sad, so serious. He could be grim, too, though he was never like that with her. But he could be infuriating in the way he almost always answered a question with one of his own. He was the oldest of them, the strongest and the fiercest. Cosette liked to think that she could be fierce, but compared to John, she could only play at fierceness.
So John was hard to find. But the other reason it took Cosette so long to track him down was that the strange black-and-white girl had frightened her so badly. Afraid of encountering her again, Cosette didn’t walk down the middle of the sidewalks anymore, she crept through the shadows and alleyways.
When she had to cross a street or the open stretch of a deserted lot, she did it with a scurrying sideways movement, trying to look all around herself at once feeling so very much like a tiny little deer mouse in an open field as the shadow of the hawk falls upon it.
She went almost all around the downtown core of the city, from Battersfield Road as far east as Fitzhenry Park, from the Pier as far north as the abandoned tenements of the Tombs, and then found John sitting on a fire escape no more than two blocks from where she’d first set out to find him. Of course, she thought. Wasn’t that always the way? But she was so relieved to see him that she couldn’t even muster up a spark of irritation.
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