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 ...”