“I won’t do it.”
Rushkin indicated his own numena. “They will kill you if you don’t.”
“They’ll kill me if I do. I heard as much before they brought me here.”
Confronted with Rushkin, Isabelle’s fear was swallowed by the anger she felt toward her old mentor.
She looked at him and saw a hundred painful deaths, the fire that had licked away at canvas and flesh, consuming all in its path. Never again, she had promised herself, and then she’d stopped painting gateways that would allow numena to cross over from their before. Never again, she repeated to herself now. Any of her numena that still survived, any that she might bring across with her new work, she would protect with her life. Where she couldn’t be brave for herself, the courage was there for those who had died before, for those who would die if she gave in to him.
“You have my word that you’ll be safe,” Rushkin assured her. He hid the hungry fire in his eyes behind an earnestness that Isabelle didn’t accept for a moment.
“Until the next time you need my ... my magic.”
Rushkin shook his head. “Once I have ... recovered, I will find myself a new protege. You will never see me again.”
“A new protege?” Isabelle said, startled.
All she could think was, how could she allow him to continue to spread his evil? But Rushkin, intentionally or not, mistook her shock for something else.
“I doubt we could work that well together anymore,” he said. “And besides, I’ve taught you all I know.”
Isabelle gave him a look of distaste.
“Oh, I see,” he said. “You thought you were alone.” He shook his head. “Hardly. There were many before you, my dear, and one since. Her name was Giselle, a lovely French girl and very, very talented. I met her in Paris, and though the city has changed, discovering her and working with her rendered my relocating there worthwhile all the same.”
“What ... happened to her?”
“She died,” Rushkin replied. He ducked his head and gave a heavy sigh. “Killed herself, actually.
Burned down our studio with all of our work and herself in it.” He indicated the two numena who had brought Isabelle to him. “These two were the only survivors of the conflagration and lord knows how I managed to save them.”
A deep stillness settled inside Isabelle. She remembered sitting at her kitchen table one morning some two years ago with that week’s edition of Time magazine and reading about that fire. The whole of the art world had been in shock about it, but it had particularly struck home with her because of her own fire all those years ago.
“Giselle Marchand,” Isabelle said softly as her memory called up the artist’s name.
“So you know her work. She could have given Rembrandt a run for his money with her use of light.
We lost a great talent that day.”
Isabelle stared at him in horror. “You killed her. You killed her just so you could feed on her numena.
You set the fire that burned down her studio.”
“I no more set that fire than I did the one that destroyed your studio.”
“At least have the courage to admit to your crimes.”
Rushkin shook his head. “You wrong me. And if my word is no longer of value with you, then look at me. Do you think I would have left myself in a position such as this? She had a death wish, Isabelle, and all that gorgeous art of ours fell victim to it. Without it, I am reduced to begging favors from an old student.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “You set that fire—just as you set the one in my studio.”
“I didn’t set that fire.”
“Then who did?”
Rushkin gave her a long considering look. “You really don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
He sighed. “Isabelle, you set that fire.”
Those few simple words made her reel back from him. She would have fled the room, except Bitterweed caught her by the arm and returned her to Rushkin’s pallet.
“You always had a gift for restating the truth to yourself,” Rushkin said, “but I never realized how thoroughly you would come to believe your own lies.”
“No. I would never ...”
She closed her eyes, but then the burning figures reared up in her mind’s eyes. She could hear the roar of the flames, the crackle of flesh burning, the awful stink of smoke and sweet cloying smell of cooking meat. But it hadn’t been meat, not meat that any sane person would ingest.
“The only difference between yourself and Giselle,” Rushkin said, “is that she let the fire consume herself as well as her art.”
“No!” Isabelle cried. She shook off Bitterweed’s grip and knelt on the floor, her face now level with Rushkin’s. She glared at him. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. You can’t make me believe your lies. I won’t believe them.”
“Fine,” Rushkin said. “Have it your way.”
It was plain from the tone of his voice that he was humoring her, but Isabelle refused to let him bait her any further. She clenched her teeth and sat back on her haunches. Cold. Silent. Staring at him.
“But you will still repay the debt you owe me,” Rushkin added.
Isabelle shook her head. “I won’t do it,” she said. “I won’t make people for you to murder.”
“People? You call them numena, yourself. Strictly speaking, a numen is merely a spiritual force, an influence one might feel around a certain thing or place. It has no physical presence.”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Of course I do,” Rushkin told her. “But you have to remember they’re not real.”
Isabelle looked at the two numena who had brought her to this place. “You heard it from his own lips,” she said. “How can you serve a monster such as this? How can you help him prey on your own kind?”
But neither of the numena appeared particularly perturbed.
“What do we care about the others?” Scam asked. “What have they ever done for us?”
Bitterweed nodded. “And we will be real. We have been promised.”
“By who? This father of lies?”
“He has never lied to us.”
Isabelle shook her head. “You don’t need him. He needs you. You’re already real. My numena live lives of their own and so do you. To believe otherwise is to believe his lies.”
“No,” Bitterweed said. “We need him.”
“All we ever did,” Isabelle said, “was open a door for you to cross over from your own world to this. You don’t need him any more than the man he based you upon needs me.”
“Quite the remarkable job I did making Bitterweed, don’t you think?” Rushkin remarked. “Of course it helps to have an eidetic memory.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Isabelle said.
“I know,” Rushkin said. “But you are wasting your time trying to convince them to see things your way. They know the truth.”
“Then how will you make them real?” Isabelle challenged.
“It’s quite simple, frankly. They require only a piece of your soul. Or mine. Or that of anyone such as us who can make them.”
Now Isabelle knew what Bitterweed had meant when he said she owed him. Though what he should have said was that she was owed to him. He and Scara had brought her to Rushkin so that she would rejuvenate her erstwhile mentor and in return Rushkin would give her to them. So much for Rushkin’s assurances of safety. So much for his giving his word. But then she already knew he was a liar.
“You’re a monster,” she said.
Rushkin shook his head. “You take everything far too seriously, Isabelle. You think of us as parasites, but it’s nothing so crass as that, I can assure you. The beings I require to restore me are not real in the sense that you or I can claim. I murder no one; I hurt no one. No one that is real.”