by Megan Chance
My heart raced like a mad thing. Joseph clutched his chest.
Nicholas said hoarsely, “Because you are tired. Because there is nothing more you can want, Odilé. You have inspired so many already. You know what a talent Hannigan is. Why would you destroy him? What more do you want?”
“What if I tell you I have no desire to disappear into the great nothingness?” she asked. “Obscurity does not suit me. I have not yet fulfilled my own wishes. Why should I die unsatisfied?”
“Don’t we all?” Nicholas asked. “Don’t we—”
“No.” My brother lifted his head. His face was pale, his eyes dark as he looked at her. “What if I could satisfy you? What if I could give you what you most desire?”
I thought at first he was mocking her, throwing back the words of her stories, the words of the bargain.
She laughed. “How can you even know what that is, Joseph Hannigan?”
Joseph whispered, “I could make your name famous for an eternity. Yours. I can make people remember Odilé León forever. That’s what you want, isn’t it? It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
She had been drawing from us relentlessly, and suddenly she wasn’t. My head cleared, my vision sharpened. And I saw she was looking at him, her focus intent, as if she did not quite believe what he was saying, as if he had come upon a great truth, and I realized he had. He had, as always, seen what others had never noticed, what others could not see.
“How would you do that?” she asked.
My brother said with confidence, “You said I could be the best of them. If you let us live, I promise you I will be. I will paint a portrait of you for the ages. I will give it your name.”
She went very still—it was unnerving, to see a serpent body so unmoving, to see not even a pulse in the coils.
Nicholas added, “He can do it, Odilé. You know he can. He’ll paint a masterpiece, and I’ll make certain he’s famous for it. I know the people who can help. Even without your inspiration, he has a destiny. I’ll do my part to make certain he meets it.”
I felt a surge of hope as I saw how she considered it. But when her answer came, it was not directed at my brother, or Nicholas. Instead, she looked at me.
Her fathomless eyes surveyed me dispassionately; I felt their poison in my heart. “How is it you can best me? What is your magic, Sophie Hannigan?”
I met that gaze, though it took all my will not to turn away. I felt Nicholas’s eyes upon me, nervous, yet determined and hopeful. I felt his love for me. I felt Joseph’s too, and with it I felt the strength of the world we had made together. “You said there was no meaning in life, but I think that cannot be true. I think I can give meaning to yours, if you will let me. Joseph will paint you, and Nicholas will help him find the fame he deserves, and I . . . I will tell the whole world the story of who you were. I will make it one of Venice’s best and most enduring legends. I will tell it across continents. I will never stop telling it.”
Odilé was silent. The night sounds of Venice intruded—the splashing of an oar, the faint strain of a gondolier’s song from far away—such normal sounds that they seemed fantastical, unholy and fearful.
“Is it not enough, Odilé?” Nicholas asked softly. “Or would you prefer another two hundred years of disappointment?”
It seemed I saw several lifetimes pass through her eyes. Regrets and sorrows and joys, but most of all, I saw exhaustion and relief, and I knew what her answer would be before she said, “I accept your offer.”
My brother sagged in gratitude. Nicholas smiled.
The jewels of her coils stung my eyes. I felt the lure of her as strongly as I ever had, the temptation and enchantment. Even in her horror, she was splendid.
Her voice was sibilant, hollow; it seemed to sink into me as if it were my own pulse. “And so . . . which one of you will take the gift? There must always be one.”
NICHOLAS
I was so overcome with relief at Odilé’s agreement that it was a moment before I understood what it really meant, that one of us must take her place. And then, as that horror dawned, another grew as I realized that Sophie was rising as if drawn by some bewitchment. Beside me, Hannigan cried out, “Sophie, no!”
There was a determination in her eyes—and something more than that. I saw once again that despair I’d seen in my bedroom as she’d told me the story of how her scars had been made.
“No,” I said quietly, and when she looked at me I felt both pain and joy. “Not this, Sophie. This isn’t for you.”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“She is tired of living in the shadows, is that not true, cherie?” Odilé whispered, and that voice, even touched with its serpent’s hiss, was as seductive as ever. “What she wishes is to walk into a room and have people see her. She does not wish to fade next to her brother. She does not wish to be second best again. This is what you want, is it not so? Tell them, Sophie, what it is you most desire. Tell them who you really are.”
“Sophie,” I said desperately. “You’re not second best. Not for me and not for Joseph. You’re everything, don’t you see? You don’t need this. Don’t do it.”
Sophie said tightly, “Someone must, and—”
“Then let it be me,” Hannigan interrupted. He lurched toward Odilé, holding out his hand. “I’ll take the gift. Right now. Give it to me.”
Sophie grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back. “Joseph, don’t be absurd! It would be no better than the bargain.”
The air around Odilé pulsed. I felt it in my muscles, the rapid beating of my heart as she drew upon it.
It seemed as if the scene before me froze—Hannigan offering his hand to Odilé’s lamia; Sophie watching in horror, grasping his arm—and in that moment, I was struck with a clarity that was like the cracking open of the world. The thing I had known and not let myself see—the absurd belief that my talent could have brought me fame, had Odilé not destroyed it. I understood now that she had not taken it from me. Had she not already said as much? On that street in Florence. . . . You haven’t enough talent to change the world. I had known it then, but I had been determined to find blame for my own lack, to believe a lie that was more comfortable than the truth. Yet inspiration had returned to me, hadn’t it? Sophie, and love, had given me what I’d thought was lost.
I thought of what Sophie had said about her brother, I cannot live without him. And I knew that was true—Odilé could not choose either of them to take her place, because the twins were too connected. There must always be one, she’d said. What had kept the bargain from sealing would prevent this too.
It had to be me.
If I did not take the gift, we would all die. Joseph Hannigan’s talent would be gone. And Sophie’s too. The words on Sophie’s note settled hard within me. I love you.
I stepped forward. It was my first completely selfless act—it was the only thing to do to save the woman I loved, and I thought—I hoped—that perhaps it would make a difference, to take the gift not out of greed, but out of love. “They cannot be chosen. The gift belongs to me, Odilé. You know it as well as I.”
Sophie cried out in a grief and dismay that tore at my heart. Her brother said, sharply, desperately, “No, Dane. For Sophie’s sake, don’t do this.”
But it was for her sake I was.
“A man.” Odilé ignored them both, as I forced myself to do. “Yes, why not? An incubus muse. It is woman’s time to shine, I think.”
She met my gaze. Here was the demon I’d seen crawling upon the dead. Here was every nightmare I’d ever had. But here also was the Odilé I’d loved, and I felt the bond between us—seven years of pursuit, seven years of bondage. Symmetry, as she was so fond of saying. I was ready to bring it to an end, and I think so was she.
“There must always be one,” she told me, again, her coils undulating. “And you will have three years to choose each time.”
“I understand,” I said.
“There is a trunk in my bedroom. In it, you will find eve
rything I know.” She smiled softly. Her gaze took in Sophie and Joseph before lighting again on me. “I had thought there was nothing new in the world. How strange to find I was wrong.”
I felt the weight of her regard, and with it an acknowledgment that the last seven years had not been devoid of meaning, that I had been a worthy adversary. That I had been important after all.
“Have you a knife?” she asked.
I reached into my coat pocket and took out the one I always carried. “It’s quite small.”
“It is large enough for this.” She reached for me, gripping my arm and pulling me close, so her coils tangled about my feet—this was what I would become. It was my last chance to refuse. I glanced at Sophie, who looked stricken.
“Nicholas,” she whispered.
I ignored her, and the pain in my heart.
Odilé said, “What do you most desire, Nicholas?”
“To matter,” I answered.
She smiled. She whispered in my ear, “Hold to your promise. Make Joseph famous. I want the world to know my name.”
“I will,” I vowed.
She drew back, staring into my eyes, the gray subsumed by dark, everything we’d been to each other swirling in their depths. “Goodbye, cheri.”
I plunged the knife into her breast and heard her little gasp of pain; I saw her relief and gratitude.
Then she went lax in my arms, and I felt the flood of the transfer, an energy greater than anything I had ever known sweeping into me, and I cried out, releasing her without meaning to, collapsing beside her on the marble floor, watching her transform into herself again, the woman I had once loved—beautiful Odilé—as I felt the monster come to life within me.
DECEMBER, 1879
SOPHIE
It was snowing. The marble angels of the Salute were faint and ghostly through the fog of snowflakes, and the usually translucent domes looked to be covered with the fallen wing feathers of the heavenly host trumpeting their glories. On either side of the church, the balconies and rooftops of the palazzos were sugared like iced confections. The Canal below was a deeply opaque green, as if the snow falling within it had mixed like the paints on Joseph’s palette, a whisk of white into pure emerald. Gondolas were nothing more than sliding shadows. There was a quiet upon the world that one felt even through the buzz of talk in the Alvisi, as if Venice had become even more an enchanted city, one only existing in a fairy tale.
Oh, but it was that, wasn’t it? Even more so now, for me.
“. . . and the city took on again its everyday mask,” I said to the group of listeners gathered about me, continuing the story I’d been telling for the past hour. “The oil lamps in the corner shrines were lit as they always were, the rats stealing bits of offerings left for the saints as they always did, the cats lifting their taunting tails as they slinked by. It was as if nothing had happened and nothing had changed. The veil lowered, and no one but they three knew what really lay beneath, or what strange enchantments existed beyond the sight of men.”
I let my voice fall to a whisper, and for a breath—for the briefest of moments—the snowfall hush of Venice descended upon our little group, and the sounds of the conversations in the room beyond seemed to fade.
Frank Duveneck was the first to leap to his feet. “Marvelous!” he said, clapping. “My God, Miss Hannigan, you do have a way with a tale. Why, you almost make me believe such things exist as immortal succubi!”
The cartographer sitting beside him laughed. “Indeed! Hannigan, for shame! Why did you not tell us before that your sister was such a brilliant storyteller?”
We all looked over to where my brother stood beside the painting that held the place of honor in the main sala. Joseph smiled and winked, and my heart swelled with love for him. “Sophie’s been shy. I’ve only just convinced her to show the rest of you what I’ve always known.”
Duveneck’s gaze went to the painting. “Did she really exist? Is the woman on your canvas really the succubus in the story?”
I wondered if I was the only one who saw the sadness in my brother’s eyes as he said, “Well, that’s the pleasure of a story, isn’t it? Deciding for yourself how real you wish to make it.”
The painting was the masterpiece Odilé had known it would be. Joseph had told me, I want it to be worthy of her, Soph. And it was worthy. It was exquisite—a woman posed at the doorway to a bedroom, looking back over her shoulder as she reached to take down her hair while demons in the darkness beyond beckoned. A ghost in a twirling chemise. A monster with glowing eyes. An angel who was sometimes a devil, depending on the light. Odilé León, Inamorata, he’d called it, and every night for a week critics had gathered about it, lauding him, scrawling excitedly in their notebooks. It would go to the Exhibition at the Salon of Paris next, thanks to Nicholas’s connections.
“How vibrantly you’ve done her,” Duveneck said. “I almost imagine that if I kissed that mole on her back I would feel warm skin. Such an alluring flaw!”
The cartographer said, “It’s the flaws that make true beauty, don’t you think, Duveneck? Symmetry is boring.”
“It was the flaw that was my inspiration,” Joseph said quietly, with a smile that was just for me.
“Well, if she is real, I’d give my soul to meet her. Where is she?” the cartographer asked.
“Turned to smoke and drifted away, as I just told you,” I answered.
They all laughed. It was just a story, after all. Such bargains were the stuff of legends, best told on cold winter nights over glasses of wine. Spells cast in inebriation and dreams, inexplicable, impossible. Layers beneath the world, like the angel/demon in Joseph’s painting, only visible in a certain light.
The cartographer said, “You’ll tell us another story tomorrow? Your tales have become the sole reason I attend this salon, Miss Hannigan, so you must promise to be here.”
I nodded and smiled and said that of course I would be here, where else should I be? I had to admit the attention was heady, and I loved telling the stories for an audience. It was not just Joseph and me who needed such gilding in a cruel and ugly world, and I liked that the way I colored it stayed in their hearts and minds, in their dreams.
When the others disappeared into the crowd, Joseph came up behind me, squatting at my chair to rest his chin upon my shoulder, his thick hair brushing my cheek. “They half believe it.”
“Sometimes I half don’t,” I mused. “But then, it felt so real, didn’t it?”
“Your stories always do,” he said.
And it had begun to feel like a story, truly. Something I’d imagined, words formed from nothing. Odilé seemed at times like a trick of the light—her laughter, the jewels that had glinted at her throat, the serpent’s coils, and the red of the blood on her breast as Nicholas withdrew the knife—flickering in and out of my sightlines like a ghost, though I had watched her leave us, and I knew she was gone. I had seen her turn to smoke the color of her eyes and drift away in a sudden breeze through the courtyard while we watched in stunned surprise, and then Nicholas had raised his head and said with a sigh, “Well, that’s it then. It’s done,” and Joseph had followed the last of the smoke with a gaze so full of compassion I wanted to cry. Then he blinked and helped Nicholas to his feet, and they had clasped shoulders like comrades in arms, like brothers.
They’d come to me and Nicholas had taken me into his arms, and the moment he’d touched me, I felt the draw of his hunger—so pure and sweet, so tempting. The longing for it had overwhelmed me, and I realized it was what Joseph had felt with Odilé. I understood. But Nicholas had jerked away, whispering, No. Oh no.
I’d known it then, just as he did. I had known it as I knew the beat of my brother’s heart. Nicholas had made his choice, as I had made mine. He had taken the gift to save both Joseph and me, and in so doing, he had made anything between us impossible. Because he was an incubus, and his very touch stole everything from me. Because he loved me, and because he loved my brother, and we loved him, he could get p
ast the wall that Odilé could never broach. We could not help but let him in, and his hunger drew the talent I’d once told him I didn’t have and left me weak and gasping.
Joseph murmured now, as if he knew what I was remembering, “Don’t, Soph. Don’t think it.” The words we used to banish every ghost and hurt.
I wiped at my eyes and said, “No, I won’t. I won’t.”
Joseph went suddenly still. Then he said softly, “He’s here. He’s just come.”
I don’t know how he knew it. Some connection between them, some understanding that had blossomed—two who had been under her spell, two she’d held prisoner—another link forged to bind the three of us forever.
I felt a shiver of anticipation, and looked up just in time to see Nicholas come into the sala. I saw the way others stopped and turned to watch him. He had always been handsome, but now he was beautiful, as if a light shone from within him, some angel’s light, so that the world seemed dim about his center. Irresistible. Odilé in male form, casting enchantment wherever he went. He strode into the room as if he owned it. Katharine Bronson was on her chaise, and when she saw him she motioned him over. A woman sat beside her—I’d heard her name earlier—Constance Woolson. I watched as he went up to her, as he bowed over her hand, and I saw how caught she was by his spell. I imagined I felt the leap of her heart.
“Look at how good he is. She belongs to him already,” I murmured, the ache in my chest growing.
Joseph kissed my cheek. “Yes. But he’ll always be yours, Soph.”
He was; I knew that.
I love you, Sophie, he’d said. I always will. Whatever you ask of me is yours—except to destroy you. That I won’t do.
Nicholas glanced up. His gaze came unerringly to me. He put his fingers to his lips and blew me a kiss, and it seemed I felt it float across the air to brush my skin. A feather-light touch, unbearably warm.
Joseph’s arm came around me, pulling me close. He buried his face in the crook of my neck as if he meant to breathe me in. I felt his lips move against my throat as he whispered, “Tell me you don’t regret it.”