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.
“Look at this,” Marisa said, standing by the window seat.
She held up the painting of Paddyjack and Alan drew a sharp breath.
“That’s a character out of one of Kathy’s stories, isn’t it?” Rolanda said.
Alan nodded. He crossed the room and took the painting from Marisa. In the corner by Isabelle’s signature he found a date, 1974. So it was the original, not a copy.
“This shouldn’t exist,” he said.
Marisa gave him an odd look. “Why not?”
“It was destroyed in the fire. Almost all of her early work was destroyed except for the one I’ve got, some juvenilia and the paintings in the Foundation’s waiting room.”
“That must have been so horrible for her,” Rolanda said.
“It devastated her,” Alan said, “though she tried not to show it.” He shook his head. “All that astonishing work … gone, just like that.”
He pictured the one painting by Isabelle that he owned – a ten-by-sixteen oil pastel of a small angular, red-haired gamine that she’d called Annie Nin – and a thought came to him then. If Cosette really had been brought over through Isabelle’s painting The Wild Girl, then the subject of the painting he owned would be alive, too. Out there in the world somewhere. But the others, the others were all dead.
Destroyed in the fire.
“It must have killed her,” he said softly.
“Killed who?” Marisa asked.
But Rolanda was with him. “Isabelle,” she said. “The way she must have felt when the people who were born from her paintings all died in that fire.”
“No wonder the direction of her art changed so drastically,” Alan said. He stared down at the painting he held. “Except … what if they weren’t destroyed?”
“You just said that the fire took almost everything she’d ever done up to that point in her career,” Marisa said.
Alan nodded. “Including this painting. But it’s here, isn’t it?”
“Do you think she only pretended that they were destroyed in the fire?” Rolanda asked. “That she hid them so that she could keep them safe from harm?”
“I don’t know,” Alan replied.
But he remembered again how Isabelle had insisted on the condition that the originals of the art she did for Kathy’s book would remain in her possession at all times.
“She’d be in a lot of trouble with her insurance company, if that’s true,” Marisa said.
Alan nodded absently. He placed the painting back down in the window seat, setting it on top of the brown wrapping paper that it had been lying upon before Marisa picked it up. He noticed the envelope as he was straightening up. Before he knew what he was doing, he had the envelope in his hand and was studying the handwriting.
“What’s that?” Marisa asked.
“A letter from Kathy. I recognize the handwriting.”
“Wait a sec,” Marisa said as he started to open it. “I know I walked us in here, but that’s because I didn’t think she’d mind us waiting in her studio, you being old friends and all. But we should definitely draw the line at reading her mail.”
Alan agreed with her. Normally he would never have considered prying the way he was about to.
But the need to know what Kathy had written overtook him, eclipsing common courtesy. The compulsion had him going ahead and opening the envelope at the same time as he nodded in agreement to Marisa.
“It’s dated from just before she died,” he said. “It …” He continued to scan down the page, turned to the next one. “It’s her suicide note,” he said when he got to the end. “She mailed it to Isabelle instead of leaving it in her apartment.”
His chest was tight with the old pain of Kathy’s loss. The unfamiliar room suddenly seemed to be choked with ghosts. He gave Marisa an anguished look.
“Isabelle really knew all along that Kathy … that she killed herself. So why did she pretend otherwise?”
“I don’t understand,” Marisa said.
“The big fight we had at Kathy’s funeral. It was about how Kathy died. Isabelle was mad at me for not going to the hospital to see her … but Kathy was never in a hospital. She died of an overdose of sleeping pills in her own apartment and Isabelle was the one who found her on one of her visits to town. When she kept claiming that Kathy hadn’t killed herself, I thought it was because there was no note – you know how people want to deny that someone they cared about could have killed herself? But then it got crazy with all this talk about cancer and hospitalization and the radiation treatments not working …”
“I still don’t get it,” Marisa said. “Her suicide was reported in all the newspapers. And even the other night on the TV, they mentioned it when they ran the piece on how the injunction had been lifted.”
Alan nodded.
“So why would Isabelle try to convince you different?”
“That’s something I would love to know,” Alan said. “It’s gotten to the point now where I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Rolanda cleared her throat. “Maybe I should leave you two to hash this out with Isabelle.”
Jesus, Alan thought. What must she think of us? Barging into Isabelle’s studio and going through all of her stuff.
“I can come back some other time to talk to her,” Rolanda added.
Alan shook his head. “No. There’s something very strange going on here and what you told us about this Cosette girl is a part of it.” He paused to study her for a moment. “Don’t you want to know what it’s all about anymore?”
“Yes, of course. But this all seems so … personal. I can’t help but feel as though I’m intruding.”
Marisa nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. We should go, Alan.”
Alan knew they were both right, but he also knew he had to deal with the tangle of memories that rose up from the past every time he thought of Isabelle and Kathy. At the moment, the past lay so thick upon him that he could hardly breathe. He looked down at the letter once more, wishing it actually explained things, rather than calling up new questions.
This is what I’m leaving you. For you and Alan, if you want to share it with him.
What had Kathy left in that locker at the bus terminal all those years ago? And why had Isabelle never told him about it – about the letter or the contents of the locker? Was whatever it had been the real reason that Isabelle had gone all strange at the funeral? They had all been so close, almost inseparable for so many years. He had never been able to understand how it fell apart. And surely Isabelle knew how much he’d cared for Kathy, how much her death had d
evastated him. What had she found in that locker that she couldn’t share with him?
“Alan?” Marisa said.
Alan nodded. He returned the letter to its envelope. He looked at it for a long moment, then tossed it onto the window seat beside the painting.
“Nora Dennis has a studio here, doesn’t she?” Marisa asked as they made their way down the hall to the stairwell.
Alan nodded. “Why?”
“Maybe she’s seen Isabelle.”
“Doesn’t seem likely. Isabelle only just got back to town.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask,” Marisa said.
So they left the stairwell at the second floor and went looking for Nora’s studio. It wasn’t hard to find. Halfway down the hall they came upon a door that was standing open. Loud music spilled out of it, a song sung in an Irish dance-tune signature, but with drums and electric guitars augmenting the acoustic instruments. The Waterboys, Alan thought, recognizing the song. Looking through the doorway, they found Nora sitting on the floor with watercolor paintings scattered all around her. She glanced up and grinned when she noticed them standing in the doorway.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said, standing up to turn down the volume of the music, “but I’m just getting organized for a show.” She looked around herself, her smile widening. “What am I saying? Organized? I wish.”
Unlike Isabelle’s studio where everything was still unpacked, Nora’s looked as though a tornado had just touched down in the middle of it. Alan felt like a relief worker showing up at the scene of a major disaster with the best of intentions to help out, but being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what had to be done.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet,” Nora said when they asked her about Isabelle. She ran a hand through her short brown hair, making it stand up at attention. “But I saw her down in the courtyard about an hour ago with Johnny Sweetgrass.”
Isabelle’s old boyfriend, Alan thought. Another ghost from the past. But then he remembered something else: that painting of John that Isabelle had done. What if Isabelle hadn’t painted his portrait?
What if John had come into being because of the painting? A painting which, Alan reminded himself, had also supposedly been destroyed in the fire.
“I haven’t seen him in years,” Alan said, keeping his voice casual. “How’s he doing?”
“Oh, you know Johnny. He never changes. I swear he gets younger while the rest of us grow ungracefully old. But Isabelle didn’t seem at all well. She looked as though she couldn’t stand up without his support. I spotted them coming across the courtyard, but before I could get to them to see if I could help, they were out the door and gone.”
Alan hung on to the first part of what Nora had said.
He never changes. I swear he gets younger while the rest of us grow ungracefully old.
He never changes. Because he was like Cosette, forever locked into looking how Isabelle had painted him?
“Gone?” Marisa asked.
Nora nodded. “Um-hmm. She got into a car driven by some real punky-looking girl and drove off. Here,” she added. “I can show you.”
She led them across her studio, wending a careful way through the scattered piles of watercolors that they all tried to emulate. At the open window, she pointed off down the street.
“They were going north, the last time I – Hey, wait a minute. There’s Johnny now.”
Alan looked down at the street. He recognized John Sweetgrass immediately, as well as his companion.
“He’s with Cosette,” he said, more for Marisa and Rolanda’s benefit than Nora’s.
Rolanda nodded in agreement while Marisa craned to get a better look.
“Well, that’s not the girl who was driving the car,” Nora said from beside him. “She didn’t have that gorgeous head of hair.” She opened the window and leaned out. “Hey, Johnny!” she cried.
John and Cosette lifted their heads. Alan thought John looked irritated at having been noticed, but Cosette smiled happily and waved up at them, recognizing Alan and Rolanda. John gave them a brisk wag of his hand himself, then started to walk on, pausing when Cosette held on to his arm.
“Wait a minute,” Alan called down to them. “I have to talk to you. We’ll be right down.”
But when they reached the street, John was gone. Only Cosette was there waiting for them.
XII
“What are you doing?” John demanded when Cosette tugged on his arm. “They’re friends,” she said. “Maybe they can help us.”
“Good friends?”
“Well, not really. But Isabelle’s known Alan for ages.”
“And hasn’t spoken to him for years,” John said.
“But –”
“Do you think they’re such good friends that they’d help us kill a well-respected artist like Rushkin?” John asked. “Just on our say-so?”
“Maybe if we explained things …” Cosette’s voice trailed off at the withering look John gave her. “Okay. So maybe it’s not such a good idea.”
“They have their concerns and we have ours,” John said. “By what each of us are, they are mutually exclusive. We have too little common ground, Cosette.”
“That’s not really true.”
John didn’t want to argue anymore. “We should go.”
“But that would be so rude.”
“Fine,” he said, exasperated. “Wait for them. You know where to find me when you’re done.”
Cosette nodded. “I wonder,” she said, before he left. “Should I contact the others – you know, Rosalind and the rest of them still on the island?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” John told her. “They should have a little forewarning in case we fail.”
“But we’re not going to fail, are we?”
She looked up at him, afraid and hopeful all at once. John wanted to set her mind at ease, but he couldn’t lie to her.
“If we do,” he said, “it won’t be from lack of trying.”
He left her then, heading east and north, aiming for a tenement in the Tombs where Isabelle spoke with Rushkin and prepared to sell her soul. He arrived in the middle of their conversation, finding a perch outside the second-story room where they spoke, sharing the narrow ledge with a grotesque gargoyle that reminded him of Rothwindle, one of Isabelle’s earlier creations who had died in the fire at Wren Island.
“My darling ‘goyle,” he said softly.
It was the name Isabelle had given the painting of Rothwindle. The gargoyle had come across from the before with her own name, just as John had. Come across and lived her life in the shadows of this world until John had let her die. He’d let them all die. Since the night he’d rescued Paddyjack from Rushkin he’d vowed to protect each and every one of Isabelle’s numena, but he’d failed. He hadn’t been there when the fire swept through the farmhouse.
John frowned when he heard Rushkin accuse Isabelle of starting the fire. Isabelle knew what she was about when she called her old mentor the father of lies. But then John found himself thinking of how Isabelle could confuse the truth, even in her own mind – claiming she was mugged when it had actually been Rushkin who’d beaten her. Insisting her friend Kathy had died of an illness in a hospital when she’d committed suicide. What if the mystery of the fire was another of her stories? What if it hadn’t been Rushkin who had set the farmhouse ablaze, but Isabelle herself?
Simply considering the possibility made him feel as though he was betraying her, but now that the question had lodged in his mind, he couldn’t shake it. All things considered, hadn’t she betrayed him in how she’d cast him out of her life? Hadn’t she betrayed them all by allowing so many of them to die?
Couldn’t she have saved some of them?
He listened with growing disquiet as Rushkin explained how numena could be given the gift of true life. Another betrayal, he thought, but then shook his head. No, Isabelle hadn’t known … had she?
He wished now that he’d never come. He didn’t want to co
nsider Isabelle to blame for all the deaths. Didn’t want to think that she could have given all of them what Cosette called the red crow at so little cost to herself. If they’d been freed from their paintings, none of them would have had to die. How could she not have known? And yet …
Rushkin was a master of lies, but like all such men, he had to use a certain amount of truth to lend his lies the echo of veracity they required to be believed. So what was lie, what was truth?
No, he told himself. This is exactly what Rushkin wants. To raise so many doubts that you could no longer be sure what was true and what was not. Undoubtedly, he was the cause of Isabelle’s own confusion with the truth. Rushkin’s presence, his voice and the half-truths he wove in among his lies – they were like a virus. How could you do anything but doubt everything you believed in once you’d been infected by him?
That was when he realized what it was that Rushkin was demanding of Isabelle. Doubts were put aside, to be dealt with later, if not forgotten. Right now all he wanted to do was burst into the room and kill Rushkin where he lay on his pallet. Squeeze the life out of him the way Rushkin had taken the lives of so many of Isabelle’s creations. But he still wasn’t certain that a maker could die at his hands and there were Rushkin’s own creations to consider: his double and the strange monochrome girl that Cosette had described to him earlier, the one’s gaze more feral than the other’s.
So he waited. He hugged the wall and willed with all the potency he could muster that Isabelle would stand up to her old mentor rather than fall under his sway once again.
“Tell him no, Isabelle,” he whispered, his voice pitched so low that not even the stone gargoyle squatting a half-dozen feet away could have heard him. “Deny him, once and for all.”
XIII
Isabelle didn’t honestly believe that Rushkin could bring Kathy back. She was a naïf when it came to his magics, to what could and could not be done, but not so innocent as to believe that the dead could be raised, unchanged and whole. The creation of numena almost made sense. If you accepted that there was an otherworld, then it stood to reason that there could be pathways leading from it to this world. Didn’t Jilly always say that a hundred centuries of myths and fairy tales had to be based upon something?
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