The Canvas Thief

by P. Kirby

  “You think it’s a fake?” Maya asked, although the text and typesetting in this book matched the photocopies that Adam had given her.

  “Adam only let me see Volume One once, but this looks just like it. It’s just odd that we—” he nodded to Roland “—er, Roland, would find it now.”

  Maya took the book from Benjamin and turned it over in her hands, her fingers sliding over the slick, time-darkened leather. “It’s a strange coincidence, but maybe we shouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth.”

  Benjamin gave her a gentle elbow nudge. “I think I know where to get an Elvish/English dictionary.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Maya spent the afternoon wearing white gloves. Niles had a conference in Reno and needed posters printed on glossy white acetate. Each giant roll of acetate came with a pair of thin white gloves so that it could be loaded into the plotter without being marred by fingerprints.

  Maya was standing by the plotter, watching the pens zip back and forth over the acetate’s surface when Roland strolled up to her. “You look like a cartoon character,” he said.

  “I’m Minnie Mouse,” she said in a high-pitched voice.

  “I was thinking Goofy.” With hard-won practice, Roland dodged her attempt to pinch his arm. “I’m done. Want me to put this on your desk?” The majority of The Lore of the Formed, Volume Two was in Elvish. Roland, fascinated with the book and its contents, borrowed it to copy the pages written in English. “Did Ben get the dictionary?”

  “I don’t know. He was heading over to Breas’s apartment after lunch. After that he was going to the Mako to help Lane set up an aquarium in the dining area.”

  Roland bent, looking at the portion of the giant poster that had been printed. “How does he know so much about fish, anyway?”

  “He worked in a pet store.”

  “He must have worked there a while.”

  Maya looked at her friend. His inky brown eyes followed the progress of the plotter pens as they laid down line after line of ink, suggesting that his mind was elsewhere—on The Lore of the Formed, knowing Roland—and his comment only idle small talk. But it tweaked her curiosity. Why would Benjamin take such a mundane job?

  There was so much she didn’t know about Benjamin Black.

  The western sky was a deepest blue splattered with dark salmon and orange by the time Maya got home. Her phone started to ring as she put the key in the lock. She fumbled with the key and the two bags of groceries, tempted to try the unlock spell before the mechanism clicked and the door swung open. Without her usual caution, she dashed inside and answered the phone.

  “I got the dictionary,” Benjamin said cheerfully.

  “You want to come by? I’ll make us something quick for dinner.”

  When he rang the bell thirty minutes later, Maya entertained the idea of giving him a key and then wondered at the idea itself. A few days ago he had been in her bedroom, menacing her with a knife. Now she was starting to frame her life, her thoughts of the future, around him. “I’ve gone crazy,” she whispered to the empty house before opening the door.

  He stood shivering on her doorstep. He’d forsaken the usual ugly green jacket in exchange for a thin, dark blue one. Realizing he was cold because of her comments about that jacket, she felt her heart tighten with fondness and a touch of guilt.

  “Get in here.” She latched her fingers into his belt loops and tugged him toward her. Unresisting, he let himself be moved. They bumped against each other and sank into a kiss. He was still too tall, but it didn’t matter because her magic was back and the collision of his power with hers felt like two thunderhead clouds meeting. Jagged lightning raced up and down her spine. His mouth tasted sweet, as if he’d been eating candy and Maya wondered if he had a favorite sugary snack. Another thing she would have to find out about him.

  “Warmer?” she asked, in a pause for oxygen.

  “Much.” His fingers tightened on her butt, where they had wandered during the kiss. “Maybe too much.”

  “Dinner’s almost ready. You need the energy if you’re going to keep up with me.” Maya laughed, watching the expression on his handsome face go to boyish amazement followed by a sultry smirk.

  They ate dinner, Maya’s special “speedy” lasagna at her little table, and then moved to the couch. Maya got a notepad and Benjamin opened the dictionary and they started to work on the book. The first five pages explained that writing large portions of Holder publications in Elvish was standard practice—a security practice in case the book fell into ordinary human hands—and rambled on, acknowledging other Holders who helped write the book. More than half those mentioned had one of four surnames: Lake, Astin, Aragon or Trelawney.

  Maya picked up the dictionary. “Edited by Sarah Astin-Lake. Is it just me, or are these people a bit inbred?”

  “They’re inbred by necessity,” said Benjamin. “The only magic most humans possess is their childhood imagination and that disappears at puberty.” He reached for her and rubbed the back of her neck. “With a few exceptions, humanity is an unmagical race.”

  “So what am I? Some kind of mutant?”

  He laughed. “No. You’ve got elf somewhere in your ancestry.”

  “Elf. You mean humans and elves can…have sex?”

  “Yup,” he said brightly.

  “Another ingredient in my genetic melting pot,” she said. Ticking each off on her fingers, Maya went through her heritage. “My mom’s folks are from Hong Kong. My father’s maternal grandparents immigrated to England from Kolkata, India. His father is English. I’m Chinese, Indian, English and now elf. The next U.S. Census is going to be fun.”

  Benjamin started to try translating the Elvish passages. First he worked through the table of contents that was entirely in Elvish. Maya wrote down his translations on the notepad.

  “‘Translocation of Ethereal SubStratum’? ‘Corporeal Resonance in the Far Evanescent Spectrum’? ‘The Dynamics of Soul Translocation’? ‘Sub- and Super-Planar Spirit Computations’?” Maya read back some of Benjamin’s translations. “I don’t even understand the chapter titles.”

  The dictionary lay across his knees and The Lore of the Formed open on the coffee table before him. He scrubbed his hands repeatedly through his bright hair. “The last one, ‘Sub- and Super-Planar Spirit Computations’ is in English.” He had the book open to that chapter.

  “Yeah, but it looks like calculus.” She smiled wryly. “Art majors don’t have to take more than algebra. I took calculus in high school, but I don’t remember any of it. Know any math whizzes?”

  Benjamin flipped through the chapter before answering. “My friend Talis would probably understand this stuff. And he reads and speaks Elvish.”

  Maya nudged him. “Obviously there’s a ‘but’ in this line of thought.”

  “He’s an elf. He lives on Earth…somewhere, with his girlfriend or maybe she’s just a friend. But she moves around a lot and so does he. I only see him when Breas hires us both for a job.”

  Maya sighed. “And elves don’t carry cell phones.”

  “Not this one.” For a moment he looked pained, but that gave way to grim resolution. “Can I use your phone? I forgot my mobile in the car.” When she nodded he got up and made a call. Judging from the terseness of conversation, he had called Breas. After a second he gave the vampire her phone number and hung up. Returning to the couch, he sat and leaned back, pulling Maya against him. “Breas said, ‘I know exactly where the little shit is.’ Then he surprised me and agreed to pass your number on to Talis.”

  Maya closed her eyes, taking in Benjamin’s scent and listening to the dull throb of his heartbeat. “Couldn’t he just give you a phone number where you could reach the elf?”

  “No.” Benjamin chuckled. “Breas can never make something easy.”

  “Sounds like the Breas I hardly know.” His proximity reminded her that there were more interesting things to do than just sitting on a couch. Pushing her fingers just under his shirt’s coll
ar, she followed a path from the hollow where his neck met his chest up to a shoulder, the shoulder that had been shot by Ms. Kalman. “Why’d you work in a pet shop?” she asked, trying to put aside her rising libido. “Crime doesn’t always pay?”

  The effect was instantaneous. He flinched, and Maya felt the muscle under her fingers grow stiff with tension. Before her eyes, he retreated into his expressionless mask, but to no avail. Just like in the living room several days ago, when he’d mentioned working in a pet store, he emanated profound sorrow. A touch of guilt, which grew when he glanced at her, moved behind his eyes.

  “Oh,” Maya said, taken aback.

  He hesitated and then spoke quickly. “The pet shop belonged to my fiancée’s family.”

  Maya sat bolt upright, pushing off his chest. “Your fiancée? You’re engaged?”

  “No, not anymore.” He seemed surprised that she’d make such an assumption. “She’s…dead.”

  Lifting her hand, Maya touched her lips, half expecting to find her foot there. A curious emotion clenched inside her, making a hard knot in her stomach. After a second, she identified it—jealousy.

  Ashamed by her reaction, she said, “Tell me about her, Benjamin.”

  Benjamin picked up the dictionary and cradled it in his hands as though it was the most important book in the world. He flipped through the book’s pages several times, the sheets whipping the air like tiny birds’ wings. Maya’s magic hummed in response.

  “She was a small woman. Like you.” Benjamin blinked, looking startled by his own words. He glanced at Maya and then back at the book. He stopped his nervous fiddling and set it on the coffee table. An uneasy silence settled between them.

  He cleared his throat and spoke again. “Isabel said that when she saw me, she told her friends, ‘That’s the man I’m going to marry.’”

  “Really?” Maya asked. “She knew, just like that?”

  “I guess so. We met at a Taco Bell.”

  Maya couldn’t help smiling. “Is that where you go to meet women?”

  His eyes met hers and she saw a spark of humor. “No. Usually I break into their house and threaten them at knifepoint.”

  “Probably not the best strategy.”

  “No, probably not.” He returned to the book. “I was just there for lunch. I was almost done when she marched over and sat at my table. She said hi and introduced herself and we talked. Five minutes later we exchanged phone numbers and made plans for a date.

  “I knew nothing about women. She had three brothers and probably knew more about men than she needed to. She was smart and opinionated and didn’t give a damn that I stole stuff for a living.

  “Her parents owned a pet store. One day both their employees were down with the flu, and none of Isabel’s brothers were available, so she asked me if I would help out for a day. That’s how I ended up working in a pet store.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What happened? How…?”

  “She was in her senior year at U.C. San Diego. She’d put off a humanities class until the semester before she was supposed to graduate, and that semester the only available class was in the evening. After class she headed home to my place.

  “We were living together although she still kept her apartment because her parents weren’t crazy about the idea of their daughter shacking up.” He shrugged, his eyes clouded with memory. “But they knew the truth. They always called my place, not hers, when they needed to reach her.” He lapsed into silence again, and Maya waited.

  “She died about a block from my place. A drunk driver blew a stop sign and plowed into her car, the driver’s side. I didn’t know what happened until an hour later.”

  “Benjamin, I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded and turned away.

  The phone rang and they both jumped and stared in the direction of the sound. “That might be Talis,” he said hoarsely.

  The voice on the phone was deep, male and very human sounding. But he introduced himself as Talis in the slow, deliberate manner of someone whose native language wasn’t English. Despite his careful diction he had no foreign accent that she could detect and his syntax was American. Funny. What did I expect? Someone who sounded like he stepped out of Lord of the Rings, maybe?

  “Hey, Talis. Thanks for calling,” said Benjamin after she handed him the phone. They chatted cheerfully for a few minutes before Benjamin scribbled down a number, said thanks and rang off.

  “He gave me a fax number. We can send him some of the more promising pages.”

  Maya grinned. “He doesn’t have a cell phone, but he has a fax? Interesting elf.”

  “The fax belongs to his friend.” With the translated chapters as a guide, Benjamin chose a few pages that might be helpful and Maya made copies on her little scanner/copier machine. Because neither he nor Maya could make sense of the mathematics and it was a short chapter, they copied “Sub- and Super-Planar Spirit Computations” in its entirety. They were faxing the last of the chapter when Maya’s mobile phone rang.

  “Hi, Roland,” she said, seeing his name on the caller ID.

  “Maya, your land line’s been busy all night.” Maya started to explain, but Roland interrupted. “Eric’s had an accident—car wreck. I’m at the hospital.”

  “What? Is he okay?”

  “He’s alive. But…I’m sorry, Maya. I just needed—”

  “I’m leaving for the hospital, right now. St. Paul’s?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Maya.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Benjamin offered when she told him what had happened.

  “Thanks.” Maya’s knees felt wobbly, her head fizzy with shock. Though she’d grown up in Santa Fe, most of her old friends had moved away. Roland and Eric were like family, big brothers she never had. She saw them more than her actual brother, Orson. Her heart ached for Roland, who believed he’d found his soul mate in Eric, and she hated the idea of dynamic, sun-loving Eric stuck in a hospital.

  She sat in Benjamin’s rumbling car, twisting her hands in her lap. At stoplights, he would turn to look at her and tell her that Eric would be all right. Maya looked at his reassuring face, haloed by his bright hair, and thought about Isabel. Did he go through this when she died? Did he drive to the hospital, expecting to see her bruised but very much alive?

  Blinking back tears, her gaze fell to the dusty dashboard. Something caught her eye and she squinted, leaning forward. Benjamin had just pulled the car into St. Paul’s parking lot. He paused, scanning the lot and then glanced at her. Following her line of sight he dropped his chin to look at the dash. The name “Maya” was etched in the dashboard’s dust.

  Despite her mood, Maya smiled and Benjamin’s face turned dark with a blush. “I’m twelve,” he said, turning the car toward an open space.

  “I had the Porsche in for full maintenance just a month ago.” The lines of Roland’s face were honed to sharpness by guilt and worry. He looked at Maya. “You remember, don’t you?”

  “I do,” said Maya, squeezing her best friend’s hand. “It’s not your fault.” She, Roland and Benjamin sat in a small cluster of uncomfortable chairs in the center of the hospital waiting room. Roland and Maya sat side by side and Benjamin just across from them. “I thought it felt a little funny yesterday, like the steering was pulling to the left.” Roland shook his head, still intent on chiding himself.

  “Roland,” Maya said firmly. “The brakes are what failed, not the steering. Stop trying to make a random accident into something more.” Out of the corner of an eye, she saw Benjamin shift in his chair, his posture uneasy. “Eric’s going to be fine. Before you know it, he’ll be on his feet and using his crutches to beat his employees.”

  A touch of Roland’s usual humor flashed in his eyes. “The doctor said it was a clean break, but that he’s going to have to give it some rest. How am I going to get him to stay put? You know what a workaholic he is. I’m going to have to tie him to the bed.”

  Maya pinched his arm gently. “That’s way more infor
mation about your love life than we need to know,” she said with a grin.

  Roland shook a scolding finger at Maya. “You know your mind will never grow in the gutter. No sun.” He gave Benjamin a wry smile. “I hope you like women with dirty minds. Oh, yeah, heterosexual guy. Of course you do.”

  “Uh-huh.” Maya tapped Roland’s forehead with her index finger. “Pure as the driven snow, right?”

  “I see unicorns,” Roland said.

  Maya laughed. “Have you had dinner yet?”

  “No.”

  “Want me to go pick something up for you? That burrito place you love is just a few blocks away.”

  “I can go,” said Benjamin. “You stay with Roland.”

  Roland gave him a knowing grin. “Hospitals make you nervous, don’t they?”

  Benjamin let out a low laugh, ducking his head in mock shame. “Yeah.” He leaned toward Maya and Benjamin. “I have this fear that I’ll end up in one. Somebody will notice I have a weird blood type, or that I heal fast. Next thing I know I’ll be in some shadowy laboratory.”

  “Really?” Roland said, eyes wide. “You heal that fast? If you cut yourself, can you watch the wound heal, like time-lapse photography?”

  Maya scrunched up her face at Roland. “See this?” she said, pointing at herself. “This is The Look Eric would be giving you.”

  “Uh, no,” Benjamin said, answering Roland’s question. “Not that fast, but fast.”

  Maya shook her head and dug a few bills out of her purse. “The restaurant is Taco Sam’s. Roland’s favorite is the burrito with carne adovada.” She handed the money to Benjamin.

  “He’s totally yours, you know that, don’t you?” Roland said after Benjamin left.

  “I hope so. Because I’m totally his.”

  Roland’s dark eyes moved, taking in her face. “You have a reason to doubt that?”

  “He was engaged.” She told Roland about Benjamin’s fiancée. “He’d be married if she hadn’t died.”

  Expression thoughtful, he smoothed away a nonexistent wrinkle in his slacks. “And you think he still loves her.”