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.
“I’m in desperate need of sustenance,” he told John, “but I’ll forgo it if you’ll convince her to finish the piece she’s working on, instead.”
“What’s going on here?” Isabelle demanded, feeling utterly in the dark.
“That’s my source painting he’s holding,” John said in a flat voice.
“Have you gone mad? That’s not even close to The Spirit Is Strong.”
John shook his head. “I took the original from the farmhouse long before the fire, and had Barbara paint that over it. She was hiding it in the cupboard where she keeps whatever bits and pieces she’s been working on that don’t quite turn out.”
“Not exactly an original solution,” Rushkin said. “Did you honestly think you were the first to consider it?”
“How did you know she had it?” John asked.
Rushkin smiled. “I didn’t. It was no more than a lucky guess.”
“And she simply gave it to you when you asked for it.”
“No. She gave it to Bitterweed.”
Thinking that the doppelganger was John, Isabelle realized.
“I’ve been most patient, holding it for an occasion such as this,” Rushkin said.
John gave him an icy smile. “Well, you wasted your patience. I’ll welcome oblivion, if it means I don’t have to share a world with you anymore.”
“No, John,” Isabelle began. “We can’t …”
Her voice trailed off as John turned toward her. The look on his face was a chilling reminder of how he’d regarded her on that snowy night all those years ago, just before he led Paddyjack away into the storm. Cold and unforgiving.
“You can’t imagine that I’d let another die in my place,” he said.
“Ah-ah,” Rushkin broke in. “I think the choice has been reserved for Isabelle to make.”
John faced the old artist once more.
“Stop me,” he said softly.
And then he lunged for him, but Rushkin was too quick. The blade of the knife pierced the canvas.
Before John could reach him, Rushkin cut downward. Halfway between Rushkin and Isabelle, John simply disappeared from sight.
“No!” Isabelle cried.
She dropped the painting she held and rushed toward him as well, ready to murder the monster, but the change in Rushkin was immediate. Fueled by the life force he’d stolen from the painting, he stood straighter. His shoulders seemed to broaden and he moved without hesitation. The ruined canvas dropped at his feet and the knife rose to chest level, stopping Isabelle in her tracks.
“My creatures might not be able to kill you,” he said, “but I am not constricted by whatever it is that binds them.”
Isabelle’s anguished gaze found the canvas that lay at his feet before tears blinded her. Rushkin pushed her back into the room.
“Finish it,” he said, indicating the ghostly image that looked up from the unfinished painting she’d dropped, “or the next one to die will be one of your flesh and blood friends. Nothing inhibits my creatures from harming them.”
The door slammed. She heard the lock engage again. And then she was alone once more with her pain and the knowledge that she’d caused yet another death. She dropped slowly to her knees and gathered up the painting that Rushkin had slashed, holding it against her chest.
Gone. John was gone. She’d grieved for him twice before, first when he’d walked out of her life, then again when she thought he had died in the fire. This time he was gone for good. She clung to the painting and knelt there, tears streaming, unable to move, unable to think, for her grief.
It was a long time before the flood of her despair settled into a hollow ache. Still holding the painting, she slowly rose and stumbled to the worktable. She laid John’s painting gently on its surface. She ran her fingers across the raised relief of Barbara Nichols’s brushstrokes, then had to look away before grief overcame her again. Blowing her nose in an unused cleaning rag, she stared hopelessly around the confines of her prison, her gaze finally settling on the image of her angel of vengeance.
By killing John, Rushkin had achieved the exact opposite of what he’d intended by the act. She was no longer afraid. She wa
nted vengeance now, but it would not involve the creation of more numena. How could she complete this painting, knowing what its fate would be? But she had to do something.
Rushkin’s awful threat echoed on and on, cutting across the hollow space that John’s death had left inside her.
Or the next one to die will be one of your flesh and blood friends.
Who would he set his numena upon next? Jilly? Alan?
Slowly she picked up the painting and stumbled back to the easel with it. It wasn’t a matter of courage anymore. Rushkin hadn’t left her any choice at all.
She swallowed hard. But that wasn’t true, she realized. There was one other choice she’d been left – one Rushkin would never expect her to make. She could follow in Kathy’s footsteps.
V
When she walked away from the other three, Rolanda couldn’t help but feel that she had abandoned them, especially Cosette. It was an odd feeling, for it grew from no reasonable source. She knew she was doing the right thing. She definitely drew the line at condoning any sort of criminal activity, and so far as she was concerned, murder topped the list of criminal activities.
And no one was expecting her to condone it, she reminded herself. The guilt she felt was self-imposed. Not one of them had said a thing. She’d taken it on herself.
By the time she reached the front walk of the Foundation, she’d decided that what she had to do now was to put it all out of her mind. Never having been a brooder, she dealt with problems as they came up. She’d worry about what Alan and his companions were getting themselves into this evening, when she would either hear from them, or be forced to call the police. She concentrated instead on her current caseload. There’d be sessions to make up for the time she’d lost this morning, and God knew how many new files piling up on her desk.
A sudden commotion arose from inside the Foundation’s offices as she opened the front door. She recognized Shauna’s voice, uncharacteristically swearing. But before the incongruity could really register, Rolanda was confronted with two figures barreling down the hallway toward her. One of them was Cosette’s friend, John. The other was a teenage girl with the pale washed-out features and black wardrobe of a neo-Gothic punk. Both were carrying paintings – torn down from the wall of the Foundation’s waiting room. The girl was in the lead. John fended off Shauna with one hand as he followed on the girl’s heels.
No, Rolanda realized. That wasn’t John, for all that he looked to be an exact twin of Cosette’s friend. These were the other side of the coin that Cosette represented; they were Rushkin’s creatures.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Rolanda was swinging her purse. The blow caught the girl in the stomach, doubling her over. Rolanda snatched the painting from her at the same time that Shauna tackled the man who looked like John. The two of them fell on top of the girl, but she scrambled out from under them, a switchblade open in her hand. Rolanda kicked hard, her sneaker connecting with the girl’s wrist and driving it against the wall. The knife fell from the girl’s suddenly limp fingers.
“Call nine-one-one!” Rolanda cried as another of the Foundation’s workers appeared at the far end of the hall.
“Already did!” Davy called back to her.
He charged forward, jumping on the man’s back just as he was taking a swing at Shauna. Rolanda turned to the girl she’d stopped. The girl looked as though she was readying herself for another attack, but she froze when Rolanda’s attention returned to her.
“You might as well give it up,” Rolanda told her. “You’re not going anywhere now.”
The girl nursed her wrist and gave her a hard look.
“Fuck you,” she said.
And then she vanished. One instant she was crouching in the hallway, snarling at Rolanda, hate spitting from her eyes, the next she was gone with a whuft of displaced air. A half-moment behind her, the other attacker vanished as well, making Davy fall on top of Shauna. All that was left of their presence was the open switchblade lying on the carpet and the paintings that they’d pulled down from the wall in the Foundation’s waiting room.
“What the hell … ?” Davy said.
He rolled away from Shauna and got slowly to his feet, eyes going wide as he looked around himself.
Shauna appeared just as confused.
“This has been a seriously weird day,” she said. “First, we get that girl materializing in the middle of the waiting room, and now this.”
Rolanda nodded slowly.
“What’s going on, Rol’?” Shauna wanted to know.
Rolanda was only vaguely paying attention to her coworkers. Instead, she was thinking of what had just happened, of the irony of her giving a lecture to Alan and the others about vigilantism and then what she’d just done. She hadn’t even thought about it. Hadn’t tried to talk to the girl – not that she thought talking would have done any good with that one. But she’d just waded in, the thin veneer of being a socially responsible adult disappearing as suddenly as the two thieves had.
“Rolanda?” Shauna said when Rolanda didn’t respond. She stepped closer, a worried look crossing her features. “Did that girl hurt you?”
Rolanda blinked, then slowly shook her head. “No. I’m just – shocked, I guess, at how easily I was willing to forgo trying to negotiate with them and just hit back.”
“Hey, they were asking for it,” Davy said.
“I suppose.”
The wail of an approaching police siren gave them a moment’s pause. The police would be here soon.
“What do we tell them?” Shauna asked, turning to Rolanda. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“I think we should just tell them that we managed to chase the thieves away,” Rolanda said.
She leaned the painting she was still holding against the wall and retrieved the other from where it had fallen. Neither of them seemed the worse for their short misadventure.
“And maybe store these away someplace safe,” she added. At least until she heard that Alan and the others had managed to deal with Rushkin and knew it would be okay to hang them again.
Jesus, she thought. She was already siding with Alan and the others, ready, she realized, to condone the murder of another human being. The knowledge scared her, but she couldn’t make the feeling go away. All she had to do was remember the killing look in that girl’s eyes and think of it being turned on Cosette or some other innocent. What could the police do in a situation such as this?
“Fine,” Shauna said. “That’s what we’ll tell the cops. But you know more than you’re letting on.”
Rolanda chose her words carefully. “If I knew anything that would make what just happened here easier to believe, trust me, I’d tell you.”
There. That wasn’t an actual lie. What Shauna and Davy had just witnessed was unbelievable enough. If she related everything that she knew, it would only seem more unbelievable.
“But what we just saw,” Davy said. “I mean, people can’t just vanish like that … can they?”
Luckily the police arrived at that moment and Rolanda didn’t have to reply. They explained the situation to the two officers and then locked away the paintings in a storeroom in the basement. Rolanda tucked the key into the pocket of her jeans. She could tell that both Shauna and Davy wanted to talk more about what had happened, but once they’d all trooped back upstairs to the Foundation’s offices, business went on and they were soon too swamped with the usual crises to worry about something so exotic as thieves who could vanish. There were children to be fed and clothed, beds to be found for them, social workers and lawyers to contact on their behalf.
For Shauna and Davy, the mystery slipped between the cracks of yet one more hectic day. But Rolanda watched the clock all afternoon, willing Alan to pick up a phone wherever he was and contact her. And when the day was done and she’d made her excuses to Shauna and Davy, who wanted to talk about it some more; when she was finally alone and ready to go up to her apartment, she found that all that she could think abou
t were the paintings locked up in the cellar. What if the thieves came back?
What if they were successful this time?
She ended up making herself a thermos of coffee and a couple of sandwiches and took them down to the basement. She went back upstairs to get herself a chair, the cordless phone from Shauna’s office, and a baseball bat. Then she sat down and waited. For the phone to ring. For the thieves to return. For something to happen.
By the time a sudden hammering arose, knuckles rapping on a hollow wooden door, her nerves were completely on edge. She jumped upright, the baseball bat slipping from her hand to bounce off the floor.
She retrieved it quickly and stood with the bat in her hands, staring around the basement in nervous confusion. That was when she realized that the knocking was coming from inside the storeroom.
VI
The farther Cosette led them into the Tombs, the more Alan began to question the wisdom of what they were doing. While it was true that Isabelle was in danger and he wanted to help her, he was growing less and less certain of what he had to offer in terms of help. Never having been in a fight in his life, never having had to use physical force of any kind before, he wasn’t exactly cut out for the role of the hero in a situation like this. They hadn’t even confronted Rushkin or his creatures yet, and his nerves were already shot from anticipating what would happen when they did.
“I’m beginning to think Rolanda was right,” he said to Marisa, walking beside him. “Maybe we should have called in the police.”
“But you said it yourself – they’re not going to believe any of this. By the time we could convince them it was real – just saying we ever could, which I doubt – it’d probably be too late.”
“But Rolanda was right when she said that Isabelle being kidnapped would be real enough for them.”
“Well, I hate to bring this up,” Marisa told him, “but at this moment you’re not exactly a model citizen in their eyes, are you? If things got out of control, if anything was to happen to Isabelle before we could help her, they’d probably try to blame both it and Mully’s death on you.”
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