“What ... happened to her?”
“She died,” Rushkin replied. He ducked his head and gave a heavy sigh. “Killed herself, actually.
Burned down our studio with all of our work and herself in it.” He indicated the two numena who had brought Isabelle to him. “These two were the only survivors of the conflagration and lord knows how I managed to save them.”
A deep stillness settled inside Isabelle. She remembered sitting at her kitchen table one morning some two years ago with that week’s edition of Time magazine and reading about that fire. The whole of the art world had been in shock about it, but it had particularly struck home with her because of her own fire all those years ago.
“Giselle Marchand,” Isabelle said softly as her memory called up the artist’s name.
“So you know her work. She could have given Rembrandt a run for his money with her use of light.
We lost a great talent that day.”
Isabelle stared at him in horror. “You killed her. You killed her just so you could feed on her numena.
You set the fire that burned down her studio.”
“I no more set that fire than I did the one that destroyed your studio.”
“At least have the courage to admit to your crimes.”
Rushkin shook his head. “You wrong me. And if my word is no longer of value with you, then look at me. Do you think I would have left myself in a position such as this? She had a death wish, Isabelle, and all that gorgeous art of ours fell victim to it. Without it, I am reduced to begging favors from an old student.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “You set that fire—just as you set the one in my studio.”
“I didn’t set that fire.”
“Then who did?”
Rushkin gave her a long considering look. “You really don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
He sighed. “Isabelle, you set that fire.”
Those few simple words made her reel back from him. She would have fled the room, except Bitterweed caught her by the arm and returned her to Rushkin’s pallet.
“You always had a gift for restating the truth to yourself,” Rushkin said, “but I never realized how thoroughly you would come to believe your own lies.”
“No. I would never ...”
She closed her eyes, but then the burning figures reared up in her mind’s eyes. She could hear the roar of the flames, the crackle of flesh burning, the awful stink of smoke and sweet cloying smell of cooking meat. But it hadn’t been meat, not meat that any sane person would ingest.
“The only difference between yourself and Giselle,” Rushkin said, “is that she let the fire consume herself as well as her art.”
“No!” Isabelle cried. She shook off Bitterweed’s grip and knelt on the floor, her face now level with Rushkin’s. She glared at him. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. You can’t make me believe your lies. I won’t believe them.”
“Fine,” Rushkin said. “Have it your way.”
It was plain from the tone of his voice that he was humoring her, but Isabelle refused to let him bait her any further. She clenched her teeth and sat back on her haunches. Cold. Silent. Staring at him.
“But you will still repay the debt you owe me,” Rushkin added.
Isabelle shook her head. “I won’t do it,” she said. “I won’t make people for you to murder.”
“People? You call them numena, yourself. Strictly speaking, a numen is merely a spiritual force, an influence one might feel around a certain thing or place. It has no physical presence.”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Of course I do,” Rushkin told her. “But you have to remember they’re not real.”
Isabelle looked at the two numena who had brought her to this place. “You heard it from his own lips,” she said. “How can you serve a monster such as this? How can you help him prey on your own kind?”
But neither of the numena appeared particularly perturbed.
“What do we care about the others?” Scam asked. “What have they ever done for us?”
Bitterweed nodded. “And we will be real. We have been promised.”
“By who? This father of lies?”
“He has never lied to us.”
Isabelle shook her head. “You don’t need him. He needs you. You’re already real. My numena live lives of their own and so do you. To believe otherwise is to believe his lies.”
“No,” Bitterweed said. “We need him.”
“All we ever did,” Isabelle said, “was open a door for you to cross over from your own world to this. You don’t need him any more than the man he based you upon needs me.”
“Quite the remarkable job I did making Bitterweed, don’t you think?” Rushkin remarked. “Of course it helps to have an eidetic memory.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Isabelle said.
“I know,” Rushkin said. “But you are wasting your time trying to convince them to see things your way. They know the truth.”
“Then how will you make them real?” Isabelle challenged.
“It’s quite simple, frankly. They require only a piece of your soul. Or mine. Or that of anyone such as us who can make them.”
Now Isabelle knew what Bitterweed had meant when he said she owed him. Though what he should have said was that she was owed to him. He and Scara had brought her to Rushkin so that she would rejuvenate her erstwhile mentor and in return Rushkin would give her to them. So much for Rushkin’s assurances of safety. So much for his giving his word. But then she already knew he was a liar.
“You’re a monster,” she said.
Rushkin shook his head. “You take everything far too seriously, Isabelle. You think of us as parasites, but it’s nothing so crass as that, I can assure you. The beings I require to restore me are not real in the sense that you or I can claim. I murder no one; I hurt no one. No one that is real.”
Isabelle thought of John, of the arguments they’d had on this very subject, and all she could do was shake her head in denial.
“And to make them real,” Rushkin went on, “costs so little. They will step into your sleep and take a small morsel of your soul. A memory, a hope, a piece of a dream. Nothing you can’t live without.”
“You were in my dreams once,” Isabelle said, “and you weren’t nearly so benign. You killed the winged cat. You would have killed Paddyjack, too, if John hadn’t driven you away.”
Rushkin neither denied nor agreed to what she said. “It’s harder for you and I to step into each other’s dreams. It’s because we are both makers—dreamers. It’s much easier for what you call numena since they are already so close to our dreams. They are born from our art and our art is born from our dreams—from what we remember, and what we envision.”
“You still killed the winged cat.”
Rushkin shrugged. “There was a need upon me that night. In retrospect, I should have been more patient. But I must remind you, Isabelle: none of your numena that I took were real. They need that piece of your soul to fuel them and I would have known if you had given it to them. I would never harm any that you made real. I am not the monster you make me out to be.”
“Oh no? Then what would you call yourself?”
“A man who has lived for a very long time and who is not yet ready to end his stay in this world.”
“No matter what the cost.”
“There is always a cost,” Rushkin agreed. “But in this case, it is not the one you assume it to be. I did not want to come back into your life and bring you more heartbreak, Isabelle. But I was weaker than I thought and in the two years since Giselle died, I have found no one with the necessary talent to take under my tutelage. It was Bitterweed who reminded me of you and even then I would not have returned into your life except that I heard that you would be illustrating a new collection of stories by your friend.
Since I knew you would once again be creating numena ...” He shrugged.
“How
could you have heard that? I only agreed to it yesterday.”
“Really? I heard about it over a month ago. Or perhaps it was only that you were being considered for the project. It makes little difference, now, since here we all are.”
“So this was all Bitterweed’s idea,” Isabelle said. “Kidnapping me and bringing me here.”
“He is very eager to become real,” Rushkin told her, “and like your own John, headstrong. We meant to wait until you had completed the work for the book before we stepped in, but then ...”
“But then what?” Isabelle asked when he hesitated.
“There are so many things that could go wrong or delay such a project,” Rushkin said.
He kept that same earnest expression in his eyes that he’d been wearing throughout their conversation, but Isabelle didn’t think that this was what he’d meant to say. He was hiding something.
Then she had to laugh at herself. When had she known Rushkin to ever be straightforward about anything?
“You can see how weak I am,” Rushkin added. “Bitterweed was afraid that I wouldn’t survive the wait. And besides, he is so eager. So impatient. I think he would do anything to become real.”
“But he already is real.”
Rushkin sighed. “The numena do not need to eat or sleep. They are unable to bleed or dream. They are not real.”
“You say that only because it suits your purpose.”
“Then what would you call them?”
Isabelle glanced at his numena. Scara lounged on the floor, cleaning her nails with a switchblade, and didn’t even seem to be paying attention to the conversation. Bitterweed leaned against a wall beside her, arms folded, listening, but his face was a closed mask. Unreadable.
“Different,” Isabelle said. “That’s all. Not better or worse than us, only different.”
Rushkin smiled. “How very open-minded of you. How politically correct. Perhaps we should refer to them as the dream-impaired in the future.”
“I’m not Izzy anymore,” Isabelle told him. “I’m not that impressionable teenager that you took under your wing and who’d believe anything you’d say because you were Vincent bloody Adjani Rushkin.
God, I hate you.”
“And yet you named your studio after me.”
Isabelle gave him a withering look. “You know up until this very morning I couldn’t have said which was stronger: my admiration for you and the gratefulness I’ve felt for everything you taught me, or my fear and loathing for everything you stand for. You’ve certainly clarified that for me today.”
“And yet you will help me,” Rushkin said.
Isabelle shook her head. “I can’t believe you. Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying?”
“If you help restore me with your numena,” Rushkin told her, “I will give you the one thing your heart most desires.”
“What would you know about my desires?”
“I’ll bring her back—the friend you still mourn.”
It took her a moment to understand what he was getting at. She was sure that she was wrong.
“You don’t mean Kathy?” she asked dubiously.
When Rushkin nodded, Isabelle stared at him in disbelief.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
“And the numena aren’t?”
“Just because one improbable thing is true doesn’t mean anything can be true.”
“I promise you, I can bring her back to you.”
How many times had she longed to see that mass of red-gold hair tossed aside as Kathy turned to look at her the way she always did, the welcoming smile, the kind light in those grey eyes? How often had she seen something, or read something, or felt something, and thought, Wait’ll I tell Kathy, only to remember that Kathy was dead? Five years had passed, and it still happened. Not every day. Not even every week. But enough.
And how often had she railed against the unfairness of Kathy’s death? How often had she thought she’d do anything to have her back? Anything at all. But this?
She’d considered painting Kathy herself, waking her the way she had John and the others, but knew it wouldn’t work. The numena were new to this world. Kathy had lived here and died here. There was no return for her. This world had been hers before.
But even knowing that, even knowing that Rushkin would call up a ghost, a simulation, not the real Kathy, she couldn’t help being tempted. Because what if Rushkin really could do it? There were so many questions she had for Kathy, so many riddles that needed answers only Kathy could give.
I realized that I had fallen in love with her from day one, but I never once got up the courage to tell her.
I hope I do before either of us dies.
I’m not attracted to men, but I’m not attracted to women either. It’s just Izzy I want. She had to know if it was true.
“Well?” Rushkin asked. “Do we have a bargain?”
Isabelle blinked, startled out of her reverie. She gazed at the insectlike cast into which his features had fallen. Slowly she shook her head.
“You’ll bring her back,” she said. “And what will she be? Like him?” She jerked a thumb in Bitterweed’s direction. “A flawed copy of the real thing? A monster?”
“No,” Rushkin said. “I’ll bring back an angel.”
“I don’t believe your lies anymore, Vincent. I haven’t believed them for a very long time.”
“And if I bring her back first?” Rushkin asked. “If, before you paint one stroke for me, I bring her back and you can judge for yourself?”
“What ... what are you saying?”
“I will bring your friend back to you. If you are satisfied that it is indeed her, you will paint for me. If not, then we will part ways here and I will never trouble you again.”
Isabelle hated herself for what she was thinking.
You wouldn’t be doing this for yourself, she tried to tell herself. Not entirely. Sure, you’re selfish and you want her back, but it’s not like you’d be the only person to benefit. She thought of what Kathy had written about her in the journal:
It’s not because she’s beautiful, which she is; it’s because she’s an angel, sent down from heaven to make us all a little more grateful about our time spent here on planet earth. We’re better people for having known her.
Kathy might as well have been talking about herself.
“These paintings,” Isabelle began.
“I will ask you to do only enough to restore me. Two—three at the most.”
“And your numena?”
“I will give them what they need from my own dreams.”
Could she do it? Isabelle asked herself. Could she bring two or three of her own numena across from the before and sacrifice them for Kathy’s sake?
She knew it would be wrong. She was wrong to even consider it. It put her on the same level as Rushkin. She knew that Kathy would be horrified at the price paid for her return.
“Well?” Rushkin asked.
“It wouldn’t even be necessary for you to make new paintings,” Rushkin said. “You must have one or two left over from before you entered this abstract expressionism period of yours.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “I couldn’t do that.”
It was hard enough that she had to sacrifice anyone for Kathy to be able to return, but not them. Not John and Paddyjack, the wild girl and the handful of others who had survived.
“But you will paint for me?”
41
“Isabelle,” he said softly. “What do you have to lose? If I fail to bring your friend back to your satisfaction, you owe me nothing. If I succeed—surely it would be worth any price?”
“I don’t know.”
God, she felt so confused.
If Rushkin wasn’t lying about being able to bring Kathy back, then perhaps he was also telling the truth when he said that the numena weren’t real. Isabelle couldn’t barter with true human lives—even for Kathy’s sake. But if the numena weren’t real. If they were only paintings.
Dream-born figments without any true life of their own ...
But then she thought of something Sophie had told her back when they were sharing a studio in the early eighties. They’d gotten to talking about dreams, and Sophie, who had very vivid dreams, had insisted that you always had to maintain your principles, even when you were dreaming. What you did in a dream might not be real in terms of the waking world, she explained, but that didn’t change the fact that you had done it. That you were capable of doing it. If you killed someone in a dream, you were still guilty ofmurder, even if there was no corpse when you woke, even if no one had really died. Because you would still have made the choice where it counted: inside yourself.
So how would this be any different?
“I repeat,” Rushkin said. “What do you have to lose?”
My soul, Isabelle thought. And everything I’ve ever believed in. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me,” she said.
Rushkin shook his head. “But I do, Isabelle. I do. We have always had our differences, but I respect your beliefs. Just because I believe your feelings concerning the numena to be untrue doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the torment you are going through.”
His gaze met hers, guileless and clear. She could almost believe he honestly cared for her. Could almost feel herself falling under his sway again. Oh, Kathy, she thought. What am I supposed to do?
XI
There was no answer at the door to Isabelle’s studio.
“Jilly said she was running some errands this morning,” Alan said. “She mustn’t be back yet.”
As he turned away, Marisa stepped up to the door and tried the knob. The lock was engaged but the door hadn’t been completely shut and it swung open at her touch.
“Why don’t we wait for her inside?” she said.
“No,” Alan said. “We can’t just barge in ....”
But Marisa had already stepped inside. Alan and Rolanda exchanged uncomfortable looks, then reluctantly followed her inside. The studio was crammed with boxes and suitcases, but otherwise empty.
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