What They Call Sin

by Philippa Grey-Gerou

  And here it was. Julian's promotion seemed to have done the trick. There were almost a hundred and fifty people in the gallery already, and the opening was less than an hour old. Julian had gone all out and even hired a caterer for the event, so handsome young men and women in black and white wove expertly in and out of the crowd with trays of hors d'oeuvres and wineglasses and pleasant smiles for the guests.

  Lindy was too nervous to eat, so she let the trays move past, clutching at her untouched wine.

  "You need to go mingle,” Julian spoke softly from behind her. “They will be more interested in the art if they know the artist."

  She looked up at him anxiously. “I know. I'm just not very good at small talk. What is there about me that anyone would be interested in?"

  "Tonight? Your art. They want to know the stories behind the pictures, Lindy. Go tell them.” And he gave her a gentle push in the right direction.

  Julian had done a brief speech and introduction as the reception began, so many of the guests recognized her and drew her in to ask questions or comment on the work. Slowly she found her confidence growing and began to enjoy the conversations.

  She ran into her friends everywhere she turned. Sarah was minding the door, greeting the arrivals with brochures and answering questions. She grinned and threw Lindy a quick thumbs up before going back to her duties.

  Timothy was doing a credible job of mixing, but Cara was interested in only one thing. She camped herself next to the costume portrait and cornered anyone who came near. “Aren't they beautiful? They are mine, you know. Lindy did a wonderful job capturing them, but then she had good material to work from, don't you think?"

  Julian and Dan seemed to hit it off, because Lindy often saw them in conversation, the two men scanning the crowd critically, one or the other pointing or gesturing questioningly. She presumed they were comparing the jobs of representing artists versus performers. They seemed to handle the talent the same way. When Dan would stop to talk to her, it was always the same questions Julian asked her. How was she holding up? Did she need anything? Did she have any concerns? Lindy smiled and shook her head, and Dan went back to working the room.

  Jade didn't ask. She just appeared magically to replace Lindy's wineglass with cold water, making sure Lindy drank some before commenting, “I think it's going really well, don't you?"

  Lindy nodded. “There are just so many people!"

  "But that's a good thing. No matter how much attention Julian gets for you, it's going to be word of mouth that gets you noticed.” She glanced down. “Are you regretting those shoes yet?"

  Lindy rested her foot on one narrow stiletto and rotated it back and forth, letting the silver and crystal medallion hanging from the ankle strap tickle back and forth over the top of her foot. “A bit,” she conceded ruefully. “But they're so pretty!"

  "Well, I have sneakers in my bag for you when you give up suffering for your art."

  "You're too good to me.” Lindy felt a pang of guilt. “You've been a better friend than I've deserved. It's hard for me to talk about the things that have happened in my life, but I owe you more than that. I should be more open with you."

  "Lindy, it's understandable. You've had some pretty crucial stuff in your life lately..."

  "Before that.” She turned her eyes aside regretfully.

  Jade laid a hand on her arm. “Don't. You did what you thought you needed to at the time. You can't second-guess yourself now. It won't change the past. If it makes you feel better, we'll get together next week for a nice long lunch and you can spill your guts. In the meantime, forget about it and enjoy your night. You've earned it."

  Lindy threw her arms around Jade and hugged her fiercely.

  Kathleen made an entrance as only Kathleen could. She blew in like a hurricane, greeting everyone she knew loudly as she made a beeline for Lindy.

  "I'm sorry I've been out of touch,” she apologized, holding Lindy's hands as they greeted each other. “I've been in Europe on a buying trip since the beginning of May. And you were busy while I was gone!"

  "I was worried you were avoiding me.” Lindy squeezed Kath's carefully manicured hands gently. “I didn't know what he was doing, Kath. I'm just so..."

  "Don't you dare apologize for him, Lindy. He's a sucking bastard, and you've wasted enough time and energy on him. Just please, please tell me the affidavit was useful?"

  Lindy outlined the details of the divorce agreement and the evidence that had wrung it out of Gabriel.

  Kathleen was incensed. “I can't believe he'd lump me in with the likes of Leah York. She's just so ... common!” She let the indignation rage for a moment, then shook it off. “But anyway. All's well, yadda yadda. And now you're free to pursue greener pastures. Speaking of which,” she moved in closer. “Have you heard anything from the other one?"

  Lindy flushed and shook her head. “He's gone, Kath. Out of my life. I've moved on."

  "You sure about that? Because he still seems pretty present to me.” She indicated the long row of images of Rogue lining two walls toward the back of the gallery. “And let me be the first to thank you for showing that he looks even better out of his clothes."

  "Kathleen,” she chided. “He stirred up a lot of strong emotions. The paintings were too good not to include."

  "They are good,” Kath had to agree. “I think I'm going to go enjoy a closer look."

  Diana offered her a safe harbor. When it got too much, when things just started to overwhelm Lindy, Diana was there to draw her away for a few moments of quiet, gentle words of encouragement and a chance to just draw a deep breath.

  "I don't understand any of this,” Lindy confessed. “I'm afraid I'm going to close my eyes and it will all disappear."

  "It won't, Lindy.” Diana rubbed her shoulder comfortingly. “You've just gotten all the negative things out of your life, and good things are rushing to fill the void. Nature abhors a vacuum."

  "You make it sound so magical."

  "Life is magic, Lindy. That's why it's called a miracle."

  Lindy was about to reply when she heard Kathleen's voice raised in fury from the rear of the gallery. “You son of a bitch!"

  Their eyes widened and as one they turned to race towards the disturbance.

  "How dare you!"

  Julian and Dan were restraining Kath as gentlemanly as possible, but that didn't keep her from shouting invectives.

  "After what you put her through, you dare to show up here?"

  Lindy's heart sank into her stomach. She couldn't believe Gabriel would come here tonight to ruin this for her. She drew a deep breath and turned to face her husband.

  Electric blue eyes arrested her.

  "'Lo, Lindy,” Rogue said softly.

  Chapter 47

  He couldn't have stayed away from her show if he'd wanted to.

  Not that the thought ever crossed his mind.

  He'd been back in New York six weeks. He hadn't staked out her studio. He hadn't tried to find out where she worked. He hadn't so much as looked up her phone number.

  But the postcard in his mailbox was his undoing, all his restraint crumbling away to dust in the face of it.

  He knew it was her work the moment he saw it. Her style had matured in the time he had been gone, but it was so clearly her. He was relieved to see she still had enough joy in her to create such a playful image, and touched to see some of the elements they had talked about in their brief time together were now present. Even in this pale reproduction, he could see detail of muscles and intent of movement she hadn't incorporated before.

  So now he stood across from the front of Yggdrasil, trying to decide his next move. The place was crowded, so he should have no problem blending in once he got inside.

  First he had to get past the guardian at the gate.

  He stepped out of the shadows and waited to be seen. Sarah noticed him almost immediately, her face lighting up. It instantly dimmed again as she realized where they were and for whom. He nodded to acknowledge
her concerns, then crooked his finger to call her out to him. With a quick glance around, she conceded.

  She hugged him quickly before saying sternly, “You shouldn't be here, Rogue."

  "I had to. I had to see. It. The art."

  "Uh-huh. And not her?"

  "Not her. I don't plan on her even knowin’ I was here."

  "Rogue, you do know that you and plans are contradictory terms, yeah?"

  "You gonna help me or what?"

  She sighed. “Yes, I'll help. Just keep your head down and your mouth shut. And keep an eye on her. She's mingling, moving around. You're going to have to always know where she's at."

  "I will, don't worry."

  She stopped him at the door. “I'm trusting you, Rogue. Don't screw this up."

  She went in and peeked around before waving him in. “She's halfway back on the right."

  He scanned the area quickly before spotting the auburn head amongst the crowd. “Got her. Thanks, Bit."

  He slipped into a cluster of half a dozen other patrons slowly wending their way through the collection. Lindy had apparently been prolific in the months he had been gone, because the exhibit appeared to take up the entire gallery. Each section of the gallery held about a dozen paintings broken up by pages out of her sketchbook framed simply and hung as accents to the more detailed paintings.

  The first section held the Atalanta painting along with a number of others that she seemed to have found inspiration for in the world around her. Most intriguing was an enormous canvas, velvety black and speckled with stars. In the center, dozens of men and women gathered in a circle, hands held as they danced. Each carried with them a sheen of prismatic energy that flowed and tangled with that of the next and the next and the next, spiraling in to create a vortex of rainbow power that rose up in the center, illuminating the joyous faces in the circle. Diana must have taken Lindy to a ritual, and Lindy had obviously found it inspirational. More new experiences.

  As he moved back through the gallery, he began to find familiar faces among the canvases. Sidney knelt before him in one, dressed in worn and rusted chain mail armor as he leaned against the hilt of a sword. His face looked worn and tired but triumphant. Behind him, the green and iridescent corpse of a dragon lay, or at least the small part of its body which would fit on the canvas. Lindy had managed to imply the creature's size and appearance with only a small section of its body. A woman's hand, possibly Lindy's own, rested on Sidney’ shoulder in gratitude, her blue silk token drifting along his arm. Rogue smiled. It suited Sidney. He had an enormous chivalry complex.

  Further along was a painting he recognized. And a woman he didn't.

  The painting was the one Lindy had started in his hotel room, of the children dressed for Halloween. Her final execution of it was everything she had told him she wanted and more. The wonder on their faces was enough to make even the most hardened cynic soft hearted. Clustered above and around them were the faces of dozens of spirit children, each worked in different translucent colors but all with similar expressions of surprise and delight.

  The over-dyed blonde woman captured his attention. “Those are my children. Aren't they beautiful?"

  "Um.” He was a bit thrown by her directness. “Yes, quite."

  "I think Lindy did a great job with them, but then...” she paused, looking at him hard. “Do I know you?"

  He stepped back away from her. “No, I'm certain I'd remember meeting you."

  "Are you sure? You look so familiar..."

  "Car.” He was rescued by a stocky brunet who came and wrapped his arm around the woman. “The nice man doesn't need to hear all the details about our kids. He's here to look at all of the pictures."

  "It's alright,” Rogue said, feeling a touch of envy at their easy intimacy. “They are lovely kids."

  She looked surprised and gratified as her husband drew her away.

  Rogue loved the painting of Sarah. Lindy had turned the anachronism around in this one, making Sarah the piece out of time. Dressed like a Greek muse, her hair piled softly on her head, she stood in the middle of her sculpting studio. Sunlight shone in the windows, revealing the cars in the street and the buildings across the way. All the clutter of a modern sculpting studio, hammers, chisels, drills, files, all lay scattered around her. But she simply stood before the half carved woman crouched before her and swept away the remnants of rough stone with one hand to reveal the rest of the creation's leg, offering the other hand as though to help the statue to its newly exposed feet. The statue was the one from Sarah's show, come to awareness and life under her hands.

  The first portrait of himself pierced his soul.

  It was the angelic painting she had penciled that first day in the studio. In his moment of revelation. Did she know that? Did she know that was the moment? She couldn't have, and that made the transformation of the sketch even more agonizing.

  No longer did the angel sleep peacefully. Instead he lay on a bier of stone, flames and jagged rock rising all around. The elegant wings were perfect no more. Iridescent crow's wings sprung from his shoulders, one twisted and broken to flop uselessly on the stone, the other a bloody stump, mangled feathers dangling from the matted remains. His eyes were no longer closed in rest. They were open, ice blue and burning with rage, a rage that was clear in every line of his face. She had captured his own expression perfectly, Rogue knew. But he couldn't for the life of him remember when she had seen him that angry. The figure in the painting was bloody and beaten, a shattered sword in pieces on the rocks around him. But Rogue could tell by the tension he saw in the body, by the slight flex of the wrist that this creature had not surrendered. Lucifer may have been cast out of heaven, but he was prepared to fight and claw his way back, damning all those who stood in his way.

  Rogue didn't think he had ever been demonized quite so effectively.

  The stained glass window picture had changed as well. The angel in the glass now offered judgment instead of comfort, its wings unfurled and a flaming sword in its hands, blocking the entrance to Eden. The crouched figure seated in the window now hung his head in shame instead of sorrow. Was she reading into him some shred of real feeling, that she would credit him with having remorse? Or was she projecting her own wishes onto him? He couldn't tell. But he could hope.

  Also giving him hope was the watercolor diptych of the two of them that he had first seen in her portfolio. She hadn't done the oil version she had talked about, but neither had she made any changes to the originals aside from framing them. Had she remembered her promise to save these for him?

  But these pictures marked the transition from images of him to images of her. He scanned the row and saw that in the eight self-portraits on display, she represented herself as nude in every one of them. Her shyness, her modesty seemed gone. He hoped rather than believed that it was due to greater confidence and not to a sense of violation.

  He was fascinated by one in which the viewer saw only the back of Lindy's head, hair caught up in a loose ponytail. She held two mirrors before her. The one to the right reflected her much as he had seen her the second time, at the United Way fundraiser. Her hair was tightly coiffed, her make-up elaborate and perfect, her neckline demure and offset with a simple strand of pearls, looking every bit the proper Manhattan socialite wife. In the other she looked as he had seen her, as he had made her look, so many times after, her chin up, face flushed, lips swollen and red, her hair in wild disarray. Just looking at it made him hard. She didn't look at the left-hand mirror, staring intently at the one on the right. But her body leaned toward the left, and that hand was raised just a bit higher, just a bit closer. What she wanted to be but knew she shouldn't.

  In another she stood bare, wrapped into a suited man's arms, leaning back against his chest. But something about those arms wasn't quite right, wasn't in balance. It took him a minute to recognize Gabriel's Stanford Law ring on the right hand and Rogue's own silver bracelet on the left. The he realized the proportions were off, intentionally. The
left arm was more slender, with a more delicate hand and long tapered fingers. Rogue's arm, his hand, his fingers. The other was meatier, more muscled, the fingers shorter and thicker. Gabriel's fingers. The man was both of them, holding her trapped. Her own hands curled up around his arms and her head tipped back to lean against his chest. She looked so vulnerable in her nakedness against the armor of his clothing. Rogue couldn't tell if she was holding on or trying to pull away, if she was in ecstasy or anguish. It was devastating.

  But not as powerful as the next painting.

  He recognized the setting instantly. It was the garden at the Briarwood Country Club. The scene of their second encounter. She was even dressed the same, wearing nothing but the black silk stockings he had so loved the feel of. Her head was thrown back in pleasure, her mouth open, her bare breasts rising, her hair flowing around her head as though caught in a breeze. But she was suspended, crucified on nothing, her arms outstretched, her ankles locked together as though tied. The garden around her was all dead and withered and rotting, everything washed out in shades of cold blue. This was all about shame, regret and guilt. And he felt it. Felt hers and felt his. Felt it so strongly he could taste it.

  He wanted to reach out and touch her. The painting should feel warm, like she had that night. But it wouldn't.

  "Like what you see?” a sharp voice said quietly over his shoulder.

  He turned with a jerk to look into the cold, dark eyes of Kathleen Fallon.

  "Depends on whether you're talkin’ technically or emotionally, doesn't it?"

  "What, it doesn't give you a sense of pride to have been such a source of inspiration?"

  "You think I liked causing her that much pain?"

  "Have you apologized? Tried to make it up to her?"

  "She doesn't need to hear from me. She's better off."

  Kath studied him critically. “You know, I never would have pegged you for a coward."

  "Hey..."

  "So let me help.” She backed up two steps. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed at the top of her voice.