by Clayton Wood
Grandpa’s life depended on it.
Chapter 39
Simon stepped into the Collector’s office, walking up to the Collector’s large desk. He’d been called in only moments before, having waited in the waiting room with Miss Savage for over a half-hour. The Doppelganger had been forced to wait all the way back in his studio, and Simon could feel the Familiar pacing. But he hardly noticed, his eyes on the Collector.
It took every ounce of self-discipline for him to keep his expression neutral.
The right side of the man’s face had aged terribly, his hair white and thin, his skin thin and wrinkled. It was as if half of him were a hundred years old. Even the man’s right eye was glazed over, so much so that Simon suspected he couldn’t even see out of it.
“Hello Simon,” the Collector greeted.
“Hello sir,” Simon replied automatically, bowing his head.
“I have some news for you,” the Collector announced, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the desk. He steepled his fingers. “Good and bad, I’m afraid.”
Simon waited.
“Your creation was a success,” the Collector declared. “It attacked Havenwood and badly wounded the White Dragon. Your dark army took down nearly every artist in Havenwood…and their paintings are now mine.”
“The bad news?” Simon asked.
“The White Dragon destroyed most of your creation,” the Collector answered. “A few dozen of the dark soldiers remain, but the rest are gone.”
Simon lowered his gaze, swallowing past a lump in his throat.
There was a long silence, and Simon lifted his gaze, staring at the Collector. The man was watching him silently, his hands still steepled.
“How does that make you feel, Simon?” he inquired.
Simon hesitated.
“I loved them,” was all he said. All he could say.
The Collector sighed, lowering his hands to his desk. He stood then, stepping around his desk and standing before Simon.
“Simon, do you trust me?”
Simon just stared at him.
“You can tell me the truth,” the Collector reassured.
Don’t tell him the truth, the Doppelganger warned.
“I want to,” Simon answered. Which was true enough.
“And I want to trust you,” the Collector replied. “I’m going to trust you. With something very important. Something I’ve never let anyone do before.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to paint me,” the Collector answered. He gestured at the right side of his face. “I want you to fix this.”
“Yes sir,” Simon replied. “What…happened?”
“A woman cursed me,” the Collector answered. “A Necromancer. Do you know what that is?”
Simon nodded. Necromancers were artists that walked two worlds, that of the living and that of the dead. They were the stuff of fairy tales, a threat used to scare kids into behaving. The Collector must have noticed his doubting look.
“They’re real, Necromancers,” he informed Simon. “And the one who cursed me was very powerful. I need you to undo her curse.”
“Okay,” Simon agreed. The Collector smiled.
“Good,” he replied. He stood then. “Let’s go to your studio.”
* * *
The Collector set a small mirror on the floor, then stood before the huge canvas Simon had used to create Legion, the beast that had attacked Havenwood, gazing at it. With the countless Doppelgangers drawn out of it, only a drab landscape remained. For the first time in a very long time, he felt a nervous energy within him.
He felt Simon staring at him, and glanced down to eye the boy. Simon had barely said anything during their trip across the castle. The boy’s shoulders were less rounded than before, his posture better than when they’d first met. But he was still so quiet. When he walked, his footsteps were barely audible.
As if he were terrified of being heard.
“It’s time,” the Collector stated, turning to Simon. He forced himself to keep his tone calm. Authoritative. Simon glanced up at him.
“Are you nervous?” the boy asked.
The Collector tried not to grimace. Simon was an incredibly sensitive boy, highly attuned to the emotional state of others.
A skill learned by necessity, he suspected.
“Yes,” the Collector confessed. There was no point in lying. Simon already knew the answer, and only the weak felt the need to lie.
“I’ll do a good job,” Simon promised. The Collector smiled.
“I trust you.”
And to his surprise, it was true. He trusted the boy implicitly, in a way he trusted only one other: Miss Savage. Simon was…pure. There was no duplicity about him. And despite his outer frailty, the boy had an inner strength that continually surprised the Collector. So much like the Collector when he’d been Simon’s age.
He trusts you, the Collector thought. And in that moment, he felt a sudden twinge of guilt, knowing that he was unworthy of that trust.
The Collector grimaced, looking down at the glove on his right hand.
Focus.
Slowly – carefully – he pulled it off, wincing at the pain there. This time he didn’t bother to hide the expression. Let Simon see that he was…human.
The Collector noticed Simon staring at his ancient hand, and resisted the urge to hide it at his side. Unbuttoning his black suit jacket, he folded it neatly, placing it on the floor beside him. He wore a simple black shirt underneath; this too he removed, revealing his bare chest and belly. The body of an ordinary man. Mere flesh and blood.
Exposed for what he really was.
He felt Simon’s eyes on him, and knew the boy was admiring his body. He allowed this, keeping his gaze on the canvas so as not to interrupt. Though he didn’t share Simon’s preferences, he understood the inevitability of the boy’s attraction. It was the boy’s truth, something he could not change. And therefore it deserved the Collector’s acceptance.
“Take your time, Simon,” he advised.
And then, before he could give himself enough time to change his mind, The Collector stepped forward, becoming one with the canvas.
And felt a hand grab his wrist, pulling him out immediately thereafter.
The Collector blinked, seeing Simon before him. The boy looked utterly exhausted, his eyes glassy and dark circles under his eyes.
“It’s done,” Simon notified him.
The Collector looked down at himself. At his right hand. It was a mirror-image of his left, the skin smooth and supple, the wrinkles and age spots gone. He flexed and extended his fingers, turning his hand over to gaze at his palm. No pain, no stiffness.
It was perfect.
He brought a hand up to his face, feeling the skin there. It too was smooth. Retrieving the mirror he’d set on the floor, he gazed into it. His face was as it’d been before being drained by that girl, his hair jet-black. Again, it was perfect.
He felt a wave of emotion, and grit his teeth, composing himself. Lowering the mirror, he turned to Simon.
“Well done, Simon,” he congratulated. “You’re the only one I trusted to do this for me.”
Simon broke out into a relieved smile, which he quickly suppressed, almost by reflex. The boy lowered his gaze to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” the Collector inquired. Simon hesitated, then shrugged his frail shoulders.
“No one ever…said something like that to me before.”
The Collector resisted the urge to talk, sensing that this was a critical moment for Simon. Now was the time to listen.
He waited, and Simon lifted his gaze to meet his.
“My mom died when I was born,” Simon confessed. “Because I was born. My dad…” He lowered his gaze again, his eyes moist. “He didn’t love who I was inside, so he tried to beat it out of me.
“My…mother left my father,” the Collector confessed. “My father raised me too. Like yours did.”
Simon looked up at him, his g
aze intense.
“Did your father…care?” he asked. The Collector sighed.
“He thought he did. But the only person he really cared about was himself.”
Simon frowned, considering this.
“My father never lied about how he felt about me,” he muttered.
The Collector said nothing, finding his gaze drawn to the scars on Simon’s arms. He glanced at the Doppelganger, the boy’s Familiar, always at Simon’s side. It stood there, its shoulders slumped, that brown bottle forever clutched in its hand. A beer bottle. He gazed at the fine cracks in the Doppelganger’s porcelain skin. Broken over and over, it somehow pulled itself back together each time. And each time it had to, it grew a little stronger.
A vision of the Glarg it’d killed came to him, its head beaten to a bloody pulp.
He felt a warm hand touch his, holding it gently.
The Collector resisted the urge to yank his hand out of the boy’s, surprised by the unexpected touch. Simon gazed up at him with a warm smile, his expression still guarded…but hopeful.
The Collector felt a sudden, powerful affection for the boy, and found himself smiling back.
A bolt of fear struck him then, and he recoiled from the sudden emotion, gently slipping his hand away from Simon’s after a long moment, so as not to offend the boy. He struggled to remember the last thing Simon had said.
“Your father was a fool,” he forced himself to say.
Simon’s smile broadened, and the Collector turned away, gazing up at the huge canvas before them. Mostly as a way to stop the boy from studying his expression…and to collect himself. The affection he’d felt had been unexpected, but not unreasonable. They had a lot in common, after all. But he couldn’t afford to feel that way toward Simon. Especially toward Simon.
Their relationship was built on a lie, after all.
You’re just like the man who made you, the Collector realized, a chill running through him. Lie after lie after lie.
The thought horrified him.
He glanced down at Simon, who was still smiling at him…and was struck with another burst of fear.
But what if his feelings for Simon weren’t a lie? What if they were real?
Remember the plan, he told himself.
He took a deep breath in, steeling himself. Then he turned to face Simon.
“You’re too good to be wasted here, Simon,” he declared.
Simon gave him a questioning look.
“You’ll be joining me tomorrow,” the Collector continued. “I have something very special I want to show you.”
“What’s that?”
“Castle Over,” the Collector answered.
Simon’s eyes widened, and he broke out into a grin.
“Castle Over?” he breathed. The Collector nodded.
“It’s time for your promotion,” he announced. “Congratulations Simon,” he added. “You earned it.”
Chapter 40
Bella stood before a large canvas propped on its easel in her studio, making the finishing touches to her latest sketch with a fine-tipped pencil. Then she set the pencil down, taking a few steps back and staring at her work.
It was a sketch of her dragon – the best version yet. But what really mattered, she knew, was the story around the dragon. And for that, she’d started with the few fragments of her past she’d remembered painting way back when she’d been lost in the book with Grandpa. The double-doors of the library at Blackthorne, fingers of mist crawling up their surface. And that mist obscuring a transition to the inside of the library, where the two cloaked, bone-scythe-wielding creatures levitated above the polished floor. Both flanking the Collector, who raised his silver sword, face twisted in rage. And the ghostly light pulling from his face and arm, converging on her mother’s amulet…embedded in the bony sternum of her dragon.
And protected within the embrace of those translucent wings, a shadowy silhouette of a small girl holding a paintbrush.
There were countless other details, of course. They’d come to her as if by magic as she’d sketched, a trickle of the Flow affecting her. It would grow much stronger once she painted, for the act of painting was when the real magic happened.
She glanced down at Goo, plopped on the floor to her left.
“What do you think, Goo?” she asked. Goo quivered quite violently. “Really?” she pressed. He quivered again in confirmation.
Bella frowned, grabbing the pencil from her easel and tapping her chin with its eraser.
“I still need to make it my Familiar,” she realized. “Which means I have to make her connected to me somehow.”
But how?
Sure, having her dragon protect her – and having her mother’s heart-shaped amulet – might be connection enough. But then again, maybe not. How to show a mental connection? A mental and emotional one?
She stopped tapping her chin with her pencil, looking down at the eraser.
Suddenly, she had an idea.
Stepping up to the drawing, she used her eraser to create a faint light around the silhouette of her head behind the dragon’s translucent wings. She extended the light, making it travel all the way up to encircle the dragon’s head.
“There,” she declared, setting the pencil down and crossing her arms. She glanced at Goo. “Think it’s ready?”
A lump protruded from Goo’s surface, nodding once.
“All right then,” she decided, grabbing a bunch of paint canisters and sliding them across the floor next to the easel. She began to mix paints onto her palette, glancing up at her sketch as did so. The canvas was huge, with far more detail than she’d ever attempted before. Doubt trickled in again, but she pushed it aside.
She had to forge ahead if she ever wanted to see Grandpa again.
“Just paint, huh?” she mumbled to herself. She took a deep breath in, squaring her shoulders and focusing on the canvas. “All right Bella, you can do this.”
And she refused to stop until she proved herself right.
* * *
“Wow,” Piper breathed, staring at the canvas.
Three days had passed since Bella started painting her dragon, spending day and night slaving over it. Her clothes were spattered with layer upon layer of paint, as were her hands. The few times she’d taken a break, she’d worked on other things. Healing Piper’s many characters came first, then creating some magical items she’d need on her journey to the Collector’s castle.
But none compared to the one they were standing before now.
She’d obsessed over this painting. Spent almost every waking minute thinking about it. Loved it. Hated it. Raged against it. She’d painted the Collector with dark, angry lines, and the white light drawn out of him with a sense of grim satisfaction. Painted Animus with softness and warmth mixed with somber grays.
And the dragon – her dragon – she’d painted with love. It’d given her goosebumps, seeing her creation slowly come to life. What had once been mere strokes of a pencil in her notebook, but so vibrant and alive in her mind, in her daydreams, was now before her in full, majestic color.
Its wings curled inward before it, and within them was a deep red glow. A glow of its heartstone, her mother’s broken heart. And silhouetted within was a hint of a girl. A girl with wild, curly hair. A ghostly light rose from the girl’s head, arcing to the dragon’s…while the girl crouched within the radiant warmth of its heart.
Bella stared at that silhouette, picturing her mother’s arms wrapped around her. The warmth and softness of her embrace. Not for the first time, she blinked away tears.
Ten years she’d been lost, adrift in a cruel, uncaring world with her Grandpa. With only her mother’s amulet to remind her of what she’d had before. Of what had been taken from her. Now she would carry a piece of her mother with her. A dragon with her mother’s heart.
Bella would never be alone again.
“Damn,” Piper murmured. He leaned in, his brown furrowing as he took in all of the details of the painting. While si
milar to her sketch in composition, in execution it had transformed greatly. Rich colors in the foreground contrasted sharply with deep shadows in the background. Indeed, her dragon was so vibrant that Bella half-expected it to leap out of the canvas all by itself.
“Right?” she replied, watching his expression. He must’ve realized his mouth was hanging open, because he snapped it shut, blinking and turning to her.
“This…” he stated, gesturing at the painting. “I didn’t know you could paint like this.”
“You like it?”
“Bella, this is…it’s not normal,” he informed her. She frowned at him. “Do you know what this is?”
“My Familiar.”
“No, it’s more than that,” he insisted. “I’ve seen a painting like this before, but only once. Kendra showed me it. A painting from one of the old masters. It was like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like this,” he repeated. “Like…it could almost come out of the painting without you.”
“Could it?”
“No,” Piper answered. “But it means the Flow was extremely strong while you were painting. There’s powerful magic here, Bella.”
Bella turned to the painting.
“I painted the story inside of me. One that mattered.”
Piper, for once, didn’t comment. She turned to face him.
“What’s it like for you?” she asked. “The Flow, I mean.”
“The same,” he admitted. “People think that acting is just pretending. Like you just pretend to be happy or sad, memorize some lines, and that’s it. But I don’t pretend when I act,” Piper continued. “When I act, I am my character. I feel what they feel. I live what they’ve lived. They’re as real to me as…” He gestured at her painting. “As that dragon is to you. And as Havenwood is to all of these people.”
“Huh.”
Art is art,” he declared. “We’re all storytellers. We just do it in different ways.” He smiled. “And it’s all magic.”
It made sense, of course. Magic, as Gideon had told her, loved stories. She smiled back at Piper, then eyed him silently for a while, until he squirmed.
