Immortal Muse

by Stephen Leigh

*

  “Forgive me, Emilie,” she said. “I don’t mean to intrude, but I need to talk with you. It concerns Gustav.”

  Emilie opened the door to the rooms she shared with her sisters with a quizzical look on her face. She led Gabriele to a sitting room just off the entrance. The apartments were hardly lavish, set above the dressmaking school and store that the sisters operated. “May I get you some refreshment?” Emilie asked, though it was obvious that she was surprised at Gabriele’s attire, so obviously dressed for traveling. Gabriele shook her head, remaining standing even as Emilie sat in one of the embroidered chairs.

  “I can’t stay,” Gabriele told her. “I came to tell you that I’m leaving Vienna.”

  “Oh?” Emilie said in genuine surprise. “Gustav must have been upset to hear that; he won’t want his favorite model to abandon him.”

  “Gustav doesn’t know yet,” Gabriele said. “I haven’t told him. In truth, I won’t be telling him. You will—because you need to be his muse now.”

  She’d felt she had little choice. She didn’t believe Nicolas, didn’t believe what he’d said in his letter even while she’d hoped it was true. It would be too easy for him to simply take another identity, now that he knew where she was, and wait for the right moment to attack her as she’d attacked him, springing out when she was vulnerable. The letter might have been sincere—she still hoped it had been sincere—but it might as easily been a tactic to put her off her guard and make her stop hunting him while he searched for her.

  No, the only way to be safe was to leave Vienna, change identities herself, and wait. He would no more be able to ignore his compulsion than she was. She could wait and see where he was likely to be—following the spoor of violence, torment, and death—and reset the trap for him.

  If he had told the truth, the trap would never be sprung. If he had lied, then she would be prepared.

  She saw relief struggling with Emilie’s surprise at Gabriele’s announcement; the young woman’s hands fisted in her dress, gathering the fine cloth. She seemed to want to rise from her chair. “Here,” Gabriele said. “I have something for you.”

  From her purse, she gave Emilie a small vial of thick, blue liquid in a stoppered cut glass vial. “What is this?” Emilie asked as she took it. The liquid moved sluggishly behind the facets. She didn’t know if her elixir would help Gustav or not, didn’t know if it would give him immortality, or increase the length of his life from Nicolas’ flawed potion, or do nothing at all. But she owed him that chance, as she had owed it to Catherine Blake. She suspected that Catherine had taken the potion: her potion, the right one. At the very least, Catherine had lived longer than the few years that Nicolas expected of those he’d given the flawed elixir; she had survived William, who had died in 1827, some thirteen years after Nicolas had given her the potion. Supposedly she had died herself in 1831, but Gabriele hadn’t been there and she often wondered whether Catherine had—as she herself had several times—arranged for a false death and burial as she took on another identity. Catherine might be even now somewhere in the world, living another life, with her own obsession, whatever that might have been …

  It was a chance she would take with Gustav as well, if for no other reason than the guilt she felt. She’d thought of telling Emilie to take the potion herself as well, but she couldn’t do that, not knowing what changes and what personality alterations it might wreak on her. Nicolas wouldn’t hesitate, but she couldn’t play with her life that way. “Gustav’s been given a potion by Herr Srna,” Gabriele told her. “But I know that Herr Srna’s potion is incomplete. Gustav must take this one as well or there will be dire consequences for him. I need you to give it to him.”

  “A ‘potion’? A potion that does what?”

  “Gustav will tell you—in fact, you’ll witness its effects when you next see him. Give this to him. Please … please tell him I’m sorry, but I can’t stay.” Gabriele smiled down at Emilie. “As I’ve told you, he’s always been yours, not mine. Now that will truly be the case. Be good to him.”

  Emilie nodded, staring at Gabriele, who took a long breath. “I’ll miss Vienna,” Gabriele said to her after a pause. “I feel like the world is about to change, here.”

  “Where will you go?” Emilie asked.

  “Paris, first,” Gabriele told her. “Then …” She shrugged. “Perhaps it’s time to see an entirely new world for a time. I don’t know. I’ll go where I’m needed.” She smiled again at Emilie.

  “And you,” she told her, “are needed here.”

  8:

  URANIA

  Camille Kenny

  Today

  THE NEXT MORNING, before she went back to David’s, she went to Morris’ studio, knowing that finding Nicolas first was vital. She had to remain the hunter.

  “Have you heard from Pierce yet?”

  Morris whipped his head around at Camille’s question. Hip-hop music swirled around him, and, almost savagely, he punched a finger at the iPad attached to the stereo. The music died in mid-sentence, a late slapback reverberating from the far wall. She could smell the sharp scent of melted rubber, and noticed that Morris had sectioned his original clay sculpture into four pieces and was applying rubber to the clay to make a mold. One of the four sections had already been coated, then surrounded with plaster—the next step in the bronze “lost wax” process. From here, she knew, Morris would take the pieces to the foundry, where the pieces would be recast in wax in preparation for the bronze pour.

  The energy of his green heart glowed around him, but it darkened and changed color as soon as he saw her, going to smoke and ash. And there was something more—something else different in the energy radiating from Morris that she couldn’t identify. He didn’t feel the same. Camille puzzled over that as Morris dropped the thickly coated brush into the pot of melted rubber on its burner. “Camille,” he said. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Why?” she asked. “I don’t have a grudge against you, Morris. I told you—I’d like to remain friends.”

  “Sure, we can do that, at least for as long as you’re getting what you want out of it. That’s how it is for you, isn’t it, Camille?” He said it with a certainty and viciousness that puzzled her.

  “That’s not fair, Morris.”

  “Maybe not, but I really can’t discuss it right now. It’s not a good time for me. I’m kinda busy.” He gestured at the sculpture.

  “I can see that. I won’t stay. I just came by to see if you’d heard from Pierce, if you knew how I can contact him.”

  On the way into the building, Camille had seen Palento’s partner parked across the street, though she hadn’t seen Palento herself. She’d waved at the man, who had a long-snouted camera up to his face. She wondered how many pictures of her they had, and whether Nicolas was on one of them.

  Morris sniffed. He dragged a hand over his forehead. “Yeah, I’ve talked to him. He stopped by yesterday, in fact, and I told him how you wanted to meet with him. He thought that was rather humorous, and he told me a hilarious tale about you, as well.”

  “Oh?” Camille felt the self-inflicted knife wound in her abdomen pull as she straightened—it hadn’t healed anywhere near as fast as it could have; it was still seeping blood and she’d had to bandage it. You’ll be with David again in an hour. Maybe less. That will give you the energy to heal. She hoped that was right, but after her revelation the night before, after the strange way he’d sounded when they’d left, maybe she’d lost … No, she wouldn’t think that. She wouldn’t let herself.

  Morris was staring at her. His face was like a dead thing, as cold and rigid as one of his sculptures, and there was that strange, almost rusty hue to his soul-heart. She looked more closely at him: Morris was in his early thirties, and before she’d noted the beginning of wrinkles around his eyes and a few speckles of gray starting in his wiry hair. But now the wrinkles were smoothed away and his hair was unrelieved, lustrous black.

  Camille found herself taking in a breath
that made her wound ache, afraid that she knew what else had happened when Nicolas visited Morris yesterday.

  “Yeah,” Morris was continuing as she stared at his face, at his muscular hands, “he tells me that he’s known you a long time, that you seem to think you’re some kind of artistic muse, God’s own gift to creative types, and that you get off being around people like me—that’s your kink. You like to fuck ’em, too, if they’ll have your skanky ass. And when you find someone that you think has more talent, you’re off to be with them and you don’t give a damn what kind of wreckage or pain you leave behind. That sounds like a goddamn familiar pattern to me.”

  The unbridled anger in his voice and expression wasn’t like the Morris that she knew. Morris could be prickly and too concerned with his own place in the universe, but this Morris had those qualities on another, more alarming, level, and she was afraid that she also knew the cause of that.

  Nicolas, what have you done?

  Camille felt her face reddening as Morris spoke, angry at Nicolas for having told Morris about her, embarrassed at the way in which Morris threw it back at her, but most of all growing more frightened at the implication that Nicolas would have given Morris the flawed elixir. She imagined Morris, curled on the floor in agony as the elixir burned away at his mind and body, decades passing for him in a few minutes, dying horribly—and Nicolas there to feed on his agony.

  “Pierce said that’s why you tossed us all off after you found David,” Morris rattled on. “The bunch of us together at the Bent Calliope weren’t fucking talented enough for you, but David was, all by himself. More talented than all of us put together. He could satisfy you when none of us alone could.”

  “Morris—”

  “Tell me it’s not the truth,” he spat out. “Look at me and tell me that.”

  She returned his stare as steadily as she could, one hand over the healing wound under the T-shirt. “Where can I find Pierce?” she asked.

  “So you’re not going to answer?” Camille waited, and finally Morris shrugged. “Well, Pierce said to tell you that he’d find you. It’ll be very soon, too—he added that especially. And he also said to tell you that this time it’ll be final. He said you’d know what he meant by that.” Morris took a step toward her, and she retreated the same amount. She felt the heft of metal in her handbag; it gave her little comfort.

  “Morris, did Nicolas give you something? A blue liquid?”

  Morris grinned at that. “What’s the matter, Camille? Jealous? Worried that you’re going to have me to deal with forever? Well, you won’t. Nicolas will take care of that.”

  Yes, Nicolas gave him the potion, and Morris doesn’t understand how … Camille’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, Morris …”

  “ ‘Oh, Morris’,” he repeated, mocking her voice and tone, the ridicule nearly as painful as a knife stabbing into her belly. “You’re a bitch, Camille. You know that?” He was walking toward her as he spoke, and she continued to retreat. “You’re a bitch and a slut who’ll spread her legs for anyone who asks, and David can fucking have you. You’re nothing. Worthless.”

  He advanced toward her, and she retreated again. Her back found the wall near the door, and he took another step in her direction. She could see spittle fly from his lips as he cursed at her. “Bitch!” She wondered whether she could shoot him if he tried to hurt her, though she knew that it wouldn’t kill him—no, she could taste the elixir in his radiance. Still, the sight of the pistol might be enough; he wouldn’t be certain yet of his immortality, though she would have bet that Nicolas had “shown” Morris how he could recover: he’d have done that just for the pleasure of Morris’ pain. She started to reach for her handbag.

  “You’re a stupid cunt, and you have no fucking idea just how goddamn talented I am.” Morris pounded his chest with a fist. He was inches away from her, glaring down at her, his hand still fisted and too near her face. Her hand touched the polished wood handle of the Ladysmith as he swung his arm; she felt the breeze of its passage a scant hair’s breadth from her nose. “Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted at her. “Go on, before I decide to do Pierce’s job for him.”

  She left, squeezing against the wall as he continued to stare at her, her hand now curled around the gun though she hadn’t pulled it from her purse and the safety was still on.

  She found the door and fled.

  *

  She’d stopped back at the apartment to pick up Verdette and her clothes before going over to David’s apartment, but found herself pacing the floor there after the confrontation with Morris. Verdette watched from her perch on the coffee table, the cat’s gray head moving back and forth as Camille stalked past her. Nicolas’ cameo swung on its chain with each step, pounding against her chest like a slow hammer.

  She couldn’t sit still.

  It had all gone wrong, so quickly and so badly. Nicolas had vanished; he could be anywhere in the city now, under any name he’d managed to prepare beforehand. Now Nicolas had turned Morris, giving him the elixir that would kill him before his time—unless she gave him her own elixir, if she could even convince him to take it, considering his attitude toward her.

  The wound on her stomach pulled underneath the bandages as she walked. You’re letting him win. The accusation burned in her gut, underneath the new scar from the knife.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked Verdette, who stared back at her. “How can I fight him if I can’t find him?” I should leave here. The thought came again, as it had in Paris. I could lose myself as I have in the past—once I’m gone, once Nicolas knows that I’m no longer attached to him, David will be safe. I can start over again. I can track Nicolas down once more, and maybe this time …

  It was only a self-soothing rationalization, and she knew it even as she tried to convince herself. David wasn’t safe, nor was Mercedes or any of the others; none of them were safe while Nicolas was still in New York. Nicolas could—would—torment them for the sheer pleasure it would give him. Verdette meowed plaintively, and Camille stopped to scratch her neck. Verdette pressed her head hard into Camille’s fingers.

  “I know,” Camille said. “I shouldn’t stay here. After what he’s done to Morris …” She stopped, suddenly afraid. Who else in the Bent Calliope Group might Nicolas have contacted? Who else might he have told; to who else might have he slipped the elixir with his sweet-tasting lies and frosted promises?

  Verdette bumped her hand again and Camille started from her reverie guiltily. “I’m an idiot,” she said aloud, looking at Verdette, who gazed back placidly. “This is how Nicolas wants me to feel, wants me to react. He’s counting on me giving up and running, to put things off until another time. Well, that’s not going to happen. One way or another, it ends here.”

  She grabbed her purse from the corner of the couch where she’d tossed it; the Ladysmith was heavy in the bottom, but her Tarot, her chemicals, and her katana were at David’s place, not here—and she needed to check on him anyway after their quarrel the night before, needed to make sure the two of them were still good, needed his energy so she wouldn’t fall into illness and lethargy herself.

  “Let’s go,” she told Verdette. “I have a lot I need to do.”

  *

  “David?” she called as she turned the key and opened the door, but there was no answer. She half-dropped the basket of clothing on the couch so she didn’t have to bend down with the wound; she put Verdette’s carrier on the end table and opened the wire door to it. Verdette padded out, mewling querulously.

  “David?”

  Camille walked through the apartment, Verdette following her. David wasn’t downstairs; he wasn’t in his studio. Sudden worry grabbed her stomach, as painful as the plunge of a knife. Panicked, she spoke a quick charm, but there was no sense that Nicolas had been here, which meant—hopefully—that David had gone off on his own.

  “Fuck,” she grunted. “Where the hell is he … ?” She wanted to believe that he’d just taken a walk or maybe had a meetin
g with Prudhomme, but she couldn’t keep the worst scenario from invading her mind: images of Nicolas with David, of Nicolas forcing David to take the flawed elixir then torturing him, knowing that David’s body would heal quickly and allow Nicolas to torment David again and again and again …

  She called his cell: no answer; that only increased her paranoia. She left a message: “David, please call me. I want—no, hell, I really, really need—to talk to you. Please. Call.” She texted his cell as well, with the same basic message.

  She called Jacob Prudhomme’s office and talked to the secretary there: no, David wasn’t with there and Jacob didn’t have any pending appointments with him on the calendar. Jacob was out on a client lunch, but she’d have him call Camille when he returned.

  She called Mercedes next. “Hey, Camille,” Mercedes said. Her voice was cool and removed. “What’s up?”

  “Mercedes,” she said, trying to keep the desperation and fright from her voice, “you haven’t seen David, have you?”

  “David? No. Why would I? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not sure.” She needed to find David, but she also needed a soul-heart. She could feel the weariness in her body, a physical listlessness that threatened to overwhelm her. “Listen, can I come over?”

  The hesitation said more than any words. She heard Mercedes take a breath, then another heavier one. “Sure,” she said. “You hungry?”

  “Right now, I don’t think I could eat.”

  “I am. I’ll call for pizza. See you in twenty?”

  “Sure,” Camille answered, the banality of the conversation scraping against the urgency in her head.

  “Ningún problema,” Mercedes said. “Veggie all right?”

  “That’ll be fine. See you in a few.”

  She checked her cell again after she ended the call, though she hadn’t heard it indicate there’d been another call while she was talking with Mercedes. No voicemail. No return text.

  “Watch the place,” she told Verdette. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  *