Memory and Dream

tertium quid

I

Newford, September 1992

Roger Davis sat at his desk in the Crowsea police precinct and studied his partner’s features as Thompson spoke on the phone. The Mully murder case had led them up one dead end into another, but they’d finally gotten a break. An earlier call from the woman’s husband had had them out looking for Alan Grant again. Mully’s daughter claimed to have seen Grant in the hotel at the right time for him to have done it, all his protestations to the contrary.

He looked good for it. He had the right motive and now they had someone to put in the right place at the right time, but something didn’t feel right to Davis. The man they’d interviewed earlier today had been scared, sure, but not guilty scared. More like, how’d-I-get-mixed-up-in-this/what-am-I-gonna-do-to-get-them-to-believe-me scared. Still, they had the girl’s testimony and Davis had been wrong before. He figured he’d just let the DA’s office sort it all out. Until this call came in, it had only been a matter of picking Grant up and booking him.

When Thompson finally got off the phone, he gave Davis a weary look. “That was the daughter,” he said.

“I figured as much.”

“She says it wasn’t Grant she saw in the hallway.”

Davis sighed. So much for getting a break in the case. “She’s changing her story?”

“Changing her mind, sounds like. Said she was sick of lying.”

“Would it help if we brought Grant in for a lineup?” Davis asked.

“She says she knows what he looks like well enough, thank you very fucking much, and it wasn’t him.”

Tired as he was, Davis had to smile as he imagined the Mully girl saying “thank you very fucking much” to his partner.

“Was that a direct quote?” he asked.

“Fuck you, too,” Thompson told him.

It was the father who’d had them come back to the hotel and made Susan Mully tell them who she’d seen in the hallway. Of course this was after they’d already cut Grant loose. But now the kid was having an attack of conscience and calling it off. He wondered if the father knew.

Davis rose to his feet. “I’ll cancel the APB on Grant.”

Thompson nodded. “Now all we’ve got left is the Indian the desk clerk saw.”

Taking the elevator up to the same floor as the Mullys were on at just about the same time as the coroner’s estimated time of death. Right. His description fit just about every fifth person on the skids in that part of the city and of course he’d have all kinds of motive, wouldn’t he?

The case, Davis realized, was dead in the water and he doubted that it’d ever get resolved. And the thing of it was, it wouldn’t exactly break his heart. He’d never much cared for Margaret Mully—or at least not for the woman he’d seen on the news or read about in the paper. So far as Davis was concerned, the Newford Children’s Foundation was doing a bang-up job and anybody trying to screw them the way she was doing deserved what she’d got. But that wasn’t an opinion he’d share with anyone—not even to his partner.

“Just let me deal with the APB, Mike,” he told Thompson, “and then we’ll talk about where we go from here.”

II

John crouched outside the window, balancing easily on the narrow ledge, and watched the drama as it unfolded before him. He could have applauded when Isabelle stood up to Rushkin, unwilling to admit even to himself that he hadn’t been sure how she’d respond to his offer. He waited patiently as Bitterweed led Isabelle away, watched his doppelganger return alone, listened as Rushkin sent Bitterweed and Scara away to hunt.

When Rushkin’s numena left the room, he was caught in a dilemma then. Follow them and protect Cosette and the others? How long would it take the creatures to track down their source paintings? Or should he leave them to fend for themselves while he attempted to deal with Rushkin?

“I’m sorry, Cosette,” he whispered as he edged away from the window and squeezed around the squat bulk of the gargoyle that shared his ledge. Dealing with Rushkin’s creatures was only a temporary solution. The only way to stop them for good was to cut off the evil at its source, and god help him if he failed, for then he would have still more deaths on his conscience.

Once the numena’s vehicle pulled away from the curb, Scara behind the wheel once more, John scrambled down a drainpipe until he could drop to the ground. He entered the building through a ground-floor window by the simple expediency of kicking out the sheet of plywood that had been nailed across it. He made no effort to be quiet. Rushkin wasn’t going anywhere.

He had no trouble finding his way up to the room where Rushkin’s pallet lay. The monster was sitting up, waiting for him, when John stepped into the room. John paused at the doorway and their gazes locked.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Rushkin said.

“Then you know why I’m here.”

Rushkin smiled. “You can’t hurt me. You had your chance—long ago on that winter’s night—but you tarried too long. We’re not in one of your maker’s dreams now and I won’t make the mistake of entering them again. Give it up, John Sweetgrass. Accept your fate.”

“No,” John told him, but he clenched his fists in frustration as he realized that, this time, Rushkin spoke the truth. Every part of him wanted to take that scrawny neck in his hands and wring the life from it, but he could no more make a move against Rushkin than he could against Isabelle.

“It’s over now,” Rushkin said. “You’ve killed many of my hunters, but no more. These are the final days of the enmity that lies between us. I will take my nourishment from you and all of your maker’s creations and put an end to you, once and for all.”

There at least, John knew he was safe. Long before the night of the terrible fire, he’d taken his painting from the farmhouse on Wren Island and brought it to the studio of another of Rushkin’s proteges—the one who hadn’t been with the monster long enough to fall under his sway. Barbara had painted over it and now kept the painting safely stored away in her studio, hidden in a cupboard along with all of her juvenile work. In return for her help, John had told her the secret of bringing numena across from the before, sharing what he knew of it from having observed Isabelle at work, but it wasn’t a knowledge that Barbara had cared to practice. She brought one across—because of curiosity as much as to test him, John had supposed—but then no more.

“I’ve got enough trouble being responsible for my own life,” she’d told John. “I don’t need the extra grief this’d bring.”

John only wished that Isabelle had felt the same. While it was true that he owed his existence to her gift, he’d rather have remained in the before than to see so many of the others she’d brought across die.

“You know,” Rushkin was saying, “I miss Benjamin the most. He was with me for a very long time indeed.”

John couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“You’re incapable of any emotion except for greed,” he told Rushkin.

“Now you wrong me,” the monster said. “I might have a failing or two when it comes to interacting socially, but you have only to look at the work I have produced to know that what you’re saying is a lie.”

John shook his head. “You might get someone like Isabelle to buy your lies, but don’t bother trying them on me.”

“The work speaks for itself.”

“You work is hollow at its heart,” John said. “It’s all flash and technique and glossy lies—no different from its maker. Something rots under the surface of both you and your paintings. The trouble is most people don’t peel away enough of the veneer to see it.”

Anger flashed in Rushkin’s eyes, but he quickly suppressed it. “So now you’re an art critic?” he asked.

“Merely a good judge of character,” John replied.

Rushkin shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Your opinion changes nothing. In the end, I will prevail and you will be nothing more than ashes and memory.”

“Isabelle will stop you.”

He would convince her, John vowed. Even if it cost him his life.

Rushkin laughed. “I doubt that. Isabelle is already hard at work on a new painting to feed me.”

“Another lie. I heard her turn you down.”

“And yet, she’s painting even as we speak.” Rushkin waved a hand casually to the doorway behind John. “See for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

John hesitated, suddenly unsure. He had heard her refuse Rushkin’s offer, hadn’t he? Or did he have to distrust his own memories now, as much as he did Isabelle’s?

“I’ll take her away from here,” he told Rushkin.

“How do you know she wants to go?”

“I’ll convince her.”

“Then she’ll simply complete the work elsewhere, but I will still have it. Give it up, John Sweetgrass.

I have won. I will always win.”

John turned abruptly and strode into the hallway. He tried the doors as he went along, flinging them open, until he came to one that was locked. The key was still in the lock. With one quick motion, he unlocked the door and shouldered it open to find that Rushkin hadn’t lied. In the room Isabelle turned away from the canvas she was working on to face him. She looked angry until her gaze alit on his wrist and the bracelet he was wearing.

John ... ?” she asked uncertainly.

All he could do was stare at her. He was rendered immobile by confusion. By shock. But most of all by the enormity of her betrayal.

Isabelle dropped her palette and brush on the table beside her. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she stepped toward him.

“Is that you, John?” she said.

“How could you?” he asked, his voice thick with disappointment.

He started to retreat from the room, but she caught his arm to keep him from leaving. When he pulled free, she grabbed hold of him again.

“No,” she told him. “This time we’re going to finish a conversation without one or the other of us walking away.”

John couldn’t help himself. “I never abandoned you,” he said. “No. But you didn’t stay either, did you?”

“You didn’t want me.”

Isabelle shook her head. “We both know that isn’t true. I can’t tell you how many nights I lay awake, wishing you’d come back to me, wishing everything could just be like it was before that day in the park.”

“Yes, but—”

“And since you told me that you always knew when I wanted to see you, I know the only reason you didn’t come back was because you didn’t want to. I might have sent you away, but you’re the one who chose to stay away.”

“You didn’t want me,” John said. “You wanted time to turn back and rewind to before that night in Fitzhenry Park.”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

John sighed and tried again. “You believe that I’m dependent upon you for my existence. That without you, I’d be nothing.”

“No. But I am responsible for your being here.”

“You made a gateway, not me. You didn’t make any of us. We existed elsewhere first.”

Isabelle nodded. “I did the paintings, but you chose to come here. I know that. 33

“So what are you trying to tell me?”

“I ..... Isabelle had to look away. “It’s not easy to explain.”

“Then perhaps you can explain that,” John said, pointing to the painting she was working on.

The figure taking shape on the canvas was of a vengeful, red-haired angel. Working wet-in-wet as she was, Isabelle was eschewing detail for emotive power. The enormous wings that would rise up behind the figure were still only blocked in, and there was next to no definition in the figure itself, but the sword of justice held aloft by the angel was clearly defined and there was no mistaking the stern cast to her features.

“This is going to deal with Rushkin,” Isabelle told him.

“How?”

“Once I’ve brought her across, she’ll protect all of us. If Rushkin ever tries to hurt any of us again, she’ll deal with him.”

“It won’t work.”

Disappointment reared in Isabelle’s eyes. “Why not?”

“We can’t touch him,” John explained. “None of us that you brought across can. He’s a maker, and because of that we can’t harm him. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.”

“But when his numena came to Joli Coeur ...”

“They could never have made good on their threat to you,” John finished. “Because you’re also a maker. None of us can harm a maker.”

Isabelle shook her head. “No, he—the one calling himself Bitterweed—he wasn’t pretending when he grabbed me by the throat. If I hadn’t gone with him, he would’ve killed me.”

“He could kill me, or any of your friends,” John said, “but the threat he presented to you was good acting, nothing more.”

He could see Isabelle’s confidence visibly deflate.

“You didn’t know,” he said, trying to comfort her.

“I should have listened to you a long time ago,” she said. “I should have stopped bringing anyone else across when you first told me I should.”

John agreed with her, but all he said to her was “I only told you that you had to be responsible. You had to keep them out of danger.”

“But so long as Rushkin’s around, they will always be in danger. It would have been better to never have brought them across, than to let them all die. But I was too late.” Isabelle turned away. She stood there, looking at her angel of vengeance, arms wrapped protectively around her upper torso. “That’s the story of my life. I’m always too late when it matters.”

“It’s not too late for those of us who remain,” John told her.

Isabelle faced him once more. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Rushkin is the danger,” John said.

“I know that.”

“So what you have to do is eliminate the danger.”

“You mean ... kill him?”

John nodded.

“I don’t think I could do that.” An anguished look came over her features as she spoke. “I know he’s evil. I I ... I guess I even knew all along that it would come to this. But I just don’t think I can cold-bloodedly kill another human being.”

“He dies, or we do,” John said.

III

Where’s John?” Alan asked as he and his companions caught up to Cosette.

“He’s gone to kill Rushkin,” Cosette said. She gave them a shocked look and put her hands up over her mouth. “Uh-oh,” she muttered through her fingers. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“Rushkin?” Rolanda asked.

She looked understandably uneasy.

“Vincent Rushkin,” Alan explained. “The artist. He was Isabelle’s mentor back when we were all in university.”

“But what’s he got to do with anything?” Marisa asked.

Alan returned his attention to Cosette. “I guess that’s something our friend here’s going to have to explain.”

But Cosette was shaking her head. “I don’t have to explain anything. Just forget what I said.”

As she started to turn away, Alan caught her by the arm.

“We need some answers, Cosette,” he told her.

Her pale gaze held his for a long moment, and Alan found himself marveling at the strange mix of rose and grey that colored them. An impossible color, Alan thought. But then the whole situation was impossible. Except her arm was solid in his grip. There was no denying her physical presence, the reality of her standing here with them on the sidewalk.

“Why should I tell you anything?” Cosette asked at last.

“We want to help.”

“But why? What difference does any of this make to you?”

“Well, for one thing,” Rolanda said, obviously making an effort to keep her voice calm, “we don’t want to see you get mixed up in a murder.”

Murder. The word rang in Alan’s mind, and then he was remembering how his day had begun with the police suspecting him for having murdered Kathy’s mother.

“Did John kill Margaret Mully?” he asked.

Cosette gave him a confused look.

“Kathy’s mother,” Alan explained. “The one who was trying to stop us from publishing a new collection of Kathy’s stories.”

“That’s where it all started,” Cosette said. She pulled free from his grip. “If you hadn’t started Isabelle thinking about bringing us across again, I’ll bet Rushkin would never have come back. None of this would have happened.”

“I don’t understand,” Alan said.

“That’s putting it mildly,” Marisa murmured from beside him.

“You can’t keep me here, you know,” Cosette told them. “All I have to do is close my eyes and wish myself away and I’ll be standing in front of my painting again.”

Now it was Alan’s turn to look confused.

“That’s one of the things we can do,” Cosette went on. “We can just be back at our gateway with a thought.” Then she plucked at the sweater she was wearing. “And I can always be dressed just like I am in the painting. All I have to do is decide to do it.”

With that she closed her eyes, her brow furrowing. A moment later she was standing there in the street in front of them wearing only the white men’s dress shirt that Alan had first seen her in. The shirt hung open, just as it did in the painting. Lying at her feet were the clothes she’d been wearing a moment ago.

“Jesus,” he said.

Unself-consciously, Cosette picked up her jeans and put them on. She let the shirttails hang free, but she buttoned the shirt. The sweater went on over it, then she sat down on the curb and started to put on her shoes.

“Why are you telling us this?” Rolanda asked.

“Because I want to.”

She held up her palm—the one she’d cut with an Xacto blade in Rolanda’s office—and Rolanda shivered. Alan crouched down beside Cosette as she tied her laces.

“I don’t know what any of this means,” he said. “I just know that Isabelle’s caught up in it. I can feel that she’s in some sort of trouble and I want to help her.

“Do you love her?” Cosette asked.

“I ...” Alan felt suddenly uncomfortable. He glanced at Marisa before returning his attention to Cosette. When he spoke, his reply surprised him. “I did. I mean, I still do, but not in the same way as I once did. It’s complicated. I love her like a sister, I suppose. Or a friend.”

“Could you love me that way?”

“I don’t know,” Alan said. “I’d have to get to know you first.”

“That was fairly answered,” Cosette told him, suddenly grinning. “That’s how Rosalind would say it.

She’s much better with words that I could ever hope to be.”

“And she’s ... ?”

“You’d think of her as the reading woman.” Cosette gave Rolanda a knowing look. “You know.”

When Rolanda nodded, Alan realized they were talking about the other painting that hung in the Foundation’s offices, La Liseuse.

“We love each other,” Cosette said, “just like you love Isabelle.”

“Is Isabelle in trouble?” Alan asked.

Cosette gave him a solemn nod. “But you could save her.”

“How?”

“By killing Rushkin for us.”

“But you said John was going to—”

“This is going too far, Alan,” Rolanda interrupted. She put a hand on his shoulder to make sure she had his attention. “I’m trying to keep an open mind about all of this, but I’m not going to put myself in a position of being considered an accomplice to something so serious as murder. I don’t know what’s going on here any more than you do, but if Cosette’s friend really is about to kill someone, it’s time for us to stop playing detective and call the police.”

Marisa nodded in agreement. “It’s gone too far, Alan.”

“If you don’t help,” Cosette said, “then we’re all going to die—Rosalind and Paddyjack and Solemn John and all of us. Rushkin’s going to feast on us.”

Alan turned to his companions. “Let’s just hear this out first, okay?”

Both Rolanda and Marisa looked uncomfortable, but after a few moments of consideration, they each gave a reluctant nod. Alan directed his attention back to Cosette once more.

“You’re going to have to start at the beginning for us,” he said.

Cosette fixed him with her luminous gaze and gave a solemn nod. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Well, you could start with why Rushkin is such a threat to you that you want him dead.”

Cosette regarded each one of them in turn. When she saw that she had their undivided attention, she took a deep breath and told them about Rushkin and Isabelle’s relationship, how she’d received the gift from him and how she’d used it.

“But it was all a trick, you see,” she said. “The only reason Rushkin showed her how to do it was so that she’d bring lots of us across and then he’d have that many more of us to feed on.”

“How does he feed on you?” Rolanda wanted to know.

Cosette shivered. “I don’t know. Not exactly. Not what it’s actually like. But it starts with his destroying the painting that first brought you across ....”

Alan and Rolanda exchanged glances, each of them thinking of the fire on Wren Island that had destroyed all of Isabelle’s work. But then Cosette went on to tell about Rushkin’s return and how his numena had kidnapped Isabelle.

“We have to go with her,” Alan said. “We have to help Isabelle.”

“I don’t know,” Marisa said. “This is all so surreal ....”

“I think we should go to the police,” Rolanda said.

“And tell them what?” Alan asked. “Do you think they’re going to believe what we have to tell them?”

“Maybe not all of it,” Rolanda argued. “But the kidnapping is real, isn’t it?”

Alan shook his head. “They’re just as liable to throw me in jail this time. Or have us all committed for psychological evaluation. And then what happens to Isabelle?”

“He’s right,” Marisa said. “The least we can do is help her first. We can work everything else out later.”

“I can’t be party to it,” Rolanda told them. “I’m sorry. I can’t condone any kind of vigilantism. It doesn’t solve anything—not in the long run.”

Alan sighed. “That’s okay. I understand. But this is my friend we’re talking about and I’m not going to take the chance of her being hurt because I wasn’t willing to step into the line of fire.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Rolanda said. “I just can’t be party to it myself”

“Will you give us some time before you go to the police?”

Rolanda nodded. “But if I don’t hear from you within a few hours, in all good conscience I have to talk to them—even if they will think I’m crazy.” Alan stood up. “Then we don’t have any time to lose,”

he said. “Marisa?” This time there was no hesitation upon her part. “I’m with you,” she said. Cosette scrambled to her feet. “You’re really going to help?”

When they both nodded, she clapped her hands together.

“Wait’ll John sees this,” she said. “He thought you wouldn’t even care.”

“A few hours—that’s all I can give you,” Rolanda called after them as they set off.

Alan looked over his shoulder and gave her a wave. He knew that Rolanda had been the voice of reason in the discussion just past. This was a job for the police. But they’d stepped past logic into a world that looked exactly like their own except all the rules were changed. In this world it seemed better to trust instinct, and his instinct told him that they had very little time to lose.

“Is it far?” he asked Cosette.

The wild girl shook her head and began to walk more quickly. Alan took Marisa’s hand and they hurried after her.

“Thanks,” he said. “You know, for coming and everything.”

“I would have been more disappointed in you if you weren’t so loyal to your friends.”

Alan wasn’t so sure that it was a loyalty to Isabelle that was making him do this. The Isabelle he’d met out on the island was more of a stranger than someone he could say he knew very well. His real loyalty lay with the person Isabelle had once been. It lay with the ghosts of his memory that he’d never been able to set aside.

IV

Isabelle couldn’t look at John. She walked to the table and began to screw the tops back onto the tubes that she’d opened when she first started her painting. The enormity of what he was asking of her weighed her down. Rushkin was a monster, yes, but

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 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 her grief overcame her again. Blowing her nose in an unused cleaning rag, she stared hopelessly around the confines of her prison, her gaze finally setding 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 wanted 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 have heard 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 washedout 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, Roll?” 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?”

Happily 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 then, 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 about 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 roam-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 it was that 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 such as this. They hadn’t even confronted Rushkin or his creatures yet, and his nerves were already shot from anticipation of 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.”

“I don’t really care about that at the moment,” Alan said. “I just want Isabelle to be okay.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

Alan nodded. “But what can we do?”

Marisa gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Whatever we have to.”

Up ahead of them, Cosette came to an abrupt halt at what had once been a crosswalk. The painted markings on the pavement were almost erased by the weather, but two unraveling strands of wire still held the crosswalk lights aloft. The hulking bulk of an overturned city bus was rusting in the middle of the intersection, its surface a bewildering array of graffiti ranging from gang signs to slogans and crude art.

Piled up against the bus were the remains of a couple of cars that had obviously been driven into the toppled vehicle by joyriders and then abandoned.

Cosette darted across the intersection and hunkered down behind one of the cars. When Alan and Marisa joined her, she pointed to a run-down tenement building that stood a little way down the block on the far side of the street.

“That’s it,” she said. “Isabelle’s in there.”

The nondescript building took on an ominous look in Alan’s mind once Cosette spoke. The street in front of it was relatively clear of rubble and abandoned cars. It must have been an office building of some sort, Alan decided. Perhaps a bank. Along its second-floor ledge he could see a row of gargoyles—or at least the remains of their bases. Only one of the stone statues was still standing. Like the bus, like almost every surface that could hold paint in the area, its walls were festooned with graffiti.

“Where’s John?” Alan asked.

Cosette closed her eyes. Cocking her head, she seemed to be listening to something, but Alan couldn’t figure out what. All he could hear was the traffic a few blocks over on Williamson Street where it cut through the Tombs, the vehicles all speeding along that stretch of the thoroughfare. No one in their right mind stopped their car in the Tombs. They especially didn’t go wandering about on foot the way he and his companions were.

Closer he could hear the sound of the wind, blowing down the deserted streets, occasionally bringing them a snatch of music from the boom box of one of the area’s squatters. They’d seen very few people since first entering this wasteland of empty lots and abandoned buildings. Those they had were all the kinds of people that Alan would normally cross a street to avoid. They always had an attitude. But here, on their home turf, the inhabitants of the Tombs seemed content to ignore them. Watching and waiting, perhaps, to see what had brought them here.

“I can’t find him,” Cosette said, looking alarmed. “Usually I can almost see him in my head—not clearly, the way I can always see Isabelle, but I can sort of feel where he is.”

“Do you feel him now?”

“No,” Cosette said. “I can’t feel him at all.”

“But Isabelle’s inside?”

When Cosette nodded, Alan glanced at Marisa.

“We’re not going to do any good hiding out here,” Marisa said.

Like they were going to do so much good inside, Alan thought. Then he sighed. He studied the ground around them, looking for something he could use as a weapon, although use was perhaps too strong a word. Something he could hold to give him courage. He wasn’t sure that he was actually capable of hitting someone, little say murdering Rushkin the way Cosette wanted him to.

He got up and edged away from the car they were hiding behind to peer into the open trunk of the other vehicle. There he found a rusting tire iron. Picking it up, he turned to his companions, holding the tire iron awkwardly in his hand. When he returned to where the others were waiting for him, Cosette regarded his makeshift weapon with approval but he saw sympathy in Marisa’s eyes. Alan swallowed thickly.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

Before he could step around the car, Cosette suddenly pulled him down again behind the vehicle.

“What—” Alan began.

Cosette put a warning finger to her lips and then Alan heard it as well: two voices raised in argument.

A man and a woman. The sound came from the direction of the building they’d been about to enter.

Peering over the hood of the car, Alan saw two figures leave the tenement. One he recognized as John Sweetgrass until he realized it had to be John’s doppelganger, since Cosette, sneaking a quick glance beside him, drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the approaching pair and quickly dropped out of sight again. The doppelganger’s companion he only recognized from Nora’s description of “a real punky-looking girl.” These were the two people who’d kidnapped Isabelle from the courtyard in Joli Coeur. Rushkin’s creatures.

“Don’t let them see us, don’t let them see us,” Cosette was chanting under her breath.

Alan ducked below the hood as the pair crossed the street.

.. have to walk back, thanks to you,” the man was saying.

“Don’t blame me. I think she almost broke my fucking wrist.”

“Serves you right, panicking the way you did.”

“They’re supposed to be social workers in that place,” the girl said. “Not street fighters.”

“That’s no excuse. If you hadn’t screwed up, we’d have the paintings and not have to walk back across town to get them.”

“So we’ll steal another car.”

“So we’ll steal another car,” the doppelganger repeated, mimicking the girl’s voice.

“I didn’t see you doing all that well,” the girl responded sharply. “No one said you had to follow me back.”

“I couldn’t very well take the paintings and fight them all off at the same time once you buggered off on me.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” the girl said. “If that black bitch is still in the office when we get there, I’ll rip out her heart.”

They were talking about Rolanda, Alan realized. They’d gone after the paintings hanging in the Foundation’s waiting room and somehow Rolanda and the others there had chased them oft: And now they were on their way back. He turned to Cosette, about to whisper to her that Rolanda had to be warned of a second attempt on the paintings, when he realized that the conversation they’d been eavesdropping on had suddenly fallen silent.

Oh, shit, he thought.

There was no time to do anything. The doppelganger came around the front of the car before Alan could stand up. When he did, he raised the tire iron only to have the girl drop silently from the roof of the car and kick him in the shoulder. The tire iron fell to the pavement with a clang, and Alan backed away from the girl. His whole arm had gone numb, from his shoulder down to his fingers.

“Yum, yum,” the girl said, a feral light burning in her eyes as she caught sight of Cosette trying to hide behind Alan.

“Scara!” the doppelganger warned.

The girl gave him a sour look. “Who put you in charge?”

“Plain common sense. She belongs to Rushkin—or do you feel like explaining to him why you took her instead of bringing her to him?”

Scara’s only reply was to look sullen. She spat on the ground at Alan’s feet, but made no further move toward Cosette.

“Don’t even think of it,” the doppelganger said, directing his attention now to Marisa, who’d been edging her hand toward the fallen tire iron.

Marisa let her hand fall back to her side and rose to stand beside Alan. Cosette got to her feet as well, trying to wedge herself into the narrow space between Alan and the car so that Alan would be between her and Scara.

Considering the hungry light in the girl’s eyes, Alan didn’t blame Cosette at all. He wished there were someone he could hide behind.

“What—” Alan had to clear his throat before he could continue. “What do you want with us?”

John’s double regarded him with amusement. “A better question would be, what do you want with us?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the one who’s come spying on us.”

“We’re looking for Isabelle,” Marisa said.

“Oh, she’s inside.”

Alan and Marisa exchanged glances. It was going to be this easy? “Inside,” Alan repeated slowly.

The doppelganger nodded. “Painting.”

“But you ... we were told you’d kidnapped her.”

“How do these stories get around?” the doppelganger said. “We did bring her here to visit with her old mentor, but she certainly wasn’t kidnapped.”

The man was so reasonable that Alan felt confused. It was true Scara had kicked him, but then he’d been threatening her friend with a tire iron. And while the conversation between the pair concerning Cosette hadn’t exactly been comforting, neither of them had actually done anything since then that could be construed as a threat.

“Bitterweed,” Scara said.

It took Alan a moment to realize that she was using the doppelganger’s name.

“This is getting boring,” the girl went on. “We’ve got things to do.”

Things to do, Alan thought. Like stealing Isabelle’s paintings from the Foundation and assaulting Rolanda and whoever else happened to be there. His resolve returned.

“Listen,” he said. “You can’t just—”

“If you’re so worried about whether or not Isabelle wants to be here,” Bitterweed broke in, “why don’t you come in and ask her yourself?” Alan hesitated. “I ...”

“Of course we’ll see her,” Marisa said. “That’s why we came.”

She sounded brave, but she walked very close to Alan as they followed the pair back into the tenement. Cosette bookended Alan on the other side. She walked so near to him that he could feel her trembling.

It was dirty inside the building, the walls smeared with more graffiti, litter clogging the floor. The air smelled stale, with a sweet rankness lying underneath it.

“Why would Rushkin want to live in a place like this?” Marisa wondered aloud.

The same question had lodged in Alan’s mind.

“Free rent,” Bitterweed called back over his shoulder. “Isabelle’s upstairs in the studio.”

When they got to the second floor, Scara darted ahead of them, stopping at a closed door about halfway down the length of the hall. She seemed to take longer than necessary to simply turn the doorknob, but her body shielded whatever she was up to.

“In here,” she said cheerfully when they joined her.

She opened the door and stepped aside. Alan got a glimpse of Isabelle’s startled features turning toward them, and behind her, an unfinished canvas on an easel; then Bitterweed gave him a hard shove.

He stumbled into the room, dragging Marisa and Cosette along with him. The door slammed behind them and he heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.

“How could we have been so stupid?” he cried, turning back to the door.

The knob remained immobile in his hand when he tried it. He gave the door a kick, but only succeeded in hurting his toe. Swearing softly, he turned around to face the rest of the room. Marisa was regarding Isabelle with frank curiosity. Cosette had attached herself to Marisa now and stood hip to shoulder against her. Marisa hesitated for a moment, then laid a comforting arm across the girl’s shoulders. Isabelle regarded them with an unhappy gaze. Her eyes were rimmed with red and swollen from crying.

“Why ... why did you come?” she asked, her voice heavy with despair. “We wanted to help,” Alan said.

Isabelle shook her head. “But now he’s got you, too.”

“You mean Rushkin?”

“I mean the monster.”

Alan waited, but she didn’t elaborate. The silence that stretched between them grew uncomfortable.

Alan cleared his throat. He looked at the painting behind her, marveling at its emotive power even in this unfinished state.

“That painting,” he said.

“She was going to be my vengeance on the monster,” Isabelle told him. Her voice seemed drained of expression. Not toneless, but empty. “But then John told me how numena can’t harm a maker and then the next ... the next thing I knew ... he killed John ....”

Her eyes flooded with tears and she began to cry. Alan regarded her helplessly, wanting to be supportive, but there was something about her that made him keep his distance. She simply stood there, shoulders shaking, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She was looking right at him, but Alan didn’t think she actually saw him.

“Alan,” Marisa said softly. “For god’s sake, go to her.”

Her voice broke through Alan’s paralysis. He glanced in her direction to see that Cosette had buried her face against Marisa’s breast, John’s death hitting her just as hard. Marisa indicated Isabelle with a nod of her head. Alan hesitated a moment longer before closing the distance between them. He put his arms around Isabelle, gathering her close. There was no pleasure in the contact. Only days ago, he’d have given anything to be this close to her, but since then everything had changed.

Isabelle pressed her face into the crook between his neck and shoulder. Her arms gripped him tightly. But the weeping didn’t stop. It felt as though it would never stop.

Rushkin hadn’t only killed John, Alan realized. This time, with this death, he’d utterly broken Isabelle.

VII

Roger Davis stayed on at the precinct to catch up on some paperwork after his partner left for the day. Reports were always backing up as new cases took priority, and it seemed like he was always behind. It wasn’t until the evening shift came on that he was finally ready to call it quits himself.

Tomorrow was soon enough to print the files. He shut off the computer he’d been using and leaned back in his chair, stretching the stiff muscles in his lower back. How people could work at a desk job all day was beyond him.

Picking up his sports jacket from where it hung over the back of the chair, he slung it over his shoulder and headed downstairs. On the way out to his car he stopped by the sergeant’s desk to double-check that the All Points Bulletin on Alan Grant had been dropped. That was when he discovered another APB, this time for a pair of nameless thieves: white female, approx. five-one, 105, late teens, black hair, wearing death-rocker punk gear; and a Native American, approx. six foot, 170, black hair in a ponytail, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.

The mention of the ponytailed Native American was what had first caught his eye, but then his gaze settled on the address where the robbery attempt had taken place. In the offices of the Newford Children’s Foundation. He thought: ponytailed Indian spotted in Mully’s hotel just before she’s murdered, Mully trying to grab the money from her daughter’s books that was being channeled into the Foundation, ponytailed Indian involved in a robbery attempt at the Foundation. There were connections here. He couldn’t see them yet, but he could feel them.

“Who caught this?” he asked the desk sergeant.

Hermanez leaned to have a look. “Peterson and Cook.”

“Are they still in?”

“Nah. Their shift ended the same time yours did, except they were smart enough to go home.”

“Some of us aren’t so good at fitting twenty hours’ work into an eight-hour shift.”

Hermanez laughed. “Tell me about it.”

“So you know anything about this robbery?” Davis asked.

“Started as a ten-sixty-seven, but by the time we got on the scene, the only thing left to do was take statements.”

“What were they after?”

“A couple of paintings—supposed to be pretty valuable, Cook says, but nobody could put a dollar value on them.”

“Paintings,” Davis repeated.

Hermanez nodded. “Me, I’d have them evaluated and insured if they’re that valuable, you know what I mean?”

But Davis wasn’t listening. The connections were weaving more tightly together now. He’d seen those paintings. They were by the same woman who, according to Alan Grant, was going to be illustrating this collection that Margaret Mully had been so set on suppressing before she’d been murdered. Had the Indian killed her? Maybe they’re running some kind of scam together and when it goes bad, the Indian kills Mully, then tries to pull this heist so that he can still come out ahead.

Flimsy, Davis, he told himself. Very flimsy. But he was curious now. “You remember who they talked to?” he asked the desk sergeant.

“I forget her name. Remember the black woman who brought that bunch of kids by for a tour of the precinct last month? She was a real looker.”

Davis had to think for a moment. “Something Hamilton,” he said. “Rosanne. No, Rolanda.”

“That’s her. She’s the one that stopped them and did most of the talking. Want me to get someone to track down their report?”

Davis shook his head. “No. I think I’ll swing by the Foundation on my way home and have a talk with her myself “

“Now you’ve got me feeling itchy,” Hermanez said. “What do you see here that I don’t?”

“Nothing,” Davis told him. “At least not yet. But the only lead I’ve got in a case that Mike and I are working on is a ponytailed Indian and the really interesting thing is that our case has a connection to the Foundation as well.”

“You’re talking about the old witch that got murdered last night—the one who wanted to take away all the money from the Foundation’s kids.”

Davis nodded.

“Maybe you should give the guy a medal, if you find him,” Hermanez muttered.

“If it was up to me,” Davis admitted, “maybe I would.”

“Course, we don’t condone murder on our turf,” Hermanez said. “No matter how much the victim deserved it.”

“Of course,” Davis agreed.

The two men smiled at each other. Davis tipped a finger against his brow and headed out to his car.

VIII

Isabelle recovered first. While Cosette still wept quietly against Marisa’s shoulder, Isabelle finally stepped out of Alan’s embrace. She didn’t look any better, Alan thought. All that had changed was that the tears had stopped. Lodged in her eyes was a wild and desperate grief. She started to speak, then dropped her gaze and swallowed thickly. Turning away, she picked up a clean rag from the work-table and first wiped her eyes with it, then blew her nose. With her back to them, she squared her shoulders and stared at the unfinished painting on her easel.

“How ... how much do you know?” she asked.

She spoke with the same empty voice she had earlier. Alan glanced at Marisa, but Marisa only shrugged as if to say, Play it however you think is best. Alan sighed. It was probably the wrong thing to do, considering how Isabelle was feeling at the moment, but he knew the time had come to put aside all the bullshit.

“I think we’ve pretty well figured it all out except for a couple of things,” he said.

“Even the numena?”

Alan glanced at Cosette. “Maybe especially the numena.”

Isabelle let the silence hang between them for a moment. Alan shifted from one foot to another, but before he could speak, Isabelle asked, “So what do you need to know?”

“Why did you keep Kathy’s letter from me?” Alan asked. “Why did you pretend that Paddyjack had burned in the fire? And why did you turn your back on me at Kathy’s funeral?”

He wasn’t trying to rekindle old arguments or make her feel bad. He asked because he had to understand. Before they could go on from here, before he could be of any help, he had to have something more than old ghosts and memories to work with. There was a solution to their current situation, and he was sure they could find it. But the trouble was, he also knew it was tangled up somewhere in the middle of all the lies and evasions that had grown up between them over the years. Not just since Kathy’s death, but from before that. It dated back to the fire on Wren Island, when all of her artwork had supposedly gone up in flames along with the farmhouse.

Isabelle turned to look at him, but her gaze could only hold his for a moment. It shifted to the worktable, where she picked up a yellow-handled utility knife with a retractable blade from in among the brushes and tubes of paint. Turning it over and over in her hands, she walked over to the nearest wall.

With her back to the wall, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor, legs drawn up to her chest. She put the knife down on the floor beside her and hugged her knees.

“I ... I’ve got a problem with negative situations,” she said.

She still wouldn’t look at him. Her voice was so soft that he had to walk over to where she was and sit down across from her. Marisa followed suit with Cosette in tow, settling down beside Alan. Isabelle took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

“When something ... bad happens,” she went on, “I ..” She broke off again, but this time she looked at Alan. “Remember how Kathy used to say that all we had to do was reinvent the world when we didn’t like it the way it was? If we believed it was different, then it would become different?”

Alan nodded.

“You and I, we always argued with her about that. We’d try to tell her that the world was a far more complicated place and just because one person decided to see things different, it didn’t mean that things would actually change.”

“I remember,” Alan said. “And then she’d say, if it changed for you, then that was enough.”

“Except I could never do it—at least that’s what I’d say—but I learned the trick too well and the irony is that Kathy couldn’t do it at all.”

“You’re losing me.”

“I found her journal. She didn’t lead a very happy life, Alan. She couldn’t reinvent the world at all.

But I did. I just didn’t know I was doing it. Something bad would happen to me and I’d simply shift the facts around until it was something I could deal with. It’s like when I’ve talked about my parents in interviews, I’m always going on about how supportive they were, how they were so proud of me, right from the first.”

Alan remembered the first time he’d read that in an issue of American Artist and how he’d thought she was saying that just so that she wouldn’t hurt her mother’s feelings. Because he’d known the truth.

“It was such bullshit,” Isabelle said, “but I wanted to believe it. I didn’t want to remember how I was a disappointment to my father from the time I wasn’t born a boy right up until the day he died. I never did one right thing in my life, so far as he was concerned, and he was always ready to tell me about it. And my mother wouldn’t say a thing. She’d just keep on doing her chores, as though it was normal for a parent to batter down their child’s self-esteem the way he did.”

She picked up the utility knife and began to play with it again, rolling it back and forth on her palm.

“I got tired of being the person who came out of that environment,” she said, “so somewhere along the line I reinvented how it happened, and you know, Kathy was right. Once you do it, once you really believe it, the world is different. All of a sudden you have that much less baggage to drag around with you.

“So at Kathy’s funeral—”

“I really believed that she’d died in the hospital of cancer. I I ... I convinced myself that that was the truth because I couldn’t live with what had really happened. Kathy just couldn’t have killed herself. Not the Kathy I knew.”

“It was a shock to everybody,” Alan said.

“Only because we didn’t know her at all. If she’d shared with us what she wrote in her journal, we’d have known.” She gave Alan a sharp look. “Do you know why she killed herself?”

He shook his head. That question was one of the ghosts haunting him. He’d wrestled with it for years and still couldn’t understand.

“She wanted amnesia,” Isabelle said. “She didn’t want to have to carry around the baggage any longer and killing herself was the only way she could see to accomplish that. I remember she told me that the reason she believed we had to reinvent the world for ourselves was that if we didn’t change the world to suit us, then it would change us to suit it, and she couldn’t bear to be who she thought the world would change her into.”

“I don’t understand,” Marisa said. “Even though she came from such a terrible background, she rose above it. She’s helped so many kids through the

Foundation and touched so many others through her writing. If there’s anyone who left the world a better place than it was when she came into it, it was her.”

Isabelle nodded. “But she was never happy. Her writing and the kids at the Foundation were all she had and I guess one day she realized it wasn’t enough. She gave of herself, she gave until there was nothing left for herself. If you stop letting water into the well, but you keep drawing from it, eventually it’s going to run dry.”

“Jesus,” Alan said softly.

“It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?” Isabelle said. “And there we were, her best friends in all the world, and we didn’t even see it happening.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Alan asked.

“I only just found out this morning myself “

She told them then about the letter arriving at her house, the locker key, the security guard who’d held on to the locker’s contents for her for all those years, the journal.

“I didn’t know about Paddyjack and John,” she finished. “Kathy rescued Paddyjack’s painting from the fire, but she kept it instead of giving it back to me. The painting was just sitting there waiting for me with Kathy’s journal. I hadn’t known that John’s painting sur-survived ....” Her eyes welled up with tears again, but this time she kept them in check. “Jilly mentioned seeing—” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “—seeing John when I was asking her about a place to stay in the city, and then he came to see me at my new studio ....”

“Why would Kathy not have told you about Paddyjack’s painting?” Alan wondered aloud.

Isabelle gave him an anguished look. “I think ... I think she thought I might destroy it.”

“What?”

“Don’t you remember the rumors that went around for a while—that I’d set the fire myself? Kathy didn’t believe them, but according to her journal, she wasn’t ready to entrust Paddyjack’s painting to that belief “

“I have to ask,” Alan said. “Did you set the fire?”

“I ... I don’t know.”

Her reply surprised Alan. He’d been expecting a quick denial. He’d heard the rumors that had circulated back then, but he’d dismissed them immediately. With what he knew now about Isabelle’s art, about the numena, when he could see how dedicated she was to their safety and survival, he couldn’t imagine her having played any part in the destruction of so many.

“Rushkin spiked the punch that night,” Isabelle said. “With acid—remember?”

Alan nodded. “Yes, but—”

“I had a couple of glasses of it,” Isabelle said. “I started tripping very seriously and then everything went black. I remember passing out in the farmyard—out by one of the old barns. When I came to in the morning, I was on the far side of the island, my clothes and hands and arms and face all covered in soot.”

Cosette was staring at Isabelle in horror.

“So what are you saying?” Alan asked. “That you did set the fire?”

Isabelle shook her head. “I’m saying I really don’t know. Rushkin told me, just before the acid kicked in, that he could make me destroy all the paintings. He put a box of matches in my hand. Then I was gone. I remember having what

I thought was a dream. I remember seeing them burn, all those lovely, innocent creatures. I remember holding them in my arms as they died. But when I woke, I was a long way from the farmyard.”

She paused for a moment, then added, “Rushkin said I did it.”

“From all I’ve heard about him,” Marisa said, “I don’t think you should be taking his word as gospel.”

“He doesn’t lie about everything. He didn’t lie about the numena and how I could bring them across.”

“No, he only lies when it suits him. I know too many people like that.” Alan nodded in agreement.

“But if she did do it .....Cosette said in a soft, strained voice.

Isabelle gave the wild girl an unhappy look. “It makes me as much of a monster as him. John was right. He told me from the first. I should never have brought anyone across. All I’ve done is cause them terrible pain.”

“My god,” Marisa said suddenly. “Those two creatures of Rushkin’s. They’re going back to the Foundation for the paintings.”

“And to hurt Rolanda,” Alan added. He looked at Cosette. “You’ve got to go back. You have to warn her and hide the paintings of you and your friend.” But Cosette shook her head. “I won’t go.”

“What?”

Cosette stood up and folded her arms, looking down at the three of them. “You can’t make me do it.”

“But why won’t you go?” Marisa asked.

Cosette pointed a finger at Isabelle. “Because she’s going to free her red crow and I have to see it fly. I have to see, I have to know what she has that I don’t. Why she can dream and bring us across, but I can’t.”

Marisa and Alan looked at Isabelle in confusion.

“Do you know what she’s talking about?” Alan asked.

Isabelle nodded slowly. “I’ve thought and I’ve thought about it,” she said in that same strained flat voice she’d been using all along. “I can’t kill Rushkin in cold blood, and I don’t know if I have the strength to stand up to him anymore. He wants me to paint more numena for him to feed on.”

“Christ, if you’re worrying about Kathy’s collection,” Alan said, “don’t even think about it.”

“It’s not that. Rushkin said he’ll have his numena kill my friends if I don’t paint for him.”

“So we’ll have to figure out a way to—”

Isabelle cut him off. “No, there’s no more thinking to do. There’s only one way I can make sure that he can’t use me anymore.” She picked up the utility knife again, this time sliding the blade out. “I have to follow Kathy’s lead one last time.”

“Now, hold on there,” Alan said.

He started to reach for the knife to take it from her, but she swept it back and forth in front of her, making him back away.

“This is totally stupid,” he argued with her.

“No, this is the only option I’ve got left. I can’t kill another person in cold blood—not even a monster like Rushkin—but I can’t let this go on anymore.”

“You see?” Cosette said. “She has to do it and I have to watch.”

Marisa just looked at her. “How can you be so cold-blooded?”

“I don’t have any blood at all,” Cosette replied. “I don’t have a red crow beating its wings in my chest. When we die, we become nothing. We’re not the same as you. When you die, the red crow flies away and you’re supposed to live somewhere else. I want to follow it. I want it to show me how we can be real, too.”

“I told you before,” Isabelle said, “a long time ago. You are real.”

Cosette shook her head. “I’ve no dreams and no blood and because of that I can’t be like you. I can’t reach into the before and bring more of us across. So how can you say I’m real?”

“Because all it takes for you to be real is for me to give you a piece of myself,” Isabelle said. “John explained it to me.”

At the mention of John, Cosette seemed more willing to listen. “So when will you give me something?” she asked.

“I already have.”

“No,” Cosette said. “I don’t have anything of yours. I’d know if I did.”

“You have my love—that’s what I gave you when I brought you across.”

“But the dreams ... and the red crow ...”

Isabelle sighed. “I said you were real. That doesn’t make you the same as me.” She shook her head.

“Why would you even want to be like me?”

“Because of your magic. Because of the way you can make something out of nothing and then bring us across.” Cosette pointed to the unfinished canvas that stood on the easel. “I can feel her stirring already, you know. Somewhere in the before she’s leaving the stories and getting ready to come here.”

“You’ll have to learn your own magic,” Isabelle said. “And if you don’t go rescue your painting, you won’t survive long enough to do so.”

“But—”

“If you don’t care about yourself or your friend in the other painting,” Alan said, “then at least think of Rolanda.”

“She is nice,” Cosette said, wavering.

“Do you want her to be hurt, when you could have saved her?”

Cosette looked from Alan to Isabelle. Her gaze focused on the utility knife in Isabelle’s hand, the shining length of razor-sharp blade that protruded from one end. Cosette put a hand to her chest, palm flat between her small breasts, and a look of sadness came over her. Alan couldn’t tell if it was for Isabelle, or for herself; for the red crow that Isabelle would be loosing, or for the one she herself didn’t have. Then she blinked out of existence, leaving behind her only the sound of displaced air that rushed to fil the spot where she’d been standing.

Beside him, Marisa shivered and took his hand. Alan knew just how she was feeling. It was one thing to talk about magic being real, but something entirely unsettling about experiencing it firsthand.

“I’m sorry you have to be here to see this,” Isabelle said.

Alan watched her stand up and back away from them.

“We won’t let you die,” he said. “If you cut yourself, I’ll stanch the wound.” He stood up himself:

“Hell, I’ll make you cut me first.”

“Don’t make this harder than it is. It’s already taking all the courage I’ve got.”

“What would Kathy think?” Alan tried.

“I don’t care!” Isabelle cried. The flatness left her voice and Alan could hear the utter despair that was driving her. “We always thought she was so brave and true, that she was so strong. Well, we were wrong, weren’t we? Maybe we could have saved her, if we’d known, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not doing this for Kathy. I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because it’s the only way I can stop Rushkin from hurting my friends. I won’t make more numena for him, but I won’t let him take away anything else I love.”

“And when he finds someone else to make numena for him?” Alan asked. “What changes?”

Isabelle shook her head. “Do you think he’d be risking what he is, if he could find someone else? His last student killed herself because she realized the truth: that’s the only way to get out of his clutches. I don’t think there is anybody else. And even if there is, I doubt he’s strong enough to live through the time it’d take to train them.”

“Unless he feeds on whatever numena of yours that are still around. Paddyjack and Cosette. The painting of Annie Nin that I’ve got. The reading woman at the Foundation.”

Isabelle nodded. “I guess it’ll have to be up to you to protect them,” she said, lifting the blade of the utility knife to her throat.

Marisa turned her face away, unable to look. At her side, Alan made an inarticulate sound and lunged forward. He knew he couldn’t possibly reach her in time, but he had to try.

IX

A few rooms away, Rushkin sat on his pallet, back against the wall, oblivious of the drama taking place in the makeshift studio down the hall. He still held the knife he’d used to destroy The Spirit Is Strong, gently thumbing its edge as he looked across the room. Finally consuming the obstinate John Sweetgrass had been far less satisfying than he’d imagined it would be. He was stronger now, much stronger than he’d been for weeks, but the gnawing hunger continued to eat away inside him, unappeasable.

He remembered when Bitterweed had first brought the painting to him, how angry he’d been at the numena’s stupidity until he’d felt the unmistakable aura of the otherworld rising up from under the paint Barbara Nichols had used to cover Isabelle’s original painting. He’d picked away at a corner of the canvas, working at the dried oil paint with his thumbnail. The garish top layer had come off in small flakes under his effort, revealing the richer tones of Isabelle’s oils hidden under it.

That had been clever of Sweetgrass, but not clever enough. Did Sweetgrass think that he hadn’t kept tabs on him, that he hadn’t been aware of the friendship that had developed between Isabelle’s first fully-realized numena and his own erstwhile student? Who better to guard the painting for Sweetgrass than lovely Barbara with her quick tongue and a temper to match Rushkin’s own? Rushkin hadn’t expected The Spirit Is Strong to be hidden under another painting, but that had been the only surprise.

That, he amended, and the singular lack of substance he’d acquired upon consuming the numena.

Perhaps it had something to do with Barbara’s having covered Isabelle’s original under her own work.

The additional layer of paint could well have worked subtle changes in the properties of the original.

Although Barbara hadn’t stayed with him long enough to fully learn the craft of bringing numena across, there were still traces of enchantment in her work—enough to create some slight imbalance.

A pity about Barbara, he thought. She’d been so promising. Much more talented than poor Giselle.

Perhaps more talented than Isabelle as well, though it was hard to tell. She hadn’t been with him long enough. She’d certainly been more volatile. Not at all like poor innocent and trusting Isabelle. He smiled, thinking of Isabelle. Even now, even after all that he’d done to her, she couldn’t sift fact from fiction. As though she would ever have set the fire that consumed her farmhouse and all her numena. As if it could have been any other hand but his own that had struck the match, just as he’d had to do a few years later in Paris with Giselle’s studio.

Rushkin held up his hand and studied the way light played along the edge of the knife he held. He regarded it for a long moment, then leaned over the side of the pallet and tossed the knife on the floor where it landed beside Bitterweed and Scara’s gateway paintings.

A shame you couldn’t feed on your own, he thought. It would make life so much simpler.

He stretched out on the pallet and put his hands behind his head. Staring up at the cracked and water-stained ceiling, he tried to ignore the hungry gnawing in his belly by imagining how Isabelle would finish the painting he’d glimpsed on her easel. It was such an interesting choice of a palette. He could almost taste the sweet angel it would bring across from the Garden of the Muses.

Poor Isabelle. She imagined her subject as an angel of vengeance, a stern-faced, winged Amazon who would leap the bridge between the worlds, redressing wrongs with the edge of her bright sword.

But numena were really only sustenance, nothing more. In this he hadn’t lied: it took a piece of the soul of their maker to make numena equal to humans and who would be fool enough to do such a thing? Let the creatures run one’s errands. Let them remain food. Anything else led only to needless complications.

That was something that Isabelle hadn’t stayed with him long enough to learn. Undoubtedly it had been for the best. Had she stayed, she would have continued to grow stronger and one day she might have tried to wrest control from him—as he had wrested control in his time.

His smile deepened and a dreamy look came over his features. Now, that had been a bloody night.

He had bathed in the hot crimson gushing from the man’s throat, astonished at how much blood one human body held. He’d been so strong in those days—even without the sustenance stolen from another’s numena.

He would be that strong again.

X

A sudden relief flooded Rolanda when she realized that the rapping she heard was coming from inside the storeroom where she’d locked away the paintings for safekeeping. Not bothering to put the baseball bat down, she hurried to the door, disengaged the lock with the key from her pocket and flung the door open.

“Cosette,” she cried. “God, am I happy to ...”

Her voice trailed off and she backed away as a tall, red-haired woman walked out of the storeroom.

The stranger was oddly familiar, but Rolanda couldn’t immediately place where she knew her from. She seemed to be in her early thirties and stood a few inches taller than Rolanda. She had a striking figure and carried herself with a stately grace. Her solemn grey eyes were the same color of the calf-length gown she wore over a rust underskirt.

“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 darkness, 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.

“I’m missing something here,” he told her. “How did you know that it wasn’t me who came to fetch the painting? And if you didn’t give it to my double, then how did Rushkin get it?”

But Rushkin hadn’t acquired it, had he? His gateway painting still had to be in Barb’s closet, or else he wouldn’t be here. Yet he’d seen the painting in Rushkin’s hands.

Barb smiled. “First, although the guy looked like you, that’s where the resemblance ended.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

“Have you ever known identical twins?” Barb asked.

John shook his head.

“I grew up with a set of them. They might look identical, but once you get to know them, you can always tell them apart. Not from a distance, maybe, but up close and talking? You can’t not know which is which.”

“If you say so,” John said, doubtfully.

“I do.”

Barb regarded him with mock severity until John said, “Okay. I believe you. But Bitterweed and I—”

“Is that his name? Bitterweed?”

John nodded.

“I guess he thought the play on your own surname was clever.”

“Maybe he didn’t get a choice in the matter,” John said, feeling a little odd. As soon as he spoke the words he realized that he carried a certain amount of sympathy for his double. What must it feel like when your only reason for existence was to refute another’s?

“Anyway,” Barb went on. “You and I—we’ve known each other for a long time now. The man who came here with your face wasn’t you. And if he had been you, well he didn’t deserve to get what he’d come looking for. He’d have to lose that arrogance before I’d even give him the time of day.”

“But the painting ... ?”

Barb shook her head as if to say, Don’t you know me better by now?

“I’ve been expecting something like this for years,” she said. “Once I realized it was all true—the gateways and the otherworld and all—and once I realized how important your painting was to your existence, I knew something like this would come up at some point. If not from Rushkin, then from some other enemy.”

“You think I have so many enemies?”

“Since Rushkin can bring you folks across, I figure you’d have as many as he painted.”

“I suppose you’re right. But even if you knew Bitterweed wasn’t me, it still doesn’t explain how I ended up here.”

“That’s simple,” Barb told him. “I did another one. I duplicated the painting Isabelle used to bring you across, and then on top of it I made a copy of mine so that the two were exactly the same.”

“So I’ve got yet another doppelganger running about?” John asked, not at all pleased with the idea.

Bitterweed was bad enough. Though since it had been Barb bringing this other double across, he could at least be assured that it wouldn’t hold the same spiteful intentions toward him that Bitterweed did.

Barb shook her head again. “No, I thought about it before I started the new painting. With a bit of experimentation I discovered that it’s possible to make a gateway painting in which the gate will only open a bit—no wider than a crack. Enough to let the taste of your otherworld through, but not so much so that someone else can make the passage between our worlds.”

“So what Rushkin believed to be me ...”

“Was only an echo of you,” Barb finished. “Or rather, a taste of the otherworld, but nothing more.”

John looked at her with open admiration. He thought of what must have happened back at the tenement where he’d left Rushkin and Isabelle. Rushkin would have cut the canvas and consumed the spirit released. He’d now be thinking that John was dead. He wouldn’t have fed well on what little sustenance he’d obtained from the painting, but he wouldn’t doubt that it was John’s essence he’d swallowed.

“You saved my life,” he said.

Barb flushed and looked away. “Indirectly, perhaps.”

John didn’t push it. Like Isabelle, Barb was often far too modest for her own good. He sometimes wondered how either of them got any work done since the very act of putting pigment to ground required a healthy measure of self-confidence that neither seemed to be able to muster with the same level of intensity outside the compass of their art.

Beside him, Barb took another swallow of her tea, then set the mug down on the floor. She leaned back against the arm of the chesterfield so that she was facing him, knees drawn up to her chest, chin propped up on her forearms.

“So I take it Rushkin’s back,” she said.

John nodded. “In the flesh.”

“I was hoping he’d finally died.”

Allow me immunity to whatever protects makers from attack by those of us brought across from the before, John thought, and he would be.

“So long as he can feed on us,” John said, “he’ll live forever.”

Barb sighed. John could see the muscles of her hands contract with tension and knew she was remembering her own time spent under his tutelage. “So what’s the old bastard up to this time?” she asked.

As John explained, Barb’s tension intensified—this time in empathy to what Isabelle was going through. Just as he was getting to the moment when Rushkin had appeared in the doorway of the makeshift studio, he suddenly sat up straight, story forgotten. Through his connection with Isabelle, he felt the decision she’d come to. In his mind’s eye he could see the utility blade in her hand as it rose up to her throat.

“No!” he cried as the razor edge sliced into her skin, his voice ringing sharply in the confines of the studio.

Barb jolted as though struck. She leaned forward and gripped his arm. “John! What’s the matter?”

John’s lower jaw worked, but he couldn’t get a sound out. The enormity of what he felt left him helpless and numb. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he fell limply against the back of the chesterfield.

“John!” Barb cried again.

He finally managed to focus on her for one long moment, but before he could speak, he was taken away, drawn out of her grip with a rush of displaced air that eddied across her face, blowing her hair around her brow and temples.

Barb’s hand fell limply to her thigh. Her gaze was pulled to the door of her closet, which still stood ajar. His painting was still in there, that much she knew. But if John had been taken away ..

She rose to her feet and darted across the room, suddenly afraid that for all her precautions, someone had snuck in and stolen the painting while they sat on the chesterfield talking. At the doorway of the closet, she hit the light switch, flooding the interior with a bright fluorescent glare. A few quick steps inside and she was flipping through the paintings. John’s gateway wasn’t hard to find. She picked it up and brought it back out into the warmer light of her studio, where she studied it carefully. There was no doubt in her mind that this was The Spirit Is Strong, painted over with her own deliberately crude brushstrokes to disguise it.

John had explained it all to her, how those brought across from the before could always instantaneously return to their source paintings. But that was it. The ability went no further than that one-way journey.

Holding the painting, she stared at the empty chesterfield, a deep chill settling in her chest. So what had just happened was impossible. Except John was gone. She held his source painting in her hands, but she was still alone in the studio.

“Oh, John,” she said softly, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. “What have they done to you now?”

XII

It wasn’t going to be hard at all, Isabelle realized as she put her decision into action. It felt so true, so

... inevitable. Was this how it had felt for Kathy?

Everything decelerated into slow motion. Alan’s movement seemed like a series of quick sketches from a life-drawing class. He took forever, plunging toward her through air gone suddenly thick and syrupy, a look of desperation and horror etched on his face. They both knew he’d be too late. By the time he reached her, knocking the utility blade away from her throat, the edge had already sliced through the flesh of her throat. A wash of warm blood flooded down onto her shoulders and chest.

Alan was still moving forward, unable to stop his lunge. Over his shoulder, she had a momentary glimpse of Marisa’s shocked features. Then the force of impact as Alan rammed into her knocked the back of her head against the wall behind her. The sharp pain of the blow was the first pain she’d felt since cutting herself.

She felt Alan’s hands gripping her shoulders, slipping on the bloodied fabric of her shirt. She heard him shout something, but there was a loud humming in her ears and she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

She didn’t really try. A vast pool of darkness welled up inside her and she let herself fall into its depths.

There was no pain there. No Rushkin. Only peace.

Only peace.

But she fell through the other side of the pool. It was like an hourglass with a top at either end. On the far side of the darkness her eyes flickered open and she swayed dizzily. The pain was still gone, but so was the throat wound. She stood in a place so familiar it hurt.

It was night, here on the far side of the darkness. Snow fell thickly about her. She stood up to her knees in white drifts and would have fallen from the vertigo, except there was a castiron gate in front of her on which she was able to catch her balance. Beyond the gate was a backyard. Rearing above it was the back of a house, a familiar house, the one that had held the apartment she’d shared with Kathy all those years ago on Waterhouse Street. As she lifted her head, she saw the colored ribbons tied to the fire escape outside her window, fluttering in the wind-driven snow.

Dying had taken her back into the past, she realized. Dropped her into a piece of memory, one of the few that she’d never distorted or forgotten. But then how could she ever forget this night? It would be easier to forget how to breathe.

She looked for Rushkin and Paddyjack, but she couldn’t see either of them. Had she arrived before or after the cloaked figure of Rushkin arrived with his crossbow? She listened for the tappa-tap-tap of Paddyjack’s fingers dancing upon his wooden forearm, but all she could hear was the wind. Her gaze returned to the fluttering ribbons, then dropped when another movement caught her attention. Under the fire escape she saw the receding back of a figure as it made its way down the laneway that ran alongside the house.

She forgot how she got here. Forgot Rushkin and pulling the blade of the utility knife across her own throat. Her entire being was focused on that receding figure and the idea that if only she could call him back, this time everything would change. She was being given a second chance, she realized, a chance to undo all the mistakes she’d made the last time. She could still rescue her numena from the fire. Still save Kathy’s life. But it all depended on her not letting John walk out of her life this time.

She hauled herself over the gate and fell into the snow on the far side. “John!” she cried as she struggled to her feet.

The wind took the sound of her voice and tore it into tatters too small to carry. She forced herself forward through the snow.

“John!” she cried again.

XIII

Oh, Jesus!” Alan cried as Isabelle’s blood washed over them both.

He’d managed to knock the utility blade out of Isabelle’s hand, but he’d been too late to stop her from cutting herself. His forward momentum knocked Isabelle into the wall behind her, cracking the back of her head with enough of an impact to dent the plaster. As she started to slide down, he grabbed her shoulders, fingers slipping on the bloody fabric of her shirt. He let go one hand to support her head and slowly lowered her dead weight to the floor.

All her muscles had gone slack. When he finally had her on the floor, her head lolled to one side. The blood was making his stomach do flips. He stared numbly at the horrible sight, gaze blurring with tears.

“She ... she ... she ...”

She’d really done it, was what he was trying to say, but the words locked in his throat, corning out only as sobs. He stared at her, feeling more sick by the moment.

Behind him, Marisa finally broke her paralysis. She grabbed clean rags from the worktable and hurried to his side, feet almost sliding out from under her on the polished wood floor as she rushed.

“We’ve got to stanch the flow of blood,” she said. “I’ll hold these in place while you try to get through the door.”

Alan gave her an anguished look. “But ... but she’s ...”

“She’s not dead,” Marisa said, shouldering him aside. “But she will be if we don’t get her some help soon.”

“All this blood ...”

Marisa swallowed thickly. “I know.” She swabbed at Isabelle’s neck with one of the rags. The white cloth immediately turned crimson. “But look,” she added, pointing to the actual wound on the side of Isabelle’s throat. “You deflected her aim enough so that all she cut was the fleshy part of her throat. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s ... not?”

“The door.”

Still numbed by shock, Alan turned to look at it.

“It’s not that thick,” Marisa said. She didn’t look at him, concentrating her attention on Isabelle. “See if you can’t ram something through one of its panels. Or even the walls—Christ, they’re only plaster.”

Alan turned back to look at Isabelle. A shudder ran up his spine. “But she’s so still,” he said.

“I think you knocked her out when you banged her up against the wall.”

“Jesus. I never meant to—”

“The door, Alan!”

This time something got through to him. He shook his head and rose unsteadily to his feet to look around the room. After a moment, he swept his arm across the top of the worktable, knocking its contents to the floor. Then, using the long table as a makeshift battering ram, he aimed the point of one of its corners at the door and slid it across the floor. The point hit a wood panel with a satisfying crunch, but it didn’t break through.

Alan pulled the table back. He looked at the door, imagining that it was Rushkin standing there, and heaved the table forward again. This time the point of the corner went right through the thin wood of the door panel.

“One more shot,” he called back over his shoulder to Marisa.

She didn’t answer. She was too busy stanching Isabelle’s wound.

It was still Rushkin’s face that Alan saw in the wood panel as he drove the point of the table’s corner into it a third time. When he pulled the table back there was enough of a hole in the door for him to put a hand through and fumble for the key that was still in the lock on the other side.

XIV

The third time Isabelle called his name, John turned.

“Don’t,” she cried, floundering on through the snow toward him. “Please don’t go.”

But this time there was no coldness in John’s eyes. No rejection. When he saw her, he hurried forward, reaching out a hand to help her reach the comparatively easier passage created by a trough in the drifts that ran up to the corner of the house.

“I know I can do it right this time,” Isabelle said, once they reached the sheltering lee of the house.

The wind wasn’t so strong here. The snow didn’t fall as thick. “I promise you, I won’t screw it up. I’ll save the numena and Kathy.”

In the light cast by the bulb hanging above the back porch, she studied John’s features, wanting to see that he believed in her, that he trusted her to do the right thing this time, but John was looking at her strangely.

“What ... what is it?” she asked.

“You’re Izzy again,” he said.

Old nickname, given name, what was the difference? Isabelle thought. There were more important things to deal with at the moment than names.

“No,” he went on, understanding from the look on her face what she was thinking. “I mean you’re young again.”

“Young ... ?”

Isabelle turned toward the nearest window. The image reflected back was hard to make out because of the streaks of frost that striped the pane, but she could still see what he meant. It was Izzy in the reflection—herself, almost twenty years younger. She lifted a wondering hand to her face. When the reflection followed suit, she shivered.

“Let’s get out of this cold,” John said.

“Where can we go?” she asked.

He pointed to the fire escape, festooned with Paddyjack’s ribbons. Isabelle hesitated, not sure she could go. What if she found herself inside, crying into her pillow, brokenhearted? But when John took her arm and led her toward the metal steps, she went with him, up the fire escape, hand trailing along the metal banister, fingers tangling in the strips of colored cloth. At the top of the landing, John took a small penknife from his pocket and inserted it between the windows. It took him only a moment to pop the latch. Stowing away the knife, he pulled the window open and ushered her inside. As he closed the window behind them, keeping out the cold and snow, Isabelle gazed about at the familiar confines of her old bedroom. It looked exactly the way she remembered it except it seemed smaller.

The warmth inside was comforting, but Isabelle still shivered, as much from the eeriness of being where—and when—she was as from the chill she’d gotten outside. Her cheeks stung as the warm air settled on her skin. John made a slow circuit of the room, then sat down on the edge of the mattress.

After a moment, she followed suit.

“What were you saying earlier?” John asked. “About starting over?”

Isabelle turned to him, pulling her gaze away from its inventory of the room’s contents—all the remembered and forgotten objects that at this point in her life, almost twenty years later, seemed to be so much found art, gathered here together in her old bedroom by someone else, like a set for some kind of

“This Is Your Life” television show.

“I feel like I’m being given a second chance,” she said, “Returning here like this, I mean. This time I can do everything right.”

“This isn’t the past.”

“But ..... Isabelle gazed pointedly at the mirror on the far side of the room, where a reflection of her younger self looked back at her. “Then what is it? Just memory?”

John shook his head. “We’re in a maker’s dream—just as we were that other winter night all those years ago.”

“I don’t understand.—What maker?”

“You. We’re in your dream.”

Isabelle stared at him. “You’re telling me it isn’t real? That I’ve made this all up?”

“I don’t know if you actually made it up,” John said, “or if you simply brought us here. But what I do know is that what happens here reflects back into the world we’ve left behind us.”

Isabelle’s throat was suddenly dry. The exhilaration, the freedom she’d felt when she’d finally taken matters into her own hands and followed in Kathy’s footsteps, had utterly drained away. It had seemed as though there’d been no other choice at the time. Now all she could see was choices. Had it been this way for Kathy as well? First the exhilaration of finally having done it, and then the regret when it was too late?

“I ... killed myself,” she finished in a small voice.

“You cut yourself,” John corrected. “Badly. But you’re not dead yet. If you were, we wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m alive?”

Isabelle’s relief was immeasurable.

“For now. We don’t know how badly you’re hurt. And we can’t judge your survival by how long we spend here since time moves differently in a maker’s dream. It’s like fairyland. We could be here for hours while only a moment passes in the world we left.”

“I see.”

And she did. Nothing was free. She’d gained the knowledge of a new level of enchantment, but she’d only gained it when she might no longer be able to use it beyond this one last time.

“Have I always been able to do this?” she asked. “Could I have come here whenever I wanted to?”

“Ever since you became a maker.”

“But why didn’t I know?”

“I thought you did.”

Isabelle gave him a blank look. “But the only other time I’ve ever done it was almost twenty years ago.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’d know, don’t you think?”

John shrugged. “So you never dream?”

“Well, of course I dream. It’s just ...”

Her voice trailed off. Yes, she dreamed. Very vivid dreams, often peopled with the numena she’d brought across from the before. Horrors courtesy of Rushkin for a while, but then later, other, mundane dreams in which she simply interacted with her numena. She just hadn’t been aware of a difference between what she now realized had been maker’s dreams and ordinary ones. And they’d all stopped, after the fire. After she shut herself off from the alchemy that Rushkin had taught her and refused to bring any more numena across.

“Why did I never dream of you again?” she asked. “Why did I never bring you back into one of those dreams?”

“I can’t answer that for you,” John said.

Isabelle nodded slowly. He couldn’t but she could.

“It’s because I shut you out of my life,” she said. “I wanted you back, but I wanted you on my own terms and I guess some part of me realized that you can’t do that. I would have had to take you as you are, or not at all.”

“But you didn’t forget me entirely,” John said. “Sometimes a maker’s dreams are prescient, or at least the patterns in them reflect on life and repeat toward certain meanings.” He held up the bracelet of woven cloth that was on his wrist. “Like colored cloth.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s one of the pattern that keeps repeating in your life: the bright clothes that Kathy always wore, Paddyjack’s ribbons from which you made these bracelets, the Maypole dance that was never consummated because of the fire. Even the abstract designs on your canvases that replaced your realistic paintings.”

“But what does the pattern mean?” Isabelle asked.

“I can’t answer that for you either, but I do know that if you hadn’t made me this bracelet, you wouldn’t have been able to trust who I was after you’d met Bitterweed. We might never have come here, to this moment. We might never have had the chance to finally put an end to the shadow that’s hung over us for most of our lives.”

“You’re losing me again,” Isabelle said, but it wasn’t true. She knew exactly what he meant. She simply couldn’t face it.

“We have to go to his studio,” John said. “Now. Tonight. Here, in this dream. We might never get another chance.”

“But—”

“He’s not protected from me here, Isabelle. He told me as much himself.” He bowed his head, staring at the floor. “I carry as much guilt around with me as you do. I could have finished him that night in the snow, but I was too hurt and too full of pride. I chose to turn my back on you. It was your fight, I told myself, not mine, and because of that decision hundreds have died. I won’t let that happen again.”

Isabelle shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known things would turn out the way they did.”

“But I did know. I had only to look at Rushkin, to know the honors he was capable of committing.”

“But to just kill a person in cold blood ..”

John lifted his head to look at her. “He’s not a person. He’s a monster.”

“I still couldn’t do it,” Isabelle said.

“I’m not asking you to. I’m the warrior, the hunter. All I’m asking you to do is to accompany me to his studio. There, where his connection to you and this dreaming is strongest, you can call him across and he’ll have no choice but to come.”

“Think of the dead,” John said. “Think of all those who might yet die at his hand. If you die, all he has to do is find another artist with the potential to be a maker. Your kind are rare, I’ll grant you that, but not so rare that he won’t be able to track down another—Barb, for one.”

Think of the dead, Isabelle thought. She turned to look at the door of her bedroom. Kathy was alive somewhere beyond it—either in the living room or in her own bedroom. Sleeping, probably, at this time of night. But maybe still awake, propped up in her bed with the inevitable book or notepad on her lap.

If she could only see her one last time ...

“All right,” Isabelle said. “I’ll go with you to the studio and I’ll try to call him to us. But first I’ve got to do one thing.”

John put his hand on her arm as she started to rise. “This is dreamtime,” he said. “Not the past. Not the reality you remember of how things should be on this night, at this time. You might not find what you’re looking for.”

“I still have to try,” Isabelle said. “I have to see her. Even if she’s just sleeping. All I want to do is look at her and see her being alive again.”

John let his hand drop. “I’ll wait for you here,” he said.

Isabelle stood up. Crossing the bedroom, she paused with her hand on the doorknob.

“I won’t be long,” she said.

But in the end, John had to go looking for her.

XV

As she waited for Rolanda’s friends to arrive, Rosalind wandered aimlessly through the ground-floor rooms of the Newford Children’s Foundation. On Rolanda’s desk she came upon a small oil painting that she recognized as Cosette’s work. It was crudely rendered—Cosette always seemed to be in such a hurry to get the image down—but powerful all the same. As powerful in its own way as any of Isabelle’s work.

Rosalind laid down her ever-present book to pick up the painting and study it more closely. She remembered what Cosette had told her about Isabelle. She said we’ve been real all along.

Just as John had always insisted.

That she made us real with the love she put into bringing us across.

Could it be true? Had they spent all these years yearning to be what they could never be instead of embracing what they were?

That we’ll never have red crows or dreams, because all we get is the real we have now.

And was that such a terrible thing? What were blood and dreams anyway but another way of describing aspirations and mortality? She and the others were certainly mortal and they were filled with hopes and ambitions. They had talent. Bajel’s poetry didn’t lack heart. Nor did the sculptures of found objects that Paddyjack constructed high in the trees and barn rafters back on Wren Island. Cosette’s art was rushed, but not without emotive potency.

And who could truly say that one of them couldn’t become a maker? When one considered how rare the potential for the gift was in human beings, perhaps it wasn’t so odd that none of them had the talent.

None of them so far. That, she realized, would not make Cosette particularly happy, but it was probably closer to the truth than Cosette’s belief that all it required were dreams and a red crow beating its wings in one’s chest.

Rosalind set the painting back where she’d found it and retrieved her book. Holding it against her chest, she walked toward the front of the building once more, more troubled than she’d care to let on—even to herself. When she reached the door, she looked out at the city street through the small leaded panes. She’d never liked the city the way that Cosette and John did, didn’t even care to be enclosed by the walls of a building. Give her the solace of the island any day, the wind in her hair and the open sky above.

Needing to breathe, if only the noisy pollution of a city night, she stepped out onto the porch. Relief from the claustrophobia she’d been feeling was immediate. Relief from the troubling thoughts that had risen was not nearly so easy to achieve.

Have we really wasted so much of our lives? she couldn’t help but wonder. Could we not at least have tried to live for the moment the way Paddyjack does?

Out of his company for no more than a few hours and already she missed the little treeskin. She looked across the street, trying to imagine where he was, which building housed his gateway painting, how he was faring in his own guard duty. He’d be unhappy, too, but not for entirely the same reasons.

His needs were simpler. He’d miss the island and he’d be lonely. And frightened.

He had every right to be frightened. Her own fear was constant, for all that she’d hidden it so successfully from Cosette and her new friend Rolanda. What she wouldn’t give to have John here with her tonight. Nothing frightened him. Not the fact that they might not be real, not Rushkin or his creatures, nothing. Or was he merely an even better actor than she?

Rosalind sighed. She turned to go back inside, pausing when she heard a scuffle of footsteps on the sidewalk. Her heart leapt for one moment when the man first stepped into the light. She thought she’d called John to her, simply by thinking of him. But then she saw his companion, recognized her from Cosette’s description, and realized who it was that she faced. Rushkin’s creatures had come.

Panic reared up in her. She tried to keep her features expressionless, but she couldn’t hide the shock she felt when she looked at John’s doppelganger, this Bitterweed. Prepared though she’d been, it was too much of a jolt to see him in the flesh. The resemblance was beyond uncanny. It was perfect.

She managed to recover enough before they reached the porch to school her features to regain their impassivity.

“That’s far enough,” she said.

They paused there on the walk to look at her. The girl, Scara, regarded her with a feral intensity, but Bitterweed only shook his head, as though regretting what must come.

“Don’t make this harder on yourself than it already is,” he told her. “What?” she asked. “Dying? It doesn’t seem to me that there’s much to discuss when death is the only option you offer me.”

“You still have a choice,” Bitterweed told her. “You can die hard or easy.”

“That’s not worth a reply.”

“Christ,” his companion said. “Can we cut the crap?”

She started to move forward, but Bitterweed caught her arm and held her back.

“Now, Scara,” he said, reproachfully. “We can at least be polite about this.”

He looked to Rosalind and gave her a shrug as if to say, What can you do? He was trying to be charming, she realized, the way John might have, but he couldn’t pull it off the way John would have. The gesture only made him seem more pathetic to her.

“At least she’s honest,” she told the doppelganger.

“Who gives a shit what you think?” Scara said. She turned to Bitterweed. “What’re you screwing around for? Look at her. She’s all by herself and she’s not about to stop us.”

It was hard to be brave, Rosalind understood then. She’d often felt impatient with Isabelle for not standing up to Rushkin, but confronted now with the reality of her own terror, she saw how courage could so easily slip away, leaving you with nothing to hold but your fear.

“The only thing that really pisses me off,” Scara went on as though Rosalind weren’t even there, “is how that black bitch took off and left her on her own. I wanted a piece of her.”

“Why dontcha try taking a piece outta one of us, homegirl?” a new voice asked.

Neither Rosalind nor Rushkin’s creatures had heard the newcomers arrive. Rosalind felt a surge of hope that was quickly dashed as a half-dozen figures moved into the light. These were supposed to be her protectors? she thought. What had Rolanda been thinking of? The oldest couldn’t have been more than fifteen. But then she realized that while they might look like children, they were as feral in their own way as Bitterweed’s young companion.

They were dressed simply in T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts, baggy shorts and hightops. Their faces ranged from cherubic to acne-scarred. They could have stepped directly from a schoolyard recess. It was the weapons and the casual way they carried them that made Rosalind look twice. Two carried handguns that appeared massive in their small hands. One had a baseball bat with the points of a dozen long nails sticking out along its head. Two others had chains. The only one that appeared unarmed was in the front. He looked about thirteen and had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth that he lit after snapping a flame off a match with his thumbnail.

“See,” he said after he exhaled a drag, “the thing is, this little piece of nowhere’s part of our turf tonight an’ it’d give me a real come if a couple of homes like you’d decide you wanted to take it from us.” He looked slowly from Bitterweed to Scara. “Whaddaya say, you wanna start some shit with us?”

XVI

It wasn’t the bedroom in the apartment on Waterhouse Street that Isabelle found when she opened the door to Kathy’s room, but the bedroom on Gracie Street in which Kathy had died. Kathy lay stretched across the bed, half-covered by a comforter, but she wasn’t sleeping.

She should have listened to John, Isabelle realized, and spared herself this. But now it was too late.

Now all she could do was make her numbed way through the doorway and step into another piece of the past.

Everything was the same as it had been when Isabelle had entered this same bedroom on that awful morning all those years ago. The pill bottles scattered on the hooked rug beside the bed. Kathy stretched out, her face gone an awful blue, lying there so still, not moving, not moving at all when Isabelle had called out her name, not moving when Isabelle had tried to shake the stiff body that had once housed her best friend’s soul.

And now Kathy was dead again.

Isabelle got as far as the end of the bed before she slowly sank down to the floor, arms cradled on the mattress, face pressed into the crook of one elbow. She had no idea how long she knelt there, the tears streaming down her cheeks and into the fabric of her shirtsleeve. She didn’t call Kathy’s name as she had on that other morning. She didn’t go around to the side of the bed and touch the stiff shoulder.

She heard John enter, but she couldn’t turn around to look at him. She couldn’t even lift her head.

John remained in the doorway. He didn’t speak. He was so silent at first that she couldn’t even hear him breathe. There was only the sound of the floorboards creaking as he occasionally shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Finally Isabelle raised her head. She looked down the length of the bed, but the corpse’s shoulders, covered by the comforter, blocked her view. She couldn’t see Kathy’s face from here, but she remembered all too well the emptiness in it, the vitality drained from those solemn grey eyes and once mobile features, the blue of her skin. Isabelle wiped her eyes on a dry part of her sleeve and cleared her throat.

“Rushkin said he could bring her back,” she said after a moment. “I know. I heard him tell you.”

“Could he really do it?”

When John didn’t reply, Isabelle slowly turned to look at him. “It’s possible,” John finally said.

Isabelle nodded. Of course. The deeper she got into all of this the borders between what was possible and what wasn’t seemed to stretch further and further apart.

“As a numena,” she said, filling in what she thought John wasn’t telling her. “As someone that looks like her, but isn’t her.”

John shook his head. “Remember what I told you about this place. Things that happen here reflect back into the world we’ve left behind. Rushkin might well know a way to revive her here and then give her safe passage back. There’s more that we don’t know about than we do.”

“But he’s not God.”

“No,” John agreed. “He’s a far cry from God.” He paused, then added, “Things are true here—that’s something you can’t forget. Whether it’s an echo of the world we’ve temporarily left behind that’s strayed here with us, or something we do that gets reflected back. It’s all true.”

Isabelle pushed herself up from the mattress and stood. She didn’t look at the body on the bed behind her, but faced John instead.

“I think I might hate Rushkin for that offer of his even more than for everything he’s done to me or the others.”

John nodded and she saw that he understood. That he realized how hard it was for her to refuse Rushkin’s bargain. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes again, then stepped past John into the hallway behind him. She didn’t look back into the room. John regarded the body for a moment, then slowly closed the bedroom door and followed her into the living room of the Waterhouse Street apartment.

Neither of them remarked on the impossibility of that other bedroom being here in this apartment. By now it was all part and parcel of the strangeness that had overtaken them, from Isabelle looking the way she had twenty years ago—right down to her old monochromic black wardrobe—to the juxta-positioning of the normal relationships of space and time.

When they returned to Isabelle’s old bedroom, she opened up the closet to look for warmer clothes.

Black boots. Black parka. Black scarf and gloves. She put the outerwear on mechanically, her attention fixed on some distant, invisible thing that only she could see. John leaned against the wall, watching her dress, concern plain in his eyes.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked when she was ready to go. Isabelle responded with a tired look that couldn’t begin to encompass the numb, lost feeling that she held inside.

“I don’t think of being ‘all right’ as an option anymore,” she said. “All I want to do now is get through this. I want it over with and finished, once and for all.”

John nodded. “And after?”

“We don’t know that there’s going to be an after, do we?” she replied. Her gaze settled on his, still lost, still weary. John nodded again, then led the way outside.

They used the front door of the apartment this time, descending to street level by the stairs. The cold air hit them with a blast of wind-driven snow when they stepped outside.

“We have to make a stop on the way,” John told her.

“Whatever.”

When they moved off the porch, he paused to brush the snow away from the brick border of the small garden that ran the length of the walkway. He kicked at one of the bricks until the frozen grip of the surrounding dirt was loosened enough for him to pick it up. Isabelle watched him without comment.

On Lee Street, he used the brick to break the window of the door of a pawnshop. Ignoring the klaxon alarm that resulted, he quickly opened the door and stepped inside. He moved purposefully, collecting a handgun and a box of shells from behind the store counter. They were already blocks away by the time they heard the answering wail of a police siren, but neither of them was worried. The wind was erasing their footprints almost as fast as they could make them and they were far enough away that it was unlikely the police would connect them to the robbery and stop them.

“Will that actually do any good?” Isabelle asked as they paused in a doorway so that he could load the gun.

John inserted the last shell, then closed the cylinder. He wiped the snow that had collected on the metal against the inside of his jacket before sticking the handgun into the waistband of his jeans.

“I told you before,” he said. “Rushkin can die here—but only if you bring him into this dreamtime.”

“You said that before, but I don’t know how to do it.”

“Concentrate on him. On his being in the studio. Call to him. But be careful not to give away our intentions.”

For the rest of the way to Stanton Street Isabelle tried to do just that. She ducked her head against the wind and snow and shuffled along at John’s side, trying to disregard the enormity of what they were about to do, to address her attention to one thing at a time. First she’d try to put Rushkin in the coach-house studio, then she’d consider what came next.

She concentrated on Rushkin, but not on the man she remembered studying under. It was impossible to hide the hatred connected to those memories. She focused instead on the artist who had created The Movement of Wings, the painting that had first inspired her to become an artist herself, to stick with it, despite the obstacles in her path. It was easier to do than she’d expected. Even with all the horrible memories she had of Rushkin, she was still able to divorce the man from his art, the darkness from the genius. She could still call up the warmth and affection she had for his work and then, through it, the artist himself.

She was so intent on what she was doing that she didn’t realize that they’d arrived at Stanton Street until John stopped and caught her by the arm. She looked up to find that they were in the laneway leading down to the coach house. Ahead of them, through the falling snow, she could see the warm lights of the studio.

“There’s only the one entrance, right?” John asked.

Isabelle nodded. “You have to go outside by the stairs to get into the down-stairs apartment.”

“Wait here,” John told her.

He slipped away before she could object, moving like a ghost through the blurred curtains of snow.

She watched him circle the building, looking in each ground-floor window. When he started up the stairs, she hurried to join him. He turned, but the look on her face killed any attempt he might have made for her to wait outside.

If she was going to be responsible for what happened here tonight, she’d decided, she was going to be fully responsible. There was no more room in what little life she might still have left to once again let someone else shoulder her obligations. She had to be accountable.

She didn’t have nearly John’s silent grace, but the thick snow on the stairs and the howling wind muffled any noise she made. When they reached the door, John carefully tried the knob. It turned effortlessly under his hand. He looked over his shoulder at her and she nodded to tell him she was ready—at least as ready as anyone could be in a situation such as this. John gave her a look that was meant to be reassuring, to instill confidence, but it wasn’t enough to comfort her. He turned back to the door. Drawing the handgun from the waistband of his jeans, he shouldered the door open and entered fast, crouched low, holding the gun in front of him with both hands and aiming it in a wide sweep across the studio.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said.

The catch in his voice made Isabelle hesitate on the landing. Ahead of her, John straightened up. The hand holding the gun hung loosely at his side. Entering behind him, Isabelle had to immediately turn back outside. She reeled against the banister, scattering clumps of snow from it as she banged into the railing and leaned over it to throw up. The image of what she’d seen was burned into her retinas: a perverted inversion of da Vinci’s famous study, The Proportions of the Human Body, except it was a three-dimensional rendering rather than pen and ink, utilizing a real human being. The man had been nailed naked to the wall, his body slashed and hacked, strips of flesh peeled away to reveal the musculature underneath the skin, blood gathering in a large pool on the floor below the drained corpse.

She vomited until all she could bring up were dry heaves; then she fell to her knees in the snow, head pushed up against one of the railing’s support poles. When John appeared in the doorway, she could only stare at him, the horror of what she’d seen still trapped behind her eyes.

“Who ... who ... who could do such a thing ... ?” she finally managed. But she knew. There was only one true monster in her life, one individual capable of such an obscene act, but she couldn’t even believe it of him. “It’s Rushkin,” John said.

Isabelle nodded; the last lingering tie to her mentor was finally severed. She knew she wouldn’t ever be able to look at The Movement of Wings now, at Palm Street Evening or any of Rushkin’s other paintings, without the genius of the work being overshadowed by his monstrosities.

“I know,” she said. “It’s taken this to show me that he really is capable of anything.”

“No,” John said. “The man on ... the man nailed to the wall. It’s Rushkin.”

Isabelle stared at John as though he’d gone mad. How could the victim be Rushkin? Who could be more monstrous than him? She got shakily to her feet and started for the doorway, shrugging off John’s attempt to stop her from entering the studio again.

“I ... I have to see,” she said.

She kept her gaze on the floor once she was inside and took a long steadying breath before she let it rise to look again at the corpse nailed to the wall. The wind coming through the door behind her dropped for a moment and her nostrils filled with a sharp coppery scent. Her stomach churned, but she choked back the sour acid that rose up her throat. Then the wind gusted up once more, taking the smell of blood away, if not the memory of it. That hung on in Isabelle’s nose and continued to make her stomach do slow, queasy flips.

She did her best to look at the scene with a clinical detachment, the way she’d been able to go to the morgue for anatomy classes during her years at Butler U. The corpse’s features were caked with blood, but she saw that John had spoken the truth. She stared for one long awful moment at Rushkin’s face, then made her gaze travel up. It was hard to make out details on the body because of the abuse it had undergone—she didn’t want to make out details—but she saw enough to realize that the musculature had far more bulk than she remembered Rushkin having the last time she’d seen him. The corpse’s body shape was more like that of the squat, trollish figure she remembered meeting that day so long ago on the steps of St. Paul’s.

She found herself staring at a particularly gruesome wound and suddenly had to turn away. She hugged herself, trying to stop from gagging. Keeping her back to the corpse, she looked at John. He lifted his hand and returned the gun he was holding to the waistband of his jeans.

“This is true ... isn’t it?” she said in a quiet voice. She was surprised at how calm it sounded. “This has really happened, hasn’t it?”

John nodded slowly. “Except we don’t know when it’s true.”

Isabelle gave him a blank look. “What do you mean by ‘when’?”

“He’s like you,” John said, nodding at the corpse. “He’s younger—far younger—than the man we left behind in the Tombs not so long ago.”

Isabelle nodded. She’d felt the same. “So what does it mean?”

As John began to shrug, a familiar voice spoke to them from the far end of the studio.

“It means that a maker should never attempt a self-portrait—particularly not when the individual is as disturbed as was our friend here upon the wall. Who knows what you might bring across?”

They turned and Isabelle thought that she’d finally crossed over into madness, for it was Rushkin they saw walking toward them, the old and wasted

Rushkin they’d seen in the Tombs tenement. John reached for his gun, but Rushkin was quicker. He brought up the revolver that had been hidden at his side and sighted over the barrel at John.

“Tut-tut,” Rushkin said, shaking his head.

John hesitated, then slowly let his hand fall.

“You,” Isabelle began. To the sickness in her stomach was added a sudden disorientation that made her sway dizzily. “You’re one of Rushkin’s numena?”

Rushkin shook his head. “Not anymore. I am Rushkin and I’ve been him for a great many years.”

XVII

Davis had half turned in his seat while Rolanda spoke so that he could watch both her and the street outside his windshield.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “This Vincent Rushkin you’re talking about—do you mean the Rushkin?”

Rolanda nodded and Davis had to think about that for a moment. You couldn’t live in the city and not know about its most famous reclusive artist. There were no pictures of him. To the best of his knowledge, no one had actually seen him in public in twenty, twenty-five years. Davis hadn’t thought the man was even alive anymore.

“How do you know it’s him?” he finally asked.

“I’m sorry?” Rolanda said.

Why did people always apologize when they didn’t hear something? Davis found himself wondering.

“No one’s seen him in years,” he explained. “At least not that I’ve heard. There are no photos of him. How can you be sure that it was Vincent Rushkin who kidnapped your friends and not just somebody calling himself that?”

Rolanda gave him an odd look, then asked, “Does it matter? They’re still being held inside that building against their will.”

Cosette spoke up from the backseat. “It’s Rushkin.” When the other two turned to look at her, she added, “You would know if you saw him. No one else could hold so much darkness in their body and still pass themselves off as human.”

Davis nodded, but it was more in agreement to what Rolanda had said than Cosette’s curious observation.

“Do either of you know where the hell we are?” he asked. “Besides the obvious.”

When Rolanda and Cosette both shook their heads, Davis looked out the window again, trying to find a landmark. He was about to give up when he realized that the taller building behind the tenement with a dozen or so chimney stacks foresting its roofline looked familiar. It took him a moment before he remembered the name of the abandoned factory, then another while he mentally cross-referenced it to the city map he carried around with him in his head. Plucking the microphone from the dash, he radioed in their position and requested backup. When he got an affirmative, he replaced the mike and leaned back in his seat.

“That’s it?” Rolanda demanded when it was obvious he wasn’t planning to take action.

“We can’t do anything else until the backup gets here.”

“They could be dead by then.”

“Look, lady—Rolanda. I have to follow certain procedures.”

“Well, I don’t,” Cosette said.

Before they could stop her, she’d popped open her door and stepped out into the night. Rolanda and Davis watched her scurry into hiding behind the abandoned bus. She studied the tenement for a few moments, crouching in the same spot where Bitterweed and Scara had captured her and the others earlier. When she darted across the street, Rolanda opened her own door.

“Now, hold it,” Davis said, grabbing her arm. “We can’t all just go off half-cocked like a bunch of—”

Rolanda pulled free of his grip. “Do what you like,” she told him, “but don’t try to tell me how to live my life, okay?”

Stepping out of the car, she hurried after Cosette. Davis slammed the ball of his palm against the dashboard.

“Shit!” he muttered.

He reached under his seat and pulled out a shotgun. Once he was outside, he stood listening, but the night air didn’t bring the welcome sound of approaching sirens. Davis sighed. He gave it another minute; then, against his better judgment, he followed Rolanda and Cosette into the derelict building across the street.

XVIII

Isabelle stared at Rushkin’s numena, this creature he’d made the mistake of calling across from the before with a self-portrait, and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. She had to ask herself, had she ever met the real Rushkin? Would she even know the difference? The Rushkin who stood here threatening them with his revolver was the man she remembered, the man she knew. He had the same features, the same voice and the same eyes. He carried himself with that familiar arrogance, and she soon discovered that, just like the Rushkin she’d known, he loved to hear himself talk. So how could she think of him as anything but Rushkin?

Rushkin, for his part, seemed particularly intrigued by John’s presence. That puzzled Isabelle until she realized that, insofar as Rushkin knew, he’d already killed John.

“I have to admit that I am curious,” Rushkin said. “How did you survive?”

John shot Isabelle a quick warning glance before replying. Isabelle understood. Rushkin knew nothing of Barbara’s abilities and that was the way it should stay or Rushkin would turn to her next.

“It’s no real mystery,” John said. “We foresaw it coming to something like this, so we had Isabelle make a copy of her original painting, one that opened the gate only a crack—enough to give you a taste of the before, but no more.”

Rushkin regarded them with an admiration that made Isabelle want to crawl under a carpet, out of his sight.

“Now that was clever,” Rushkin said.

John acknowledged the comment with a nod, then lifted his hand to indicate the corpse hanging on the wall behind them. Rushkin’s index finger tightened slightly on the trigger of his revolver, relaxing when he realized the innocence of the gesture.

“When did you kill him?” John asked in a quiet voice.

“We disagreed on my existence—he had a conscience, you see.” The smile that touched his lips was as feral as Scara’s had been. “But it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? It was too long ago to make any difference to us now.”

Isabelle shook her head. “How can you say it doesn’t make any cliff—”

“To all intents and purposes,” Rushkin broke in, “I am the only Rushkin now. The only one you have ever met.”

“I don’t believe you,” Isabelle said. “We know that numena can’t harm makers.”

“They can here,” Rushkin told her. “In dreamtime.”

That gave Isabelle pause. Of course. Why else had she and John come here to the coach-house studio?

“So you lured him here and then you just killed him,” she said.

She found it hard to put much conviction behind the accusation, since she herself was guilty of attempting to do the same. The only difference was that the Rushkin she’d come to kill wasn’t an innocent.

Rushkin shook his head. “No, I followed him here. A small point, I realize, considering that the end result was the same.”

“But all those paintings. I saw them being done right in front of me.” Anger flashed in Rushkin’s eyes.

“The talent belonged to me more than it ever did to him. I, at least, had the courage to use it.”

But not to show it, Isabelle thought. She’d give the creature this much: he did have talent. The work he had produced was stunning, but he hadn’t had the confidence to put it under the scrutiny of the academic art world where someone might have been able to debunk it. The only ones he had shared his work with were the hapless students such as herself who were too overawed by his presence to ever think of questioning him. And then there was the whole question of bringing across numena.

That gave her pause. A numena couldn’t bring others across, so who had painted Bitterweed’s gateway?

“You’re lying to us,” she said. “You couldn’t have brought Bitterweed across because numena can’t be makers.”

Rushkin laughed. “How would you know?”

“Because ..... Isabelle turned to John for help, but he was too intent on Rushkin to notice.

“You know only what I’ve chosen to tell you,” Rushkin said. “No more.”

“Then answer this for me,” John asked. “Our kind doesn’t change. We live forever as our makers brought us across unless our painting is destroyed or we are physically harmed.”

“What of it?”

“Why do you feed on us? Why does your appearance change?” Rushkin smiled. “I could tell you it’s only because I enjoy doing so.” Isabelle could feel the tension building in John. Don’t let him get to you, she wanted to tell him, but all she did was step closer to John.

“But the truth is,” Rushkin went on, “when I took my maker’s place, I lost my connection to the before. I have no choice now but to feed on what Isabelle here so quaintly calls numena.”

Isabelle bristled at the condescension in his voice. Remembering the advice she’d wanted to give to John, she made an effort to remain calm. Keep him talking, she told herself. Learn everything you can.

Doubtful as it seemed, something might prove useful.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“But you do, don’t you?” Rushkin said, addressing John.

“I’m not sure ....”

“Numena don’t need to eat or dream,” Rushkin explained to Isabelle, “because their needs are fulfilled through their connection to the before. By taking my maker’s life for my own, I was cut off from my source painting and forced to seek such sustenance through surrogates.”

“But not ones you bring across yourself,” Isabelle said, understanding finally. “Because they require a piece of you to be brought across and you can’t feed on yourself.”

“Exactly.”

“Where is your source painting?” Isabelle asked.

Rushkin smiled. “It would do you no good, even if it still existed. The connection between us is severed and I am no longer bound to it for my survival.”

“No,” Isabelle said bitterly. “Instead you have to feed on others.”

“Everything has its price,” Rushkin told her. “When I am unable to feed for a time, I grow progressively weaker. It begins with my losing my ability to maintain my natural appearance.”

“And how does it end?” John asked.

Rushkin shrugged. “Happily it has never gone so far.”

“Until now,” Isabelle put in.

“Until now,” he agreed. “But I believe we will still be able to come to an understanding. My promises remain, Isabelle. See me through this difficult time and I will ask no more of you. I will even bring your friend back for you.”

When Isabelle shook her head, Rushkin sighed.

“My threats remain as well,” he said. “Would you have John die for you? Don’t doubt that all the cleverness in your world or outside of it can help him now.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Isabelle said. “You can’t use John as a threat to make me do what you want. He won’t let me.”

Beside her, John merely nodded in agreement.

“And your other friends?” Rushkin asked. “Those of flesh and blood who are completely innocent except for the crime of knowing you?”

“You’re too late for any of this to work on me,” Isabelle told him.

“I am completely serious,” Rushkin said. “The first to die will be your friend Alan.”

“I’m serious, too,” Isabelle said.

Rushkin shook his head. “You would make a poor cardplayer, Isabelle. I see the fear written all over your face.”

“Of course I’m scared, but it’s got nothing to do with you. I’m afraid of the unknown. Of what comes next. You think I’m sleeping in that tenement studio, dreaming this, don’t you? But I’m not. I took the utility knife you were so thoughtful to leave on the worktable with the rest of those art supplies and used it to cut my throat.”

Not even conscious of the action, she lifted a hand up under her chin as she spoke and loosely held her throat as though, for all that she was separated by who knew how much time and space, she might somehow be able to stem the blood, close the wound that was killing her in the world she’d left behind.

“This dreamtime’s going to last about as long as it takes me to die,” she finished.

Rushkin stared at her aghast. “You couldn’t have ...”

“Couldn’t have what?” Isabelle countered. “Have had the courage? You can only push people so far, Rushkin. Back in that tenement studio, when I thought you’d killed John, I hit my limit.”

“But he’s not dead.”

“Doesn’t make a whole lot of difference now, does it? I still pulled the blade across my throat.”

That familiar anger woke in Rushkin’s eyes. “You’ve killed us both!” he cried.

“Christ,” Isabelle said, feeling not nearly as brave as she was trying to sound. “I sure hope so.”

The muzzle of his revolver swung away from where it had been pointing at John to center its aim on her. Looking into Rushkin’s enraged features, Isabelle realized that she wasn’t going to have the chance to bleed to death back in the tenement studio.

“No,” Rushkin said in a dark, cold voice that Isabelle knew all too well. “I won’t let you win. I will find those few numena you have hidden from me and I will feed on them. I will find another young artist and teach her to make me more. I will survive. But you won’t live to see me prosper.”

If she had to die now, Isabelle decided, she’d at least make her death worthwhile and try to take him with her.

She gave John a shove to the right and dove for Rushkin. The monster’s gun went off, the thunder of its discharge so loud in the confined space that she went partially deaf. She didn’t hear the bullet fly by her ear, but she swore she could feel the wind of its passage on her cheek.

Because of the ringing in her ears, the second gunshot wasn’t nearly as loud as the first had been, but that made little difference, for the bullet hit its target.

XIX

After almost knocking the key out of the lock in his hurry to get it to turn, Alan finally managed to get the door unlocked. He stepped back and tugged it open with such force that it banged with a loud thump against the wall, its knob knocking a hole in the cracked plaster. Marisa looked up, momentarily startled from her ministrations.

“It’s too late to worry about making noise,” Alan told her.

She nodded. “See if you can find something we can use as a stretcher.”

There was the table he’d used to break through the door, Alan thought, but it was too heavy. Then he remembered the pallet that Rushkin had been lying on. Under all those blankets, it hadn’t looked like it weighed much.

He picked up one of the unused canvases that were scattered across the floor of the room. Wedging a corner under his foot, he tugged up on it sharply until the frame broke. He repeated the action on another corner, then tore the canvas away from the length of wood he was left with. The makeshift club didn’t have a lot of heft to it, but it was better than nothing.

“Hurry!” Marisa called to him.

Alan gave a quick glance to the corner of the room where Marisa was bent over Isabelle’s still form.

Blood seemed to be everywhere. He darted out into the hallway, almost hoping he’d run into Bitterweed or Scara. He wouldn’t hesitate to strike out at them now. Because of them he was seeing the world through a red veil. Wherever he looked, superimposed over whatever his gaze settled upon was an image of the blood that had spilled from Isabelle’s throat and then welled over his own hands and forearms.

Isabelle had cut herself but it might as well have been Rushkin or his numena that had slashed her throat, since they’d driven her to it. For what they had done to Isabelle, for the threat they presented to Marisa and himself, he found himself responding with a savagery he hadn’t known he possessed.

So he was prepared for anything as he moved down the hallway, his club swinging back and forth alongside his thigh—anything, except for what he found in Rushkin’s room. The pallet was empty and neither Rushkin nor his creatures were anywhere to be found.

He felt a certain sense of disappointment as he walked slowly around the room, checking behind the door, under the narrow bed. He wanted a confrontation. He needed to have someone pay for what had happened to Isabelle.

Crouching beside the pallet, he pulled out the paintings he found there. The top one was of John. He might have thought that this was the real version of Isabelle’s The Spirit Is Strong until he realized that the background was different. No, this one belonged to Bitterweed. And under it he found the monochromic painting of Scara.

He stood the two paintings up so that they leaned against the side of the bed and stared at them through the red veil of Isabelle’s blood that he carried inside his eyes. He hesitated briefly, then lashed out with his foot and put it through Bitterweed’s painting. A sound of rushing air filled his ears. He turned to see

Scara snarling at him—not from her painting, but in the flesh. She was slashing out at him with a switchblade, but before she could cut him, he put his foot through her painting as well, falling to the floor as the second abrupt movement threw him off balance.

She screamed—a long, wailing sound that tore all the way through his anger to touch his heart.

No, he wanted to say. I didn’t mean to do this.

But it was too late. She vanished right there before his eyes in a whuft of displaced air, leaving behind only the echoes of her cry.

“Alan!” he heard Marisa shouting at him from down the hall. “Alan! Are you all right?”

He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“I’m okay!” he called back.

But he wasn’t. He felt sick all over again. This time for what he’d done—no matter if the pair had deserved it—as opposed to the wound that Isabelle had inflicted upon herself.

He disentangled the paintings from his feet and stood up. Under the heap of blankets, he discovered that the base of the pallet was an army cot. Grabbing one end, he dragged it down the hall to where he’d left Marisa with Isabelle.

“What happened?” Marisa asked as he pulled it into the room.

Alan briefly explained. He found sympathy in her eyes, but it was for him, for what he’d had to do, not for the two numena he’d so summarily dispatched. Five minutes ago, he realized, he would have felt the same.

“And Rushkin?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Gone.”

Marisa nodded. She looked down at Isabelle.

“Even with that cot to carry her on,” she said, “I don’t know how we’re going to get her out of this place.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Alan said. “If we don’t—”

Before he could finish, Marisa laid her free hand on his arm. “What’s that?” she asked, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.

Alan heard it, too. Footsteps coming up the stairs and now moving down the hall toward them. His mouth went desert dry, fear sucking all the moisture from his throat as he tried to swallow.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He grabbed his makeshift club from where he’d laid it on the cot and turned to the door to face the new threat.

XX

Davis caught up to Rolanda and Cosette in the doorway of the tenement. Rolanda smiled until he stepped around in front of them to block their way into the building. Both women visibly bristled when he insisted they wait outside.

“Look, you got me here—okay?” he said. “You did good. Now back off and let me do my job.”

Rolanda glared at him. “Your idea of doing your job is waiting for help. By the time anyone else gets here, they could be dead.”

“I hear you. That’s why I’m going in. Now. Without backup. But I can’t be effective if I have to worry about a couple of citizens at the same time. Is this getting through to you?”

Rolanda looked as though she was going to continue the argument, but finally she gave him a brusque nod. “Fine. Do your job.”

“Thank you,” Davis said, not quite able to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

He turned to try the door. The knob turned readily under his hand, and when he gave the door a gentle push it swung open. The air inside was stale with an undercurrent of bad odors that he didn’t care to try to identify. The walls and floor were in rough shape, holes punched in the plaster, refuse underfoot, graffiti everywhere. Your typical Tombs squat. It could be home to a bunch of harmless runaways and old winos, or it could be the clubhouse of a bunch of bikers, or some gang of street toughs with better armament than the NPD could ever hope to afford. In this kind of a situation, you just never knew.

Once inside, he stopped to listen, but there was nothing to hear, only the sound of his own breathing.

It was coming a little quicker than he’d have liked, nerves all on edge, skin stretched tight at the nape of his neck, shirt getting damp and clinging to his back. He knew he was being foolhardy, going in like this without any backup, but he’d made the commitment and he knew if he didn’t follow it through, Rolanda and the kid would do it on their own.

Screw it, he told himself. You only live once.

He slipped inside and headed for the stairwell. Halfway up the first set of stairs, he heard a scuffling sound come from behind him. He turned quickly, shotgun swinging around, finger tightening on the trigger. But it was only the kid. A moment later Rolanda followed her inside.

He started to say something, then shook his head. Short of shooting them, or handcuffing the pair to a lamppost outside, he didn’t see how he was going to be able to stop them from following him.

“Just keep the hell out of my way,” he told them, and started back up the stairs.

He reached the landing without incident and headed up the next set of stairs. On the second floor, he paused at the doorway of the first room he came to and looked inside. There were a few busted-up paintings lying on the floor along with a scatter of ratty-looking blankets, but otherwise it was empty.

Then he heard the sound of voices coming from a room farther down the hall.

Giving his unwanted companions a warning look, Davis moved on along the hall, cursing the way the floors creaked underfoot and the noise Rolanda and the kid were making behind him. When he stepped around the corner of the doorway, shotgun leveled, he almost fired. Standing in the middle of a seriously trashed room was a tall figure, covered in blood, some kind of club raised up in his hands. Behind him was a blonde woman, also covered with blood, who was crouching protectively over another woman.

But before Davis’s finger could exert more pressure on the trigger, more details registered.

No way the guy was going to get much damage in, wielding that puny stick.

More to the point, he looked scared as shit. And Davis knew him. Knew the blonde woman, too, from when he’d had the pair of them down at the precinct earlier in the day. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, Marisa Something-or-other. He saw recognition dawn on their features as well. Maybe he’d been a little too quick in scratching Grant from the top of his suspect list.

“Drop it!” Davis told Alan.

“But—”

“Drop it and assume the position, pal. On the floor, hands behind your head. Do it!”

As Alan started to comply, Davis felt a sense of relief that things were going to work out smoothly.

He’d gotten lucky. No crazed bikers. No crackhead with an AK-47 protecting his turf. Just a screwed-up guy who wasn’t going to be much of a problem at all. But then Rolanda and the kid pushed into the room behind him and he lost control of the situation.

“Oh my god!” Rolanda cried. “What happened?”

Cosette pushed past her and Davis, getting in the line of fire. Davis was about to yell at her, but then Alan threw aside the stick he was holding. “We need an ambulance,” Alan said. “Fast.”

“What we need,” Davis told him, “is for you to—”

But now Rolanda had gotten past him as well and there were just too many people moving around in the room. Davis lowered the shotgun, pointing the muzzle at the floor. On the other side of the room, Rolanda knelt down beside Marisa.

“If we can get her on this cot,” Marisa was saying, “we should be able to get her downstairs at least.”

“Who did this to her?” Rolanda asked.

Marisa shot Alan a glance. He was the one who answered.

“Rushkin. He cut her throat and then just took off.”

Davis moved a little deeper into the room and turned so that his back wasn’t to the door anymore.

He glanced uneasily down what he could see of the hall. “So where’s he now?” he asked.

Alan glared at him. “We don’t know. Now, are you going to help us, or do you want Isabelle to just die here waiting for you to make up your mind?”

Davis looked at Alan, then at the wounded woman, and made a quick decision he hoped he wasn’t going to regret later. The blood on Alan’s clothes could have come from his trying to help Isabelle. Fact was, the guy hadn’t struck him as capable of killing the Mully woman in the first place, little say cutting his own friend’s throat. None of them had a record and they were all so scared and screwed up about what was going down that he couldn’t help but try to take them on faith. For now.

“Okay,” he said. He turned his attention to Rolanda. “Think you can handle this?” he asked, holding up the shotgun.

When she nodded, he passed the weapon to her and knelt down beside the wounded woman.

Marisa had been stemming the blood with rags that were now soaked crimson. Davis quickly stripped off his jacket and shirt. He handed the shirt to Marisa and put his jacket back on over his undershirt.

“Cosette,” he said. “You and I’ll support her head and shoulders. Alan can handle her legs. On the count of three we’ll lift her onto the cot.”

“Why didn’t you kill Rushkin?” Cosette asked as she moved into position.

Alan gave her an anguished look. “I never got the chance.”

Davis filed that information away for the time being. There was a hell of a lot more going on here than met the eye, but he’d have to sort it all out later. Right now they had a life to save. Normally he would have left Isabelle lying as she was until the medics could get here, but Christ knew how long it’d take an ambulance to get through the Tombs to reach this place. As it was, the woman looked so weak he wasn’t sure she’d make it through the next few minutes, never mind a ride to the nearest hospital.

“One, two, three,” Davis said.

He’d been expecting a dead weight, but the woman didn’t seem to weigh more than a few ounces, tops. She was in seriously bad shape. Marisa had replaced the soaked rag bandages with his shirt and had held it in position while they moved the woman. It was already turning crimson. Not a good sign.

“She got cut on the side of the throat,” Marisa explained. “I don’t think any of the major veins were cut.”

“When did she pass out?”

“She hit her head on the wall as she was falling down.”

Great, Davis thought. So they had a concussion to worry about as well. “Okay, let’s get her out of here,” he said. “Rolanda, you and the kid take point.”

Rolanda gave him a confused look.

“Take the lead,” Davis explained. “Scout ahead. You hear anything, you come tell us. Don’t play hero.”

This time she didn’t argue. She gave a quick nod and went to the door, waiting there for Cosette.

Cosette stared down at Isabelle’s ashen features, her own face having gone almost as pale. She reached out a hand and lightly brushed a wan cheek with the tops of her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean those things I said about you.”

“Cosette,” Rolanda called.

Cosette nodded, but didn’t look away from Isabelle. “I know you loved us,” she said, “but it just didn’t seem to be enough.”

Then she turned away and hurried out of the room after Rolanda.

There was something seriously weird about that kid, Davis thought as he watched her go. He found a grip for each hand on the sides of his end of the cot.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” he told Alan as they lifted the cot between them.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want,” Alan said. “But not until we get Isabelle to a hospital.”

“Understood.”

Davis took the lead, walking carefully backward through the rubble. Marisa walked alongside the cot, keeping the makeshift bandages in place. None of them spoke again as they navigated their way down the stairs and out of the building, where the night was suddenly filled with sirens and flashing lights.

XXI

Isabelle didn’t feel any pain. She knew Rushkin had hit her with his second shot—how could he have missed at such close range? But then she’d closed the distance between them and there was no more time to think. She barreled straight into him, hands scrabbling for his gun, knocking him backward, off balance. Because of the force of her momentum, she lost her own footing and fell down on top of him.

They hit the floor with a thump that had to have knocked the breath out of him, but she didn’t let up.

This time she was determined to see things through. If she had to die, she’d be damned if she’d let him survive to torment someone else the way he’d tormented her.

He didn’t fight back as she struggled to get a grip on the gun in his hand. His fingers had gone oddly limp and she had no trouble pulling the weapon free from his loose clasp. Clutching the revolver, she scuttled sideways, trying to put some distance between them before she aimed the revolver back in his direction. But there was no need to fire. No need to see if she could actually go through with it and pull the trigger.

Rushkin lay sprawled on the floor where she’d knocked him, except she hadn’t been responsible for the blood that was splattered all over the floor and on the wall behind him. She stared at his corpse and it was only then that she understood why he hadn’t fought back. The second shot hadn’t been from his gun, but from John’s.

Her hands began to shake and she slowly laid Rushkin’s weapon on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her upper torso, but the trembling grew worse. She watched John enter her field of vision. He walked slowly up to Rushkin, his gun pointed at the monster’s chest as he toed the body. Once. Twice.

There was no response. When he was finally satisfied that Rushkin was dead, John put down his own weapon and walked back to where Isabelle knelt, shivering.

“It’s okay,” he said. He crouched beside her. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he drew her close. “It’s over now.”

Isabelle nodded. But it didn’t feel as though it was over. It felt more like it was just beginning. She felt stretched so thin that she knew something had to give. Still leaning against John, she looked back at the body.

“There’s ... blood,” she said. She regarded John in confusion. “But numena can’t bleed.”

“That we know,” he replied. “Remember what he said: all we know is what he’s told us. He might have taken over more than Rushkin’s life. He might have taken over his body as well.”

“Unless he was lying.”

John nodded. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the truth about some things, but it doesn’t matter.

Whatever he was, he’s dead now and we don’t ever have to worry about him anymore.”

Dead, Isabelle thought, and then she understood why she was feeling stretched so thin. Back there, in that tenement studio of Rushkin’s, the last of her life was finally bleeding out of her body.

“I think I’m dying, too,” she said. “I can feel the pull of my body fading away on me.”

“Hold on,” John told her, his voice suddenly urgent. “Don’t let go.”

“I don’t think I have much say in it at this point.”

And at least she wasn’t dying alone, she thought. Not like Kathy had died. Had Kathy regretted what she’d done when it was too late? Had she wanted someone to be with her as desperately as Isabelle knew she would if she didn’t have John?

“I wish I could have been there for Kathy,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t let her die alone.”

“You didn’t know.”

“But I should have figured it out. If I’d been a better friend ...”

“No,” John said. “That’s not the way it was at all.”

“But it is. You always told me to be more responsible.”

“I told you to be responsible for what you do—for your own actions. There’s a difference.”

“I still wish I’d come in time to stop her,” Isabelle said.

“Of course you do. That’s natural. But you can’t take responsibility for what she did. It’s not like she came to you and asked you for help and you turned her down.”

“But in a way I did. I wasn’t there for her anymore. Not enough. Not like I should have been. She loved me—unconditionally and right from the first. How could I have gone away and left her alone in the city?”

John could only shake his head. “You can’t live other people’s lives for them.”

“But—”

“And you can’t second-guess what they want,” John went on. “All you can do is accept the parts of themselves that they show you. We don’t live inside each other’s heads or have a script where everything we’re supposed to do is all worked out for us. If Kathy had wanted more from you, she would have told you.”

But she did, Isabelle thought. The only trouble was she’d either hidden her message away in her stories or written it in a journal that she’d only been willing to share after she’d died.

Isabelle wasn’t even leaving behind that much. She was beginning to feel thinner than ever. Almost transparent. She slid out of John’s arms and laid her head on his lap, looking up at him, too weak to do anything else.

“Hang on,” John said. “Think of yourself as having been healed, of going on from here. Don’t let go.”

Isabelle nodded, but it was so hard. “If I had another chance—not to change the past, but to go on, I’d do things differently. I wouldn’t just hide away on the island anymore. I think I’d take up Kathy’s work. I’d keep the island for any of the numena who wanted to live there, and I’d still live there some of the year, but I wouldn’t hide away from the world anymore. And I’d try to be there for my friends.”

She paused as a deep sorrow rose up inside her. It grew not for herself; but for all the time she’d wasted.

“Because if I died now,” she said, “not many people’d miss me. I’m just not a part of their lives anymore. When Tom Downs died a couple of years ago, I remember going to his funeral and seeing all those people there and thinking if it was me they were burying, I could count the mourners on one hand.”

She looked up into John’s eyes. “I’m not just feeling sorry for myself. It’s more like pity. That I could have let my life come to this.”

“I’d miss you.”

Isabelle gave him a sad smile. “Even with all those lost years between us?” John nodded.

“Did you ... were you and Barbara lovers?” she asked.

“No. We were only friends. Good friends.”

“I wish we could have stayed friends,” Isabelle said.

She closed her eyes. She heard John say something, but she couldn’t make out what it had been, because she was stretched so thin now that she was invisible.

I hope you waited for me, Kathy, she had time to think.

And then she went away.

XXII

Left behind in Rushkin’s studio, John bowed his head. The hands that had been stroking Isabelle’s hair lay on his knees. The weight of Isabelle’s head was gone from his lap. He was alone now in the studio, except for the two bodies. Isabelle had been drawn back into the world, out of dreamtime. He could feel the pull of the world on himself as well, but he held on to her dreamtime for a few moments longer. Nothing waited for him there in the world.

He regarded the corpse nailed to the wall, then let his gaze travel to the other Rushkin, the one he’d killed. Which had he been—numena or maker? In the end, John realized he’d told Isabelle the truth: it didn’t matter. All that was important was that the monster was dead.

There were so many dead. Rushkin murdering Isabelle’s numena. He, Rushkin’s. How had it come to be that he’d embarked upon such a course for his life? He sighed. Why did he even ask?

It began with Isabelle’s friend, Rochelle. He’d tracked down and confronted her attackers, wanting to know why they had done such a thing. They’d only laughed at him. And then one of them had said,

“You should’ve stayed on the reservation and minded your own business, Geronimo, because now we’re going to have to shut your mouth for you.”

They hadn’t known what he was. They’d been no match for him. He hadn’t meant to kill them, but once they were dead, he’d rationalized that their deaths had served to even the scales of justice.

That was where it had begun. He’d vowed to take no more human lives, to devote himself instead to protecting Isabelle’s numena. But on the night of his greatest failure, as the farmhouse burned and all those innocent spirits died, he took the battle to Rushkin, tracking down his creatures and dispatching them until the monster fled the country. That should have been it. That should have ended it. Except Rushkin had returned with the last of his creatures and the killing began again.

“Has it ended now?” he asked Rushkin’s corpse.

The monster was dead. Whatever had animated it, numena or maker, was gone. But the fixed stare of that dead gaze seemed to be focused directly upon him, mocking him. You win, it said to him, by which it meant he’d lost everything all over again.

John closed his eyes, calling up Isabelle’s features, needing them to wash away the choking swell of his memories, of too many murders, of the dead monster that shared the studio with him. In his mind, he repeated what he’d said to Isabelle, what she hadn’t heard.

We were always friends, Izzy. Nobody could take that from me—not even you.

But the lies he’d told her still lay between them, for when truth was the only coin one had, even one lie rendered all one’s coins suspect. He was guilty of far more than one. Whenever Isabelle had pressed him too hard, when changing the subject no longer worked, the lies had come. No, he hadn’t killed Rochelle’s attackers. He lived with an aunt in Newford. She didn’t care for white girls. Her apartment looked like this. One led so easily into the next.

If he’d been asked what he regretted the most, it would be the lies. The lies, and the pride that had kept him away from her when he knew she needed him, when he could have been with her and prevented the deaths of so many. For if he’d been there with her on the night of the fire ...

He remembered what the monster had said just before he died: Everything has its price.

He’d finally fulfilled the promise he’d made all those years ago when the farmhouse on Wren Island burned down and the inferno claimed so many of his brothers and sisters. He’d finally put an end to the threat Rushkin presented. But in the process, he’d lost Isabelle once again.

He opened his eyes and regarded Rushkin’s corpse.

“You’re right,” he told it, his voice bitter. “I win.”

Rushkin was dead. Isabelle’s numena were safe. But his share of the victory was only the memories made of ashes and dust that would be his companions once more.

He let the dreamtime fade and returned to the lonely world into which Isabelle had called him all those years ago.