“Yes, but—”
“And since you told me that you always knew when I wanted to see you, I know the only reason you didn’t come back was because you didn’t want to. I might have sent you away, but you’re the one who chose to stay away.”
“You didn’t want me,” John said. “You wanted time to turn back and rewind to before that night in Fitzhenry Park.”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
John sighed and tried again. “You believe that I’m dependent upon you for my existence. That without you, I’d be nothing.”
“No. But I am responsible for your being here.”
“You made a gateway, not me. You didn’t make any of us. We existed elsewhere first.”
Isabelle nodded. “I did the paintings, but you chose to come here. I know that. 33
“So what are you trying to tell me?”
“I ..... Isabelle had to look away. “It’s not easy to explain.”
“Then perhaps you can explain that,” John said, pointing to the painting she was working on.
The figure taking shape on the canvas was of a vengeful, red-haired angel. Working wet-in-wet as she was, Isabelle was eschewing detail for emotive power. The enormous wings that would rise up behind the figure were still only blocked in, and there was next to no definition in the figure itself, but the sword of justice held aloft by the angel was clearly defined and there was no mistaking the stern cast to her features.
“This is going to deal with Rushkin,” Isabelle told him.
“How?”
“Once I’ve brought her across, she’ll protect all of us. If Rushkin ever tries to hurt any of us again, she’ll deal with him.”
“It won’t work.”
Disappointment reared in Isabelle’s eyes. “Why not?”
“We can’t touch him,” John explained. “None of us that you brought across can. He’s a maker, and because of that we can’t harm him. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.”
“But when his numena came to Joli Coeur ...”
“They could never have made good on their threat to you,” John finished. “Because you’re also a maker. None of us can harm a maker.”
Isabelle shook her head. “No, he—the one calling himself Bitterweed—he wasn’t pretending when he grabbed me by the throat. If I hadn’t gone with him, he would’ve killed me.”
“He could kill me, or any of your friends,” John said, “but the threat he presented to you was good acting, nothing more.”
He could see Isabelle’s confidence visibly deflate.
“You didn’t know,” he said, trying to comfort her.
“I should have listened to you a long time ago,” she said. “I should have stopped bringing anyone else across when you first told me I should.”
John agreed with her, but all he said to her was “I only told you that you had to be responsible. You had to keep them out of danger.”
“But so long as Rushkin’s around, they will always be in danger. It would have been better to never have brought them across, than to let them all die. But I was too late.” Isabelle turned away. She stood there, looking at her angel of vengeance, arms wrapped protectively around her upper torso. “That’s the story of my life. I’m always too late when it matters.”
“It’s not too late for those of us who remain,” John told her.
Isabelle faced him once more. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Rushkin is the danger,” John said.
“I know that.”
“So what you have to do is eliminate the danger.”
“You mean ... kill him?”
John nodded.
“I don’t think I could do that.” An anguished look came over her features as she spoke. “I know he’s evil. I I ... I guess I even knew all along that it would come to this. But I just don’t think I can cold-bloodedly kill another human being.”
“He dies, or we do,” John said.
III
Where’s John?” Alan asked as he and his companions caught up to Cosette.
“He’s gone to kill Rushkin,” Cosette said. She gave them a shocked look and put her hands up over her mouth. “Uh-oh,” she muttered through her fingers. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”
“Rushkin?” Rolanda asked.
She looked understandably uneasy.
“Vincent Rushkin,” Alan explained. “The artist. He was Isabelle’s mentor back when we were all in university.”
“But what’s he got to do with anything?” Marisa asked.
Alan returned his attention to Cosette. “I guess that’s something our friend here’s going to have to explain.”
But Cosette was shaking her head. “I don’t have to explain anything. Just forget what I said.”
As she started to turn away, Alan caught her by the arm.
“We need some answers, Cosette,” he told her.
Her pale gaze held his for a long moment, and Alan found himself marveling at the strange mix of rose and grey that colored them. An impossible color, Alan thought. But then the whole situation was impossible. Except her arm was solid in his grip. There was no denying her physical presence, the reality of her standing here with them on the sidewalk.
“Why should I tell you anything?” Cosette asked at last.
“We want to help.”
“But why? What difference does any of this make to you?”
“Well, for one thing,” Rolanda said, obviously making an effort to keep her voice calm, “we don’t want to see you get mixed up in a murder.”
Murder. The word rang in Alan’s mind, and then he was remembering how his day had begun with the police suspecting him for having murdered Kathy’s mother.
“Did John kill Margaret Mully?” he asked.
Cosette gave him a confused look.
“Kathy’s mother,” Alan explained. “The one who was trying to stop us from publishing a new collection of Kathy’s stories.”
“That’s where it all started,” Cosette said. She pulled free from his grip. “If you hadn’t started Isabelle thinking about bringing us across again, I’ll bet Rushkin would never have come back. None of this would have happened.”
“I don’t understand,” Alan said.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Marisa murmured from beside him.
“You can’t keep me here, you know,” Cosette told them. “All I have to do is close my eyes and wish myself away and I’ll be standing in front of my painting again.”
Now it was Alan’s turn to look confused.
“That’s one of the things we can do,” Cosette went on. “We can just be back at our gateway with a thought.” Then she plucked at the sweater she was wearing. “And I can always be dressed just like I am in the painting. All I have to do is decide to do it.”
With that she closed her eyes, her brow furrowing. A moment later she was standing there in the street in front of them wearing only the white men’s dress shirt that Alan had first seen her in. The shirt hung open, just as it did in the painting. Lying at her feet were the clothes she’d been wearing a moment ago.
“Jesus,” he said.
Unself-consciously, Cosette picked up her jeans and put them on. She let the shirttails hang free, but she buttoned the shirt. The sweater went on over it, then she sat down on the curb and started to put on her shoes.
“Why are you telling us this?” Rolanda asked.
“Because I want to.”
She held up her palm—the one she’d cut with an Xacto blade in Rolanda’s office—and Rolanda shivered. Alan crouched down beside Cosette as she tied her laces.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” he said. “I just know that Isabelle’s caught up in it. I can feel that she’s in some sort of trouble and I want to help her.
“Do you love her?” Cosette asked.
“I ...” Alan felt suddenly uncomfortable. He glanced at Marisa before returning his attention to Cosette. When he spoke, his reply surprised him. “I
did. I mean, I still do, but not in the same way as I once did. It’s complicated. I love her like a sister, I suppose. Or a friend.”
“Could you love me that way?”
“I don’t know,” Alan said. “I’d have to get to know you first.”
“That was fairly answered,” Cosette told him, suddenly grinning. “That’s how Rosalind would say it.
She’s much better with words that I could ever hope to be.”
“And she’s ... ?”
“You’d think of her as the reading woman.” Cosette gave Rolanda a knowing look. “You know.”
When Rolanda nodded, Alan realized they were talking about the other painting that hung in the Foundation’s offices, La Liseuse.
“We love each other,” Cosette said, “just like you love Isabelle.”
“Is Isabelle in trouble?” Alan asked.
Cosette gave him a solemn nod. “But you could save her.”
“How?”
“By killing Rushkin for us.”
“But you said John was going to—”
“This is going too far, Alan,” Rolanda interrupted. She put a hand on his shoulder to make sure she had his attention. “I’m trying to keep an open mind about all of this, but I’m not going to put myself in a position of being considered an accomplice to something so serious as murder. I don’t know what’s going on here any more than you do, but if Cosette’s friend really is about to kill someone, it’s time for us to stop playing detective and call the police.”
Marisa nodded in agreement. “It’s gone too far, Alan.”
“If you don’t help,” Cosette said, “then we’re all going to die—Rosalind and Paddyjack and Solemn John and all of us. Rushkin’s going to feast on us.”
Alan turned to his companions. “Let’s just hear this out first, okay?”
Both Rolanda and Marisa looked uncomfortable, but after a few moments of consideration, they each gave a reluctant nod. Alan directed his attention back to Cosette once more.
“You’re going to have to start at the beginning for us,” he said.
Cosette fixed him with her luminous gaze and gave a solemn nod. “What do you want to know?” she asked.
“Well, you could start with why Rushkin is such a threat to you that you want him dead.”
Cosette regarded each one of them in turn. When she saw that she had their undivided attention, she took a deep breath and told them about Rushkin and Isabelle’s relationship, how she’d received the gift from him and how she’d used it.
“But it was all a trick, you see,” she said. “The only reason Rushkin showed her how to do it was so that she’d bring lots of us across and then he’d have that many more of us to feed on.”
“How does he feed on you?” Rolanda wanted to know.
Cosette shivered. “I don’t know. Not exactly. Not what it’s actually like. But it starts with his destroying the painting that first brought you across ....”
Alan and Rolanda exchanged glances, each of them thinking of the fire on Wren Island that had destroyed all of Isabelle’s work. But then Cosette went on to tell about Rushkin’s return and how his numena had kidnapped Isabelle.
“We have to go with her,” Alan said. “We have to help Isabelle.”
“I don’t know,” Marisa said. “This is all so surreal ....”
“I think we should go to the police,” Rolanda said.
“And tell them what?” Alan asked. “Do you think they’re going to believe what we have to tell them?”
“Maybe not all of it,” Rolanda argued. “But the kidnapping is real, isn’t it?”
Alan shook his head. “They’re just as liable to throw me in jail this time. Or have us all committed for psychological evaluation. And then what happens to Isabelle?”
“He’s right,” Marisa said. “The least we can do is help her first. We can work everything else out later.”
“I can’t be party to it,” Rolanda told them. “I’m sorry. I can’t condone any kind of vigilantism. It doesn’t solve anything—not in the long run.”
Alan sighed. “That’s okay. I understand. But this is my friend we’re talking about and I’m not going to take the chance of her being hurt because I wasn’t willing to step into the line of fire.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Rolanda said. “I just can’t be party to it myself”
“Will you give us some time before you go to the police?”
Rolanda nodded. “But if I don’t hear from you within a few hours, in all good conscience I have to talk to them—even if they will think I’m crazy.” Alan stood up. “Then we don’t have any time to lose,”
he said. “Marisa?” This time there was no hesitation upon her part. “I’m with you,” she said. Cosette scrambled to her feet. “You’re really going to help?”
When they both nodded, she clapped her hands together.
“Wait’ll John sees this,” she said. “He thought you wouldn’t even care.”
“A few hours—that’s all I can give you,” Rolanda called after them as they set off.
Alan looked over his shoulder and gave her a wave. He knew that Rolanda had been the voice of reason in the discussion just past. This was a job for the police. But they’d stepped past logic into a world that looked exactly like their own except all the rules were changed. In this world it seemed better to trust instinct, and his instinct told him that they had very little time to lose.
“Is it far?” he asked Cosette.
The wild girl shook her head and began to walk more quickly. Alan took Marisa’s hand and they hurried after her.
“Thanks,” he said. “You know, for coming and everything.”
“I would have been more disappointed in you if you weren’t so loyal to your friends.”
Alan wasn’t so sure that it was a loyalty to Isabelle that was making him do this. The Isabelle he’d met out on the island was more of a stranger than someone he could say he knew very well. His real loyalty lay with the person Isabelle had once been. It lay with the ghosts of his memory that he’d never been able to set aside.
IV
Isabelle couldn’t look at John. She walked to the table and began to screw the tops back onto the tubes that she’d opened when she first started her painting. The enormity of what he was asking of her weighed her down. Rushkin was a monster, yes, but
He dies, or we do.
She arranged the closed paint tubes in a neat row, then picked up her brush from where she’d dropped it. The painting claimed her attention, as though the half-finished angel of vengeance was calling to her for completion. But that was avoiding the issue again, wasn’t it? Expecting someone else to always be cleaning up after her was as bad as pretending there had never been a problem in the first place.
The truth was, she’d made a life study of denial.
Picking up the can of turpentine, she splashed some of the clear liquid into a glass jar and then put her brush into it. She swished the brush around in the glass, watching the paint swirl into the turpentine with a fascinated concentration that was completely at odds with the action.
“Isabelle,” John said softly.
She was unable to face him. The quiet understanding in his voice was harder to take than anger would have been. Anger she could have understood. His compassion was unbearable.
Her gaze drifted back to her painting. She shouldn’t be rendering an angel of vengeance. She should be taking on the role herself.
“I get so confused,” she said. “How much of what Rushkin told me is real and how much a lie? He said you’re not real.” She turned to look at John. “He said that I could only make you real by giving you a piece of myself.”
John considered that for a long moment. “Maybe we already are real in the sense that you mean,” he said finally. “Maybe we always have been because you gave us your unconditional love. Those of us that Rushkin brought across were denied that love and that’s probably why they’re so hungry. They need what he can never give them,
what you gave us freely without ever thinking about it.”
“And the others who survived,” Isabelle asked. “Do you think they feel the same way? They’ve never really talked to me about it and for the past few years they’ve all been avoiding me—even those I thought were my friends.”
John shrugged. “Cosette’s desperate to have a red crow beat its wings inside her. That’s what she thinks she needs to be real.”
“A red crow?”
“Blood and dreams.”
“Is that what it takes to be real?” Isabelle asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.” John nodded. “Or are we only different?”
Isabelle sighed. “But I still don’t think I could kill Rushkin,” she said. “Maybe if he came at me with a knife or something, but not in cold blood. I’m sorry, John. I don’t have what it takes.”
“Do this much for me at least,” he said. “Come away from this place. Make your decision while you’re not directly under Rushkin’s influence.”
Isabelle glanced at the open door behind him. “You mean we can just walk out of here?”
“Rushkin’s banking on your not being able to leave—not because he won’t let you, but because he doesn’t want you to. It comes from the same arrogance that insists you’ll keep on bringing us across to feed him. You tell him you won’t, but—” Isabelle’s gaze followed his as it tracked to her uncompleted painting. “—but just a few moments ago he was boasting to me that in the end, he always wins.”
Isabelle shook her head. “Not this time.” She walked over to the easel and took her painting down.
“This time I’m taking charge.”
“And what will you do,” a familiar voice asked from behind John, “now that you’re ‘in charge’?”
They both turned to see Rushkin leaning weakly against the wall outside in the hall. In one hand he held what appeared to be some artist’s juvenile work, an awkward painting lacking depth of field or any sense of composition of light values. In the other he held a knife, the tip of which rested against the top of the canvas. Isabelle glanced at John to find that his color had gone ashen. Rushkin was smiling at John’s reaction.
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