The door swung wide, and David was gaping at them, a camera draped on a strap over one shoulder
“David!” Camille dropped the purse on the table again and ran past the two detectives to David, who was raising his hands tentatively. She hugged him hard, relishing the feel of his body and his soul-heart. She wrapped his energy around her, gratefully. “I was so worried about you …” She stopped then, and pounded gently on his chest with her fist. “Damn it, where the hell have you been?”
David’s arms came around her slowly, then more tightly. She felt his lips touch the crown of her head, kissing her softly, and the aura of his soul-heart brightened, opening to her. She nearly gasped with the feel of it. “I’m sorry, Camille,” he said to her. “I was just out walking, and thinking. I’m sorry.”
“David?” She lifted her face to his; he bent his head down and kissed her lips.
“I shouldn’t have walked away from you like that,” he said softly. “I never wanted to hurt you, especially after …” She saw him glance at Palento and Compton, both of whom had holstered their weapons. “… After you were so honest with me,” he finished. He hugged her again, then closed the door, still holding her hand. “Detectives,” he said. “Sorry to startle you. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Not right at the moment,” Palento said. “Ms. Kenny, thanks for the talk.” She pulled her card from her suit jacket and handed it to Camille. “In case you lost the last one,” she said. “Call me if you hear from Pierce, or if you have something more to share with us. We want the same thing; we really do. Remember that.”
With that, Palento touched her forefinger to her forehead, almost as if she were saluting, then inclined her head to her partner. “Hey, Roger,” she said. “Let’s get out of this couple’s hair. It looks like they have things to discuss.”
*
“What was all that about?” David asked her when the door had closed behind Palento and Compton. Camille had gone to the window, looking down at the street from behind the sheer curtains as the detectives went to their car. Otherwise, no one seemed to be watching: the few pedestrians on the sidewalk walked past without a second glance at the building.
No Nicolas. She turned back to David. “They were letting me know that they haven’t found Pierce yet.”
David nodded. “You look exhausted,” he said. “That’s my fault. I’m really sorry. I know you said you were coming here this morning, and I should have waited for you before I took off. But really, I … I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking.”
She nodded. “You didn’t see Pierce?”
“You mean Nicolas?” He sniffed, as if mocking his own words. “No. I didn’t. You?”
She shivered and let the curtains fall back over the window, turning back into the room. “No, but he’s been around. David, he’s given Morris and some of the others at the Bent Calliope the flawed elixir. He contacted Mercedes and tried to do the same with her, but she didn’t accept, thankfully. Still, he’s been telling them things—about me. Lies. He’s turning them all against me.”
“You tell the cops this?”
Camille shook her head. “Not all of it. Just that Pierce is still out there and that he’s after my friends and me, but the cops can’t help. Not with him.”
David sniffed. “Yeah. ’Cause he has magic and stuff.” A trace of skepticism still colored his voice. She ignored it. “What do we do now, Camille?” he asked.
I have to find him, and I have to kill him before he hurts anyone else I love. She didn’t say that. Instead, she smiled wanly. “So, in all that walking and thinking, did you give any more thought to what I told you?”
He gave a short, ironic laugh. “I couldn’t exactly think about much else, frankly. And I’m still not sure how to feel about the story you gave me, or how I’m supposed to know what’s true and what’s not in it. I went to the library and looked up books, got on the computers there and went all over the Internet, looking up those people you said you were and those you said you were with, trying to imagine that it was you and not someone else. It’s all so …” He shook his head. “It’s still all so impossible. Frankly, it’d be easier to think you’re some kind of psycho than to believe you’re telling the truth. But then I look at the photos of you on my camera, and I remember what you did with that knife, and how you knew everything about Paris and those people you said you were and were with …” Another head shake. “I still don’t know.”
She went to him and took his hands. She pressed her fingers into his. “I love you,” she said. “You can believe whatever you want, David, but that’s the final truth.”
“You love me, or you need me?”
“Both,” she answered honestly. “I need you, too—and yes, you know why. I can’t say this any more simply or truthfully, David. I need you, because … because everything else …” She could barely get the words out. She took in a long breath that shuddered audibly. His expression softened, and he leaned toward her until her forehead was against his chest. “He’s still out there,” she continued. “I’ve placed you in terrible danger, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to protect you. Maybe the best thing I could have done for you would have been to leave you and New York altogether as soon as I knew Nicolas had realized who I was. That might have saved poor Helen. But I couldn’t. Maybe that’s just me being selfish, but I couldn’t.” She was crying, uncaring that he could feel her weeping. His arms came around her once more; the radiance of his soul-heart was a cloak over them both. “I love you,” she said again.
He didn’t answer, not directly. Instead, he asked her, “Were you in love with the others the same way?”
She nodded, sniffing. She pulled back a little from him, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. “Some of them, yes. Not all.”
“If you could had given them the elixir, would you have stayed with them?”
Her shoulders lifted and fell. “I can’t answer that for you, David. With some of them, the ones I thought I truly loved, yes, I would have tried. But people—mortal people, normal people—fall in love all the time and promise to stay together ‘till death do we part’ and often enough that doesn’t work out, does it? Sometimes people grow apart, or they find that one or the other’s love fails. I’ve told you this before: forever’s a damned long time.” She looked at David, at his posture, at the way he gazed at her, at how his hands fisted and unfisted on his thighs. “Is that what you want? The elixir—my elixir? The real one?”
“No.” He said it too quickly, and he looked away from her as he spoke.
“David, I’ll give it to you if you ask. I will. Tonight. That’s how much I love you. But you have to know it will change you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve met Verdette, remember?” He smiled as if he were saying it as a joke, but it came out too harsh.
“You can make light of it all you want, but it’s a serious decision—and one that you can’t back out of once you make it. I will give it to you, David, both because I do love you and because it would give you some protection from Nicolas. But you’ll change as a result and I don’t know how. And that … that might not be a good thing for you.”
She took in a breath as a sudden thought came to her: You’ve never tried to feed from someone who’s taken the elixir. What if that’s not possible? What if you’d then still need to seek out someone else for your own needs? How would that change your relationship? She shook her head, trying to banish questions for which she had no answer. “All you have to do is ask,” she told David again.
“No,” he told her again, but this time the refusal came after a silence and was softer, and this time he was looking at her as he said it. “At least, not right now, anyway. And to answer the question you haven’t asked me—there is one thing I realized in all that thinking and walking: I love you, too.”
She nearly sobbed again at that, her eyes burning with threatening tears. “Then we’re good? I can stay here? I need to be with you.”
“Yes,
” he said. “Of course you can stay here.”
He came to her, and she saw the tears overflowing his own eyes. She allowed herself, finally, to let her emotions take control. She cried in deep, racking sobs, though she didn’t know if it was relief or fear or both that brought the tears. She clung to him, and she let his radiance cover, comfort, and begin to restore her.
*
“I love you so much,” she told him after they made love that night, and he whispered back in her ear the same words as he held her.
“I love you, too.”
She smiled, touching his cheek with her hand. The stubble of his beard dragged at her skin. “Stay with me,” she told him.
He laughed. “Forever,” he said, then seemed to realize what he’d said and just held her more tightly in the velvet darkness. She didn’t correct him, only whispered back to him:
“Yes,” and again, “yes.”
For the next few days, she began to believe that everything could be as she wanted it to be. The reconnection with David was fast and satisfying. Her exhaustion vanished like a morning snow in spring; she felt whole and complete once more, and the knife wound on her stomach healed over completely, though the scar was still visible as an angry red line. David swept Camille up in his photography; he had her pose for him, clothed and unclothed, and put the prints up on the walls so they could critique them together. They made love; they talked. She told him details of her long life that she’d never confided to anyone else; she answered any question he asked—and he had many.
She felt, again, complete. Except for the lingering sense of unease due to Nicolas, they could have been in Paris again: alone together and happy. There were moments, even hours, where she could fool herself and believe that it could stay this way.
But she knew that this was only a respite. The Tarot cards told her; her heart told her. Nicolas was a thunderhead looming on the horizon, crawling toward her on legs of jagged lightning. The storm was inevitable.
She could hear the thunder of the storm in her dreams.
She put a small fire spell on a glass flask of explosive powder and gave it to David, teaching him the single word and gesture that would release the spell. “If you see Nicolas, throw the flask at his feet and say the spell word. The explosion should at least give you time to run; at best, it might incapacitate Nicolas long enough for you to do more.”
She’d told him about Antoine and the guillotine, and what that had taught both Nicolas and her. She didn’t know if David would actually cut off the man’s head if Nicolas were lying unconscious in front of him, but at least he knew.
Camille hunted Nicolas, desperate to find him first. She spread out her cards for some hint of where he might show up next, but the array was cloudy and uncertain, as if something or someone was actively interfering with her reading. She might as well be playing Solitaire with them, for all she learned. Her Ladysmith and vials of chemicals in her handbag, her katana hidden inside a hollowed-out walking staff, she watched Mercedes’ apartment, studying each person who entered the building: Nicolas could put another face on his own, but he couldn’t change his height or general build. She spent time outside the apartments of the rest of the Bent Calliope Group, hoping that she might be lucky enough to see Nicolas. She called Palento every day, asking if they’d found Pierce yet; the answer was always the same: we’ll let you know when that happens.
She saw no sign that Nicolas was watching her, though she often found herself peering out the window. She made excuses so that David wouldn’t go out alone without her, and though he knew that the Ladysmith was snuggled in her handbag every time they left the apartment, he made no objection.
She called Mercedes, who didn’t answer her phone. “Mercedes,” she said after the beep. “I want to apologize. I don’t want to lose you as a friend. Please call me back. I’m so sorry. And please, remember what I said about Pierce …”
She didn’t hear from her. She didn’t bother to call any of the other Bent Calliope regulars.
On the third day, she went back to the apartment to get more of her things. She stopped at Mrs. Darcy’s apartment and told her that she was moving in with David for the time being, and that if she knew of someone who might want to sublet the apartment for a few months, to put them in touch with her. Camille took her time as she packed the essentials from her apartment, wondering whether she should put additional alchemical materials into the boxes she’d stored in her closet and bring them over as well, or if some of her older paintings should go with her too. If she did that, she’d need to call for a cab.
In the end, she packed up most of the things but left them there, taking only a small suitcase of clothing. She walked the several blocks to David’s apartment. The day was warm and she walked slowly down Delancey, glancing back over her shoulder now and again, and watching the other side of the street as well.
Holding the suitcase she’d brought, she buzzed the apartment rather than trying to excavate her keys from her purse. She waited; David didn’t respond. She buzzed the apartment again; once more, there was no response. He’d said something about working, so Camille figured he was in the studio loft and couldn’t hear the buzzer. Grimacing, she set down the suitcase and fished out her keys.
The key ring jangling in her hand, she walked down the hallway—if David was engrossed, he wasn’t going to hear her knock, either. But as she came closer, she slowed: if he was working, she should feel him, and there was nothing. No stirring of the green heart, no warm, grassy tendrils spilling from the apartment. A few more steps, and she saw the door of the apartment: it was slightly ajar.
Camille set down the suitcase again. She reached into her handbag for the Ladysmith. Her pulse pounded so loudly in her ears that she was certain anyone inside the apartment could hear it. Shielding herself on the wall, she pushed the door open with a foot. She waited, but there was no response and she heard nothing at all from within the apartment.
Taking a long breath, she slid inside. The large main room looked much the same as when she’d left. A coffee mug sat on the table in front of the couch and she could see the dark circle of the brew halfway down the side. She touched the cup; it was warm, but not hot. “David?” she called out tentatively, then more loudly: “David?”
Verdette came padding down from the upstairs studio, yowling angrily and curling around her feet. “David?” she called out more loudly. “Are you up there?” Could he have gone out? Maybe he was just around the back of the building, putting out the trash—that would explain why he left the door open. He’d be back in a few minutes, laughing at her panic.
She saw it then: the folded piece of paper behind the coffee mug. She snatched up the note. Underneath was the explosive flask she’d given David. On the paper itself was a crude sketch of a guillotine, and two brief sentences in French: Je l’ai. Attente des instructions.
I have him. Wait for instructions.
INTERLUDE EIGHT
Anaïs Dereux & Charlotte Salomon
1941 – 1943
Anaïs Dereux
1940—1943
AFTER SHE LEFT VIENNA AND KLIMT, she reset the trap … and Nicolas didn’t take the bait.
She’d gone back to Paris, which was still the center of the art world, and stayed there for several years. She thought Nicolas would certainly find the Great War compelling, and so she became—openly—a lover of several of the notorious Parisian writers and artists of the time, but Nicolas never appeared.
Camille began to have some small hope that Nicolas would keep his word, that he would no longer trouble her. When the Great War ended, she traveled to the United States for the first time. As “Alice Small,” she spent time in California on the fringes of Group f/64—the informal club of photographers that included Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Sonya Noskowiak, feeding on the green soul-hearts that nurtured her most. Still, the incestuous crowd and their interminable affairs eventually soured on her. She traveled eastward across the continent, fir
st to Chicago, then to New York, remaining a few years in each city, occasionally allowing herself to be prominently committed to one person: again, the trap always remained unsprung.
By the 1930s, she began to think that Nicolas would indeed abide by their truce. She found herself no longer looking constantly over her shoulder or avoiding places where she was alone. She found that she liked New York and the feeling of being immersed in the cutting edge of culture—but, achingly, that city with all its energy and vitality reminded her too much of Paris.
Meanwhile, Europe seemed to be undergoing its own new social paroxysms. She found that she wanted to be there, afraid for her old home.
Late in 1938, not long after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from his talks with Adolf Hitler and declared he had obtained “peace for our time,” she decided to return to France, taking on the identity of Anaïs Dereux. She traveled by ocean liner to England in early 1939, then eventually over the channel into France. She didn’t return to Paris except to pass through the city on a train. She continued south to Nice, arriving in February as Prime Minister Chamberlain declared in the British House of Commons that any German attack on France would be automatically considered an attack on Britain.
She wondered then whether she’d made a mistake returning to Europe. The sense of dark and boiling storm clouds looming was palpable, even under the bright Mediterranean sky.
By the time that German troops entered Bohemia and Moravia, incorporating Czechoslovakia into Germany, Anaïs was well-ensconced in the Nice art community. Most of the talk in Nice revolved around the deepening German threat, with some holding out hope that Hitler could be appeased and a peace negotiated, while others scoffed at the idea of a German invasion of France. “The Maginot Line,” the French military commanders stolidly declared, “will keep them out. No army is capable of breaching those defenses.”
On September 1, 1939, the German army crossed the Polish border; two days later, France and the UK declared war on Germany, and the continent trembled on the blood-red precipice once more.
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