Promise me you’ll be careful. Promise me you won’t let that dark man find you.
That promise had been easy to make but, she realized unhappily, probably impossible to keep.
She knew she should go looking for Solemn John, right now, but she didn’t seem able to move. All she could feel was the feral look in the black-and-white girl’s eyes and wonder how many more just like her had been brought across from the before.
VII
Rushkin has put a piece of himself inside you.
Isabelle thought about that as she locked up her studio and slowly made her way down the two flights of stairs that would take her out into the central court on the ground floor of Joli Coeur. John had that much right, but she wasn’t sure if he understood the many levels that simple statement held for her.
Her love/ hate relationship with Rushkin was far more complex than she could begin to explain—even to herself. At the same time as she dreaded a new encounter with her old mentor, a part of her still couldn’t hate him.
She didn’t know who she’d be today if she had never met him on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral all those years ago. The abstract expressionism that was so much a part of her work since the fire still owed a debt to all she’d learned from Rushkin. His techniques, his views on art, the ability to call up the numena ... they all lived on inside her, along with an affection for him that she knew was as perverse as it was irrefutable. She understood he was a monster, but he had saved her from a life of prosaic ignorance, both as an artist and a person. Without the fire that he had woken in her, she might have put her art aside long ago and be working in some office right now. It had happened to so many of her contemporaries from university days; how could she be so certain it wouldn’t have happened to her? Rushkin had found the butterfly confused into thinking it was a moth and nurtured it so that instead of being drawn to the flame, she had become the flame. For that, for everything he had done for her, how could she not be grateful toward him?
She pushed open the door that led out of the stairwell and stepped out into the bustle of the courtyard. How could she explain any of this to John when she didn’t understand it herself? John would simply
She paused in the doorway, gaze caught by a familiar figure crossing the courtyard toward her. It was as though she had conjured him up by thinking about him, but she knew that this time that wasn’t the case. His returning to her now gave her a new sense of hope. This was what she wanted from John, she realized as she waited for him to reach her. She didn’t want a confrontation. She didn’t just want him to show up only because she had called him to her, but because he wanted to come.
It wasn’t until it was too late to retreat, until he was right upon her, that she noticed that the braided cloth bracelet he’d been wearing only minutes ago was no longer on his wrist. The doppelganger looked so much like her own John that for long moments all she could do was stare at him. She was struck with the same immobilizing shock as when she’d first seen her John’s face and realized that he was an exact double of the figure she’d painted in The Spirit Is Strong.
The courtyard’s crowded, she told herself. He can’t hurt me with all these people around. Maybe he doesn’t even want to hurt me.
Neither thought brought her any comfort as she looked into the dark wells of his eyes and saw not her John’s gentle warmth, but a feral quality and promise of cruelty that the man she knew couldn’t even have mustered in anger.
“Who ... who are you?” she asked.
“A friend.”
The voice was John’s, too, soft-spoken and firm. But the eyes mocked her, giving up the lie that his looks and voice so easily disguised.
“No,” Isabelle said, shaking her head. “You’re no friend of mine.”
“So quick to judge.”
Isabelle looked for help, but no one was paying any attention to their exchange. And what would it look like to an outsider anyway? John’s double hadn’t attacked her. He’d made no menacing gesture.
There was nothing in what he’d said that could be found threatening in the least. There was only the feral glitter in his eyes.
“Please,” she said. “Just leave me alone.”
“Too late for that, ma belle Izzy.”
Isabelle flinched at the sound of Kathy’s endearment falling so readily from his lips.
“What do you want from me?”
“A piece of your soul. That’s all. One small piece of your soul.”
The way he smiled did more to disassociate him from her John than had the missing bracelet, or the darkness that waited in his eyes. It was a hungry smile and gave his entire features an inhuman cast.
“Who brought you across?” she asked. But she knew. There was no one else it could have been but Rushkin.
“What does it matter? I’m here now to collect the debt.”
Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“Not directly, perhaps, but you owe me. Of this you can be very certain.” But Isabelle was still shaking her head. “I don’t owe you a thing,” she repeated. “Now get away from me before I call for help.”
The mocking smile left his lips, if not his eyes.
“No, no,” he said. “Don’t even think of it. You’d be dead before you opened your mouth.”
Isabelle tried to dart by him, but he moved in close to her, moved quicker than she could have thought possible. With his body shielding the action from the view of anyone watching in the courtyard behind him, his hand shot up to her neck. The fingers felt like steel cables as they pushed her head roughly up against the doorjamb and held it there.
“You don’t really have any choice in the matter,” he told her conversationally, “except whether you come in one piece or not.” The fingers tightened slightly. “Understood?”
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t even move her head, but he could read the defeat in her eyes. When he let her go, she gasped for air, her own hands rising protectively about her throat. The doppelganger put his arm around her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” he asked, all concern now.
Without waiting for her reply, he led her away across the courtyard, through the light scattering of midmorning shoppers, his face turned solicitously toward her, the feral hunger hidden under hooded lids.
But the bruising grip of his hand on her shoulder was a clear reminder of who was in control.
Outside Joli Coeur they were met by a teenage girl. The girl appeared to be colorless, a monochrome study brought to life. The hungry look in her eyes matched that of Isabelle’s captor.
“Mmm,” the girl said. “She looks tasty.”
“She’s not for you.”
“Not for you either, Bitterweed.”
Bitterweed, Isabelle thought on hearing her captor’s name. That made sense. Bitterweed to John’s Sweetgrass. Monster to his angel.
“Maybe not now,” Bitterweed said. “But later ...”
The girl laughed, a dark unpleasant sound that matched the maliciousness in her eyes. “There’ll be no later for this one.”
“Shut up, Scara.”
The girl’s humor merely grew. “Hit a nerve, did we? I think a bit more John Sweetgrass went into your making than you’ll ever admit to. Next thing you’ll be wanting her to fall in love with you.”
“I said shut up.”
“Who ... who are you people?” Isabelle asked.
Her throat was still sore and the words came out in a rasp. The pair turned to her. Her question seemed to have startled them, as though they were surprised that she could speak.