“I ... I know you,” Rolanda said, as recognition finally dawned on her. “You’re the reading woman from the other painting.”
The stranger smiled. “Indeed. And from your greeting I take it you’ve already met Cosette.”
“That’s who I thought you were.”
Rolanda couldn’t stop herself from staring at the woman. She’d accepted the existence of numena, been witness to their ability to appear and disappear at will, but she still wasn’t quite used to having a conversation with someone who had just stepped out of a painting. She didn’t think she ever would.
“Where is Cosette?” the woman asked.
Rolanda gave her an apologetic shrug. She had the sudden uncomfortable sensation of having been entrusted with someone’s child and then simply letting her run off, unattended.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “She went off with Alan and Marisa—do you know them?”
“I’ve ... heard a great deal concerning Alan.”
“And I guess Marisa’s his girlfriend.”
The woman smiled. “That must have been a grave disappointment for Cosette. She was quite taken with him.”
“So I noticed.”
“And where did they go?”
“Ah ...” Rolanda cleared her throat, her uneasiness returning. “They went off to deal with Rushkin.
He’s—”
“I know who he is all too well.” The woman sighed. “And she promised me she’d be careful.”
“I tried to stop them,” Rolanda began.
The woman raised a hand to forestall an explanation. “You’re not to blame. Cosette only listens to reason when it suits her.” She shook her head and gave Rolanda a self-deprecating smile. “I suppose I’m far more protective of her than I should be. While she looks like a child, I don’t doubt she’s as old as you and certainly capable of accepting responsibility for her actions.”
“But still,” Rolanda said.
“But still,” the woman agreed. “I can’t help but worry. Especially at a time such as this.”
“If I can help ... ?”
The woman glanced back toward the storeroom. “You seem to have already done what I came to do. John sent word that we should all guard our own gateways because the dark man’s creatures were abroad again, hunting us.”
“The dark man? You mean Rushkin?”
“I refuse to allow him the privilege of a name,” the woman said bitterly. “Monsters such as he forgo that right through their actions.”
A monster, Rolanda thought. And she’d just let the others go off to confront him. Why hadn’t she gone with them and helped? But if she had gone with them, Rushkin’s numena would have gotten away with stealing the paintings and then where would Cosette and the reading woman be?
“And John?” the woman asked. “Do you know his whereabouts?”
Rolanda shook her head. “I never got the chance to meet him. He went ahead of the others—after Rushkin. Hopefully they caught up with him.”
An odd sound came from the storeroom—a soft whufting cough of air being displaced. As the two women turned to look, Rolanda’s grip tightened on the baseball bat she was still holding at her side. But this time it was Cosette who had materialized there in the dark. She stood in front of her painting for a long moment, then slowly turned to face them.
“John’s dead,” she said as she walked out into the light.
She looked different from the last time Rolanda had seen her. Her eyes were puffy and rimmed with red from crying, but the sadness that had brought on the tears had since been replaced with a grimness that stole away all the lightheartedness in her features that had made her so immediately engaging.
“Rushkin killed him,” Cosette went on, “and Isabelle’s the next to die.”
“He’s going to kill Isabelle?” the reading woman asked, shocked.
“No.” Cosette explained how they’d all been trapped in the makeshift studio Rushkin had put together for Isabelle. “She’s going to kill herself. It’s the only way she thinks she can stop Rushkin.”
“We have to stop her,” Rolanda said, but Cosette only shrugged. “It’s her choice, isn’t it?” she said.
“How can you be so callous?” Rolanda demanded of her. “If it weren’t for Isabelle, you wouldn’t even exist.”
“That’s not exactly such a blessing,” Cosette said. “We didn’t ask to be born. We didn’t ask to be different.”
It felt so odd to Rolanda to hear those familiar complaints in this situation. She was far more used to them coming from the children she saw in her office upstairs. The runaways who felt they owed nothing to anyone for having been brought into a world they hated, who struggled to make do with an existence that offered them only hardship and pain. The immigrant and black children who battled the double grievance of those same joyless homes coupled with the racism directed at them by their peers and the rest of society.
“I’m sure Isabelle never meant to make you unhappy,” she said.
“She never thought of us at all. All she wanted to do was to forget we ever existed. You know what she said to me?” she added, turning to the other numena. “That we’ll never have red crows or dreams, because all we get is the real we have now.”
“Is what we have such a bad thing?” the woman asked.
“Hunted by Rushkin and his creatures?”
“But was that ever Isabelle’s doing?”
Cosette hesitated. Rolanda could see that she didn’t want to deal with the logic of it, but she had no choice—not under the steady gaze of her companion’s solemn-grey eyes.
“No,” she said, her voice pitched low.
Some of the harshness left her features, making her look younger again. Almost fragile. Rolanda knew exactly what the other woman had meant about wanting to protect her. At that moment she wanted to enfold Cosette in a shielding embrace and dare the world to do its worst, because it’d have to go through her first to get at her. But she knew better than to try.
“Will you take me to Isabelle?” she asked instead.
“We’ll be too late.”
“But we could still try.”
Cosette nodded. “Except, they told me to come back to guard the paintings.”
“I will guard the paintings,” the reading woman said.
“His creatures are really scary,” Cosette said, wavering.
“I can call some people to stay with you,” Rolanda told the woman. Then she reached out her hand to Cosette. “Come on. Just show me where Isabelle and the others are. I won’t ask you to go back inside with me.”
Cosette hesitated for a long moment, then allowed herself to be led upstairs. The other numena locked the door to the cellar and pocketed the key before following them up.
“I know some guys in the projects,” Rolanda said. “They’re gang members, but they owe me. All we’ll need is a couple of them to deal with that pair who came by here earlier.”
“Whatever you think is best,” the reading woman said.
It took three calls before Rolanda could get through to the boys she was looking for. They had all found a haven through the Foundation at one point or another in their young lives and were eager to repay the favor.
“They’ll be fifteen minutes,” she said after she’d cradled the receiver. “Go,” the older numena told her. “I can wait on my own until they arrive.”
“But—”
“You waste precious time.”
Rolanda studied her for a moment, then nodded. She pulled a twenty out of her pocket.
“They’re coming in a cab,” she said as she handed the money to the reading woman, “but they won’t be able to pay the driver. This should cover it.”
“I will deal with whatever arises,” the reading woman said.
“Right.” Rolanda gave Cosette a quick glance. She looked terrible. “You ready?”
When Cosette nodded, Rolanda led the way to the front door. Opening it, she found yet another half-familiar stranger standing
there on the porch. In the poor light he seemed to loom up taller than his bulky six-two, one hand raised, reaching for the doorbell. He glanced down at the baseball bat that Rolanda was holding and took a step back from her.
“I’m reaching for my ID,” he said as his hand went for the inner pocket of his sports jacket.
He brought out a small billfold and flipped it open so that she could see his badge and identification.
“Detective Roger Davis, NPD,” he said slowly. “We met one of the times you brought some of your kids down to the precinct for a tour.”
“I remember,” Rolanda said.
“I want to ask you a few questions about this afternoon’s attempted robbery—in particular, what you know about the Native American with the ponytail who was involved.”
“He thinks Bitterweed’s John,” Cosette said.
The detective had misleadingly placid features. Rolanda remembered thinking when she first met him on that precinct tour how he seemed to be just a big easygoing guy. Then she’d looked into his eyes and realized that he didn’t miss a thing. That penetrating gaze that had so surprised her was now focused on Cosette.
“You know who I’m talking about,” he said, making a statement of what could have been a question.
Cosette shrugged. “It wasn’t John’s fault they looked the same, but he was getting blamed for what Bitterweed did.” She turned her attention away from the detective to look at Rolanda. “It was Bitterweed who killed Kathy’s mother—not John. And certainly not Alan.”
“You’re saying that we’re dealing with two men here and they look exactly the same?” Davis asked.
Cosette gave him a tired nod.
“One named Bitterweed and one named John?”
“John’s dead,” Cosette said in a voice drained of expression. “As for Bitterweed, if you hang around here long enough, he’ll be—”
She broke off suddenly, features going ashen. Behind them, Rolanda heard the reading woman gasp.
“What is it?” Rolanda asked, looking from Cosette to the older numena. “What’s happened?”
“She ... she did it,” Cosette said softly. “She really did it ...”
They were talking about Isabelle, Rolanda realized. Through their connection to the artist, they’d just felt her die. Rolanda thought she was going to be sick.
“You mind telling me what’s going on here?” the detective asked.
Rolanda straightened up, determined not to fall apart. Someone had to hold things together because there were still other lives at stake. Ignoring Davis, she asked the reading woman, “And the others? Alan and Marisa?”
“There’s no way to tell. We’ve no connection to them as we ... as we had with Isabelle.”
“Did you drive over?” Rolanda asked the detective.
“Sure,” he replied, pointed to the unmarked sedan that stood at the curb. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”
“We’ll tell you in the car. Right now we need to get to a tenement in the Tombs before somebody else dies.”
“Look, lady—”
Rolanda gave him a hard glare. “I don’t have time to argue with you. If you want to help, give us a lift. Otherwise, just stay out of our way.”
She took Cosette’s hand and hurried down the walk toward his car without waiting to see if he’d follow. Davis hesitated for a long moment before he sighed and joined them.
“This better be good,” he said as he started up the car. “The only reason I’m going along with you is because I know you folks are straight shooters, but if you’re dicking me around we’re going to be playing twenty questions down at the precinct. Take that as a serious promise, lady.”
“My name’s Rolanda.”
“Whatever.”
He pulled away from the curb, putting his cherry light on the dash with his free hand. As he reached for the siren’s switch, Rolanda caught his hand. “No sirens,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll scare them away.”
He pulled free of her grip. “Fine. You mind giving me an address so I can call it in?”
“We don’t have an address.”
The car slowed. “Lady,” he began, then started over at the sharp look she gave him. “Look, Rolanda. If you can’t trust me with the address, why the hell are you having me tag along?”
“We don’t know the address,” Rolanda said. “Cosette can tell us how to get there, but she hasn’t got a street name or number.”
Davis glanced at the pale-faced girl who sat between them.
“Great.”
He put his foot on the accelerator and the car picked up speed again, heading north for the no-man’s-land of the Tombs.
“Turn right here,” Cosette said.
Davis nodded and followed her direction. Once they were out of the traffic and driving down the empty, rubble-strewn streets of the Tombs, he slowed down and turned off the cherry light.
“Left,” Cosette said.
“I’ve got to call this in,” Davis told Rolanda.
When she nodded, he unhooked the mike from its holder, but before he activated it, he studied the graffitied walls and darkened streets that lay beyond the windshield. There were no street signs. There was no indication that anyone had lived here for decades. All he could see were derelict buildings and over-grown lots.
“I haven’t a goddamn clue where we are,” he said.
“Left here,” Cosette told him.
After he made the turn, he replaced the mike on its holder. He had to swing around a couple of abandoned cars, weave around a rotting mattress that lay in the middle of the street, and then the way was relatively clear for a few more blocks. Ahead of them, at the far end of the block, the car’s headlights caught the rusting bulk of a city bus, its sides festooned with graffiti.
“We’re almost there,” Cosette said.
Davis nodded. “Almost where?” he tried.
“This is what we know,” Rolanda said as he pulled up in front of the abandoned bus and she began to explain.
XI
The dark, claustrophobic space in which John had unaccountably found himself made a wild unreasoning fear flare up inside him. With an effort he worked to suppress it. There was too much at stake to panic. He took a slow, steadying breath, then another.
He had meant what he’d said just before he’d lunged for Rushkin. He wouldn’t allow another to die in his place. He would prefer oblivion to walking in the same world as the monster. But most of all he’d prefer to continue the existence Isabelle had given him and instead, rid the world of Rushkin.
But the latter wasn’t an option since he’d discovered that he couldn’t physically harm Rushkin. So when John had leapt forward, it wasn’t to attack Rushkin. He’d had the painting in mind, Isabelle’s The Spirit Is Strong, his gateway. If he could reach it before Rushkin pierced it with his knife, John knew he could wrest the painting from the monster’s grip. He was capable of that much. It would be up to Isabelle to stop Rushkin for good.
Halfway to Rushkin he’d felt a familiar sensation—that faint buzz of something like static electricity heralding the instantaneous passage from wherever he was to his source painting. And then he’d vanished from Rushkin’s makeshift studio in the Tombs. He’d felt an endless moment of bewildering vertigo as he hovered in the between place through which he had to pass before his journey could be completed. A long confusing moment during which there was no up and no down, no before or behind, no direction whatsoever, only an endless flux of possibilities. He had expected to reappear directly in front of Rushkin, prepared to grab the painting away from the monster when he did, but the between hadn’t functioned as it normally should have. Instead of being returned to the tenement studio where Rushkin was holding his gateway painting, John now found himself floundering about in an enclosed dark space, unidentified objects pressing against him from every side.
Standing absolutely still, he reached out with an exploring hand to find that what crowded him were stacks of paintings. The darkn
ess, he realized after a moment, wasn’t complete either. A body length away he could see a crack of light, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see a course through the paintings.
John worked his way carefully toward the light, fingers finding a doorknob. It turned readily under his hand, the door opening with a sharp creak. A moment later he was stepping out into the large bedroom of Barbara Nichols’s apartment that doubled as her studio. Across the room from where he stood, Barb was at her easel. She was half-turned to look at him, one hand upraised and held against her breast, her eyes startled wide with surprise.
“This ... this shouldn’t be possible,” John said slowly.
Barb lowered her hand, then wiped it on her jeans, leaving behind a smear of bright red pastel pigment. “God, you gave me a fright,” she said.
“I ...” John shook his head, trying to work out what exactly had gone wrong. “I don’t understand.
Rushkin’s got my painting. When I reached for it, I shouldn’t have come here.”
“I knew that guy wasn’t you.”
“What guy?”
“The one who looked just like you who came for your painting a few days ago.
Bitterweed, John thought. His doppelganger had been here before him. “But—?”
“I didn’t give it to him,” Barb told him. She walked over to where he stood and led him back toward the battered chesterfield that was set kitty-corner between a bay window and a bookshelf stuffed to overflowing with books and papers. “You look terrible,” she added. “You better sit down before you fall down.”
John allowed her to steer him to a seat. While he sat there, she left the room, coming back moments later with a teapot and a mug.
“I think it’s still sort of warm,” she said, pouring him a mugful of tea.
She fetched her own mug from its precarious position on top of the wooden box holding her pastels and filled it as well. As she returned to sit with him, John cupped his mug with both hands. The mint tea was only lukewarm, but it was still comforting to have something to hold. As was the act of drinking the warm liquid. It made him feel more human.
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