She sighs loudly, impatiently. “The Muses have always been eternal, not mortal like we are. But they believe a human muse will come along, and that will mark the start of this new age.” She taps me now, right on the sternum. “That’s you, doofus.”
Human muse? What now? “Sophie, what are you talking about?”
She throws up her hands and looks at the ceiling. “Didn’t my brother tell you all this?”
Frustration gets the better of me, and I snap, “No one has given me a complete answer about anything!”
She cuts her eyes my way. “Then I will. The Muses have been expecting a human muse, and when they saw you hanging out with the Degas dancers one night, they figured out that you were the one. The one they’ve been waiting for. But since you’re the first, you’ll have to figure out for yourself what that means. Now, let’s get into that room.”
She says all of this as if she’s giving me directions to Notre Dame from here. Turn down this road, cross this bridge, and there you are—a human muse.
I look from the locked door to Sophie and back again. I picture Max taking the papers out of the black leather portfolio earlier. The ink must have barely been dry, and he was trying to steal the painting.
Sophie says quietly, “I’m not putting you on, I swear. If you won’t believe you’re a human muse, then at least believe that you’re the only one with the power to keep that painting safe. Perhaps the power to break the curse.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, wondering if this is any stranger than seeing Degas’ ballerinas performing in the gallery or entertaining the idea that the ghost of Renoir is inhabiting Max.
I picture Clio looking up at me, picture her face as she edges around the subject of being trapped in the painting. She’s as alive as I am, and if buying into this human muse business lets me save her, how can I reject the idea completely?
If I’m the only one who can keep her safe, then dammit, I’ll have to do it.
Break the curse and set her free.
Looking over Sophie’s shoulder to the door, I focus on the immediate and concrete problem. “The door is locked. We’ll have to find another way in.”
Her eyes are intense as she stares at me. “You’re the other way. You brought the calf, right? With the Muses’ dust in it?”
Just go with it and remember it’s for Clio.
I take the pink polka-dotted calf I won at the party from my messenger bag and hand it over. Sophie takes off the cap from the calf’s fifth leg and taps some of the silvery dust into her palm. “Now, draw a key and touch it with the silver dust.”
“Right, sure. No problem,” I say with an eye roll.
But her expression is dead serious. “Please.”
The sound of her voice does me in.
There is no joking, only earnest gravity. As I take out my sketch pad and a pencil, I remember how I’d rubbed my silver-coated hand across the page where I’d drawn Olympia’s cat and found a black cat’s hair. I’d dismissed the oddity and forgotten about it, but maybe . . .
The lock on the door is the kind that takes an old-fashioned skeleton key. I put my pencil to the paper and draw a precise, pristine skeleton key.
When I tear out the page and put away my sketch pad, Sophie holds out her cupped hand full of the silvery dust. I dip my finger into the dust as if it’s finger paint and then trace the outline of the key.
There’s a silvery glimmer like sunlight on fish scales as the paper quivers on my flattened palm. A moment later, the weight changes, and instead of a sketch, I’m holding a key.
Exactly what I need for the lock.
12
The key has weight and shape, and when I bring it to my nose, I smell rusty metal. I want to laugh in amazement, cackle with glee.
I have officially blown my own mind.
Yes, I’ve put things back into their frames. But I just took an idea and made it into a thing.
A thing I need to put to use before the forger-slash-shopkeeper comes back.
Sophie’s already at the door, gesturing for me to hurry. I fit the key into the lock, and it works perfectly.
The backroom is dim but not dark, and Sophie closes the door once we’re inside. I tuck the key into my pocket and take a look around.
The room is the size of a large closet, and the faint light comes from atop a desk with a vintage green-shaded banker’s lamp that could have come from a vendor in the store. The large ornate wooden desk stands proud against one wall. A cabinet is wedged into the corner.
Sophie is off and running, foraging through papers, wax seals from various art galleries, stationery from state-run museums, invoices of sales. All the tricks of the forging trade are here. One of the drawers is full of stuff to make the papers look older, like they have a history. At least convincing enough to fool the eye.
“Floppy Hair just picked up the documents today,” says Sophie. “There has to be some evidence of what they were doing.” She stops rooting around and looks at me expectantly. “Hello? We don’t have all day. Try the trash can.”
I stoop to pick through the trash. One minute I’m creating a key from paper and pencil, and now I’m pawing through someone’s litter. “Nothing here but a few apple cores and some rubber bands.”
“There has to be something. A slip of paper, a practiced signature . . . You saw the finished documents, Julien. Find something that looks like a first draft.”
I rifle faster through the papers on the desk, then the papers in the drawers, then the papers in the filing cabinet. Nothing.
Then I catch a glimpse—a bit of paleness in the shadows. A handful of pages have slipped into the steep valley between the desk and the filing cabinet. I slide my hand along the desk legs, grab the pages, and pull them out. They’re rough copies of fakes, first attempts at forged documents. My heart springs like a jack-in-the-box.
Because this is the evidence, the proof that Max, the street artist and, it seems, the host to Renoir’s restless spirit, presented nothing but fake documents to the museum. He has no claim on the Woman Wandering in the Irises.
Sophie cocks her head like a dog alerting to a sound. Then she hisses, “Hide the papers. Put them in your trousers or something.”
“Why don’t I just put them in my bag?”
“Because someone could ask to search your bag.” She goes soundlessly to the door. “Just hurry. And think of a good lie while you’re at it.”
She opens the door while I still have my hand down the front of my jeans, making sure the folded papers won’t go anywhere awkward. “Hey!” I whisper.
“Hurry!” she hisses back.
I do, leaving the office and clicking the door shut behind me. I walk past old phonographs and stiff ballet slippers into the main path through the store, where I come face-to-face with one of the most cunning art forgers in the world.
13
Cass Middleton has wide-set eyes and an athletic build. With her tan and her blonde hair pulled back high in a ponytail, she looks like she could compete in beach volleyball, which makes me wonder if she’s spent the last year lying low here or somewhere much sunnier.
I don’t wonder about it long, though, because I’m worried about getting out of the shop without letting on that we were poking around, investigating her criminal activities.
“Bonjour,” she says. “Are you looking for something in particular?” Her voice is amiable as she speaks to us in French, a shopkeeper who doesn’t want to lose a sale. But her gray eyes are sharp and piercing, like she smells a thief—or two.
I don’t have a plan, but I improvise one in a hurry. “Sorry. I don’t know French,” I say, widening my eyes and adopting a flat, broad American accent. People are used to clueless tourists.
Cass Middleton repeats the question in English, in her native British accent. “Were you looking for something in particular? Our store was closed for a few minutes, so I didn’t expect to see anyone in here.”
“Oh, gosh,” I say, widening my eyes in innocence. �
��I didn’t realize the store was closed. I just tugged on the door, and it opened right up.” I laugh as I wave toward the street.
Something wiggles in my pocket where I stashed the key.
That’s . . . unexpected.
It’s moving around in there.
Awesome.
I turn quickly to the nearest display, arranged like a lady’s dressing table, and grab the purple hat perched on a lamp. “We were looking at this hat. It’s just the kind of thing we hoped to find in the Marais.” I make sure to butcher the pronunciation. “Right, sis?”
Sophie nods, doing a good job of looking overwhelmed by all the Frenchness around us.
“It’s a lovely hat,” Cass says as the key wiggles a little more. “Shall I wrap it for you?”
“Yes. That would be great.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed looking around,” Cass says, appraising me with her stone-gray eyes. “My family and I pride ourselves on our unique items.” She heads to the register and rings the item up. I drum my fingers against the counter as she wraps the fake gift, purchased by a real thief, from one of the preeminent fake artists of the last few years.
A real thief with a key shimmying in his pants.
I dip my hand into my pocket like I can settle it down. But then, it’s gone.
Now you see it, now you don’t.
Or rather now you feel it, now you don’t.
I root around surreptitiously just to make sure, but nope. The key has vanished.
Good riddance, I say.
When Cass hands me my package and says, “Come back,” I finally make my escape with Sophie, some euros poorer, but with proof of the fraud that will keep Clio’s painting safe.
I wait until we’re a block away from the shop before I turn to Sophie and say, “I thought your brother would be here by now.”
She points down the street, and I look to see Remy walking toward us. “Did you find them? The fake papers?”
“Julien found them,” Sophie gushes. “And you’ll never guess what else.”
I jump in before this becomes a game. “What else is what I want to know,” I tell Remy. “Any other bombs you want to drop besides how I’m supposed to be this . . . human muse?”
Remy, no surprise, doesn’t look repentant. He just glances at Sophie and asks, “You told him?”
She folds her arms, her chin jutting out. “You didn’t.”
“Yeah. It was the perfect timing, really, finding that out while we were breaking into an art forger’s shop.”
“Well, it was,” Sophie insists. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to make the key to let us in.”
Remy’s gaze bounces between us. “I think I missed quite an adventure.”
“I’m sure Sophie will give you all the details,” I say, “since you tend to leave things out.”
He laughs first, then catches the look on my face. “Julien, you’re not seriously mad, are you?”
I sigh—one of Sophie’s loud, meaningful sighs. I’m more irritated than angry. “You couldn’t have said something the night we talked about all this at your home?”
“Would you have believed me back then?” he asks, about as serious as I’ve seen him.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.
“I thought it would be too much at once,” he explains, a note of apology in his tone. “I was worried you’d just walk away, and we need you.”
Before I can reply to Remy, my phone rings, and when I look, I see that it’s Simon. He rarely calls when he can text.
“What are you doing in the Marais?” he asks immediately.
“How do you know where I am?” I demand.
“Look falafel-ward.”
I glance across at the falafel restaurant and see Simon give me a cocky wave through the window.
“Be right there,” I tell him, then I hang up and turn to Remy. “Listen, I’m going to get something to eat and then give these papers to Adaline. She’s really worried about the Renoir.”
Remy frowns, looking like he might try and explain again, but I wave it off. “Don’t worry about it. But maybe you should write up a user’s manual, because this on-the-job muse training is the worst.”
Remy gives me one of his open-handed shrugs. “You’re the first one. Maybe you should write it yourself.”
“Maybe I will.”
I say au revoir to him and Sophie and head into the falafel house. I also pull the papers out of my jeans and look at them again.
“Hands in your pants again, Garnier?” Simon calls to me from his throne booth in the middle of the restaurant.
“Some days I just can’t help myself,” I say as I slide onto the bench across from him, dropping the bag with the hat next to me. Lucy is here too, sitting against him, two jigsaw pieces with interlocking edges that fit just so.
“What have you got there?” Simon asks, nodding to the papers in my hand.
“It’s complicated.”
“But is it interesting?” Lucy’s voice is a purr, and her green eyes are the perfect complement to the emerald streaks that curve like streams down her cascade of dark hair. “Complicated can be dull. Or complicated can be fascinating.”
“More of the latter,” I tell her.
Simon slaps a hand on the table, decreeing, “Well? Let’s hear it.”
Where should I start? Muses. Dust. Paintings that come alive. The voices I heard in Remy’s cellar. Voices that sounded like poetry, like history, like music, like art.
“Do you believe in Muses?” I ask Simon and Lucy.
He pulls her closer, which I didn’t think was possible. “I believe Lucy is my muse,” he says, then ducks in for a quick kiss.
“And what does she inspire you to do?” I ask, ignoring their sappy grins.
“To order falafels,” Simon says. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
He raises a hand, and the waiter appears as if by magic.
Magic. The word rolls through my brain like a marble in a tilting maze. There is magic in Paris. Magic in art, magic in dust, magic in my hands. I can’t help the grin that spreads, big and wide, over my face. These things are real, and they’re magic, and they’re happening to me.
Clio is real, and she is happening to me.
But there are also curses, and art getting sick at the Louvre, and Renoirs fading from sunlight they never see. If there’s good magic, wouldn’t there be bad magic too?
After we order, Simon returns to the question. “So, Muses. You mean the nine ladies who inspire artists, writers, musicians, and so on?”
“Yes. Those Muses.”
“Sure, I believe in them,” he says, surprising me a little.
“As you should,” Lucy offers. “The Muses are powerful women.”
I chuckle silently. Not all muses are women. “No argument from me.”
There’s a pause while I tap my fingers on the table, wondering how much of the truth I can share. The thing is, I have to tell somebody something, even just part of it, or I’ll burst.
“So,” I begin, “there’s this guy who came into the museum claiming to own the Renoir painting we just hung, when he clearly doesn’t. So I followed him out of the museum, and, long story short, I found these documents.” I put my hand on top of them on the table. “They’re versions of the fake papers he offered Adaline as proof that he owns the painting.”
“Look at you.” Simon grins as if he’s proud of my cunning. “You’ve gone from cat burglar to detective.”
“I’m just full of special skills. Speaking of,” I say, “can you put yours to good use and research someone for me?”
“Anything for a cat-burgling detective.”
I give him Max’s full name and ask him to research his family, who they are, where they’ve lived, what they’ve done, and any notable details about them.
“Do you want us to follow him too?” Lucy asks, and her eyes light up, mischief in full bloom. She turns to Simon. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“What I did for my summer vacation,” Simon quips, narrowing his eyes and shifting them back and forth. “Espionage.”
“Actually,” I say, my thoughts racing, “that’s not a bad idea.” Sophie seems to be doing Remy’s legwork. Simon can help me with mine. “That would be great if you would.”
The waiter brings our food, and we eat. Then I remember the hat, and on impulse, I ask, “Lucy, would you like a purple hat?”
“I would love a purple hat,” she says, and then coos when I hand it to her. She models it, tilting her head just so.
“That hat is turning me on,” Simon says, which is my cue to leave. I place some euros on the table, and the pair of them barely seem to notice.
Walking back across the city, I rehearse a slightly more detailed version of what I told Simon about my discovery of these papers, because obviously I’m going to have to tell Adaline something, even if it’s half-truth and half-fable.
But overall, I count the day a win.
Especially since Clio isn’t going anywhere.
14
I spread the desserts out on a bench in one of the galleries. Using it as our table, Clio and I sit on the floor in front of Monet’s picnickers. They have their own alfresco meal inside their frame but watch us with smiling eyes.
“This apricot tart is pretty much the best thing I’ve ever had,” I tell Clio as I show her everything I’ve bought.
“Better than chocolate? I don’t know, Julien. That’s a tall order. Chocolate is pretty decadent.”
“Mark my words. You’ll be moaning in pleasure once you try it.”
She arches a most flirty eyebrow. “Moaning in pleasure? All from a tart?”
And this is an opportunity if I ever saw one. “Take a bite, then, Clio,” I say, my voice lower, a little smokier.
With her gorgeous eyes on me the whole time, Clio tastes it. “Mmm,” she says, murmuring around the fork, then handing it to me when she’s done. “That is decadent. I can’t resist sweets.”
I set down the fork, push my palms against the floor, and lean into her, closing my eyes, dusting my lips across hers. Tasting her sweetness. She moans, a soft little sound, but still an enticing one that makes me feel dizzy everywhere, that makes my head go hazy. She inches closer, kissing me back with more fervor, her tongue sliding between my lips.
The Muse Page 10