The Canvas Thief

by P. Kirby

  “Your turn,” she said in a breathless voice. He took her slowly, watching the way her face moved as he sheathed himself in her heat, determined to remember the little gasp she made when he was fully inside her.

  Sex had always been about joy for Benjamin, and with Maya it was more so than ever. But even now, with her under him, strong muscles clenching around him, the specter of Adam hung in his subconscious. The possibility that this might be their last night together prodded him, giving each thrust an additional urgency. Maya seemed to feel the same way, fingertips bearing into his shoulder blades, lovely hips moving in concert with his. All his patience dissolved and he surged inside her with a reckless abandon. His world shrank into the space that he and Maya occupied, the scent of her skin, each little sound she made as he drove inside her, the squeak of the boxspring’s protests.

  He knew he couldn’t hold back one second longer when Maya shivered around him, her beautiful face shining with release. His own exquisite relief rippled through him and he sank on top of her, surrounded by her warmth.

  They clung to each other until the heat from their lovemaking started to dissipate and the low setting on the thermostat won out. After they slid under the bedding, they lay on their sides, facing each other. Benjamin fought a determined battle against sleep and lost, the memory of Maya’s face, carried into his dreams, a lovely consolation prize.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Maya shifted, and the bedsprings beneath her squeaked. Outside, a car door slammed and she heard the murmur of voices. She opened her eyes to an unfamiliar texture pattern on the ceiling.

  “Talis!” The bed shook and at her side, Benjamin sat up, pulling half the covers off her.

  She blinked up at him, crossing her arms over her chest in a feeble attempt to ward off the chill. “I love it when you say a man’s name in bed,” she said.

  Benjamin grinned down at her. Backlit by the morning sun through a window, he looked like a wild-eyed angel, haloed in red. On his face, bruises still laid a funny geography of purple islands on fair skin, but the cuts had shrunk to tiny white scars. “I forgot about Talis and the stuff we sent him. Maybe he’s found something that could help us. I’m going to call him.” He turned and hopped off the bed, affording Maya a good view of his naked butt. There were, Maya reasoned, far worse things to wake up to than the sight of Benjamin’s beautifully sculpted posterior.

  A second later, he stopped and spun around, swapping the view of working muscles for something more quiescent. Well, not always so quiescent, Maya thought with a blush.

  Oblivious, Benjamin frowned. “Except Talis isn’t a morning person. He probably won’t be up for a couple more hours.”

  Maya sat up. She licked her lips and raked a look up and down Benjamin’s body. “In the meantime, what on earth could we do to pass the time?”

  Maya’s fax rang twice and then began to print, mechanisms whirring and humming. Silent, Maya and Benjamin stood before the machine, watching the first sheet inch from the machine.

  “Watching a fax print is like watching water boil,” Maya said.

  “Or paint dry.”

  Maya nudged him. “I’m an artist. I like drying paint.”

  He returned the nudge and smiled. “A terrific artist. Why haven’t you ever tried to get the comics published?”

  “My comics were meant for an audience of one—me.” She laughed. “Although Roland got a kick out of them.” Her gaze landed on the illustration of Terrence the demon. “As for the rest…”

  It was cathartic, really, telling Benjamin about her mother’s long-ago admonitions to be normal, and her long struggle to be anything except the girl who saw magical beings.

  “Normal, huh?” His mouth twitched right, then left, with a slight petulance. “So your ex, Daniel, is normal?”

  Maya thought about this for a moment. “Nobody is normal, least of all Daniel. But for all his flash and ambition, Daniel is completely mundane.”

  “I’m mundane too, when I’m not stealing stuff,” Benjamin said.

  “You’re far from mundane.” She reached for his face, cupping his chin and rubbing her thumb over his lips. “Neither am I, and that’s okay.” It felt good to say that. She’d spent too long denying an essential part of herself.

  His lips parted and he closed his teeth lightly on the tip of her thumb. Releasing it, he said, “I guess ‘not mundane’ is our normal.”

  “Exactly.” Feeling her heart rate quicken at his touch, she backed away before they fell into another round of fabulous and oh-so-distracting sex. “Speaking of boiling water, I’ll make us some tea.”

  When she returned, one fax sheet had turned into a small stack.

  “Wow!” Benjamin said, reading a sheet.

  “Why ‘Wow’?”

  Excited, he fumbled with the stack of papers, finding one and handing it to her. “According to Talis, the destruction of a key drawing triggers the creation of a temporary portal that sucks the Formed person into EverVerse.”

  He practically vibrated with enthusiasm. “Two points. First, the creation of the portal releases a lot of energy, an explosion.” He pointed at scribbles on the sheet’s margins. Along with an expansion of the equations on the page, were the words Big boom! Maya noted that the handwriting was round with a little circle over the I.

  “The most important thing is that there is just one key drawing.” He smiled down at her, gray eyes bright with excitement. “You don’t have to destroy all the drawings, just the one that brought Adam here to the Real.”

  Behind him, the fax continued to slowly inch out paper. Looking like a nervous but happy single-minded professor, Benjamin scooped up the newest sheets, made an attempt to arrange the documents in some kind of order and finally pulled another from the collection and handed it to her.

  He’s in his element, thought Maya. He loves this, magic and math.

  “Talis wrote the English translation under each line.” The elf’s writing was neat, but so tiny it was nearly illegible.

  Maya squinted at the sheet and Benjamin reached over and pointed at a particular line. “Here. I’m linked to all the drawings, but only the key drawing grounds me to Earth. The key drawing is the one that did all the soul-capture stuff.”

  “Your soul is linked to the drawing of Benjamin Black in the diner?”

  “For lack of a better way to explain it.” More fumbling followed and he handed her a sheet, dropping another.

  Maya skimmed the sheet, another in Elvish with Talis’s English translations, finding it as incomprehensible as the book’s index. “Wow. This makes me feel like I don’t understand English.”

  “It’s heavy on magical theory. Talis said he had trouble finding the right words in English for the translation. Talis is fluent in English, but only a few human languages, the ancient ones like Sanskrit, have the vocabulary to handle hard-core magical theory.”

  “But all this explains your connection to the…” Maya paused, struggling with the vocabulary. “Key drawing?”

  “Yeah. And there are some equations too. Talis must have left it to his friend to figure them out.” He showed Maya another sheet. “Talis tried to explain what she found out, but it’s as dense as the Elvish to English translations.” He frowned. “I wish I was better at math. And magic. And I really can’t ask Breas for any more favors.”

  Maya’s eyes widened, remembering. “What do you owe him for helping me beat Adam’s Mesmer spell?”

  He rubbed the back of his head. “Someday, he’ll ask for a favor, and no matter what it is, I have to say yes.”

  “Breas has been watching too many gangster movies,” Maya said. She took his hand in hers, trying to commit the shape of it to memory. “I wish you didn’t have to do that for me.”

  He looked at her, his dark eyes bright with the emotion she felt. “For you, I’d do it again and again,” he said, voice filled with certainty.

  Because she couldn’t speak through the hard lump in her throat, she wrapped her arms arou
nd him and held him tightly, letting the familiar smell of laundry detergent and soap ward off all the ugly fears she’d been trying so hard to suppress.

  After an hour poring over the faxed documents, Benjamin’s first two discoveries—the key drawing and the dangerous side effects of opening up a portal to EverVerse—were the only really useful information to be found.

  “But this is good news, right?” Maya observed as she straightened and stretched her back. She and Benjamin were sitting at her drawing table, faxed sheets covering the table’s surface. “To get rid of Adam, we just need to burn his key drawing.” Her grin was powered by hope.

  “There’s still the problem of the letter he threatened you with.” Mirroring Maya, Benjamin straightened, stretching his long arms over his head. “I bet either Octel or Peter is in charge of sending the letter if Adam ‘disappears.’”

  She nudged her shoulder against his side. “So you’re the thief. Go steal it.”

  His smile was bitter. “I’ve been through both guys’ homes with a fine-toothed comb, back when I was looking for Adam’s copy of Lore of the Formed. I never ran across that letter.” He shook his head. “My guess is Adam has it squirreled away in a safe deposit box.”

  “So who’s in charge of the letter?” She bit her lower lip. “In my experience with the dynamic duo, I’d have to guess Octel.”

  Benjamin laughed. “That would be my guess too. In my experience, Peter’s primary skills are hurting people and keeping Big Tobacco in business.”

  “If the letter’s in a safe deposit box, there should be a key.” Maya grinned. “Ever pick a pocket?”

  Benjamin looked sheepish. “More than I’d care to admit to.”

  Maya studied his face. “Why is picking pockets different from burglary?”

  “I guess it doesn’t make much sense, does it? Moral relativism on my part, but I’ve never been comfortable with picking pockets.” Tilting his head downward, he winked at her through his bangs. “I’d rather deprive a rich man of ill-gained magical booty than a poor man of his pocket change.”

  “You must be rubbing off on me,” Maya said. “That almost makes sense.” She fingered his bangs aside, meeting his eyes. “Maybe Octel’s carrying the key. Pick his pockets.”

  “I probably could.”

  “Probably?”

  “Most humans don’t stand a chance against me.” He grinned mischievously and handed her a watch.

  Maya glanced from her bare wrist to the watch. “How… Wow.” She took the watch, wondering how he got it off her wrist without her noticing.

  “Talis taught me that trick. He has a watch fixation.” He buckled the watch on her wrist with one hand, his fingers scarcely touching her skin. “Speaking of Talis, I can’t pick his pockets. He’s a better thief than I am, decades more experience, and his hearing and sense of smell are almost as good as a vampire’s.” He rubbed his wrist and grimaced. “And Breas broke my wrist when I picked his pocket.”

  Maya let out a snort of laughter. “You picked Breas’s pocket? How is that ever a good idea?”

  He blushed. “I had no idea he was a vampire. And he healed the break and gave me a job, so at the time, it was a great idea.”

  “He hired you? Why?”

  Benjamin’s grin was broad. “I did get his wallet out of his pocket. Unfortunately, he knew I was there the whole time and was just testing me.”

  Maya felt her hopes sink and a host of repressed fears rising to fill the vacancy. “So you can’t pick a nonhuman’s pockets.”

  He didn’t lose his grin. “I didn’t say that. As far as I know, Octel shouldn’t have any abilities that would get in the way.”

  “But even if we have a key, how do we know which safe deposit box it opens? There are lots of banks in Santa Fe.” Maya picked up one of the faxed sheets and stared at the complex lines of mathematical equations on the page. “It’s not like he’s going to just tell us.” She paused. “Will he?”

  Benjamin had gone quite still, his eyes focused on something across the room. Following his line of sight, her gaze settled on the portrait of Terrence the Sh’ree demon.

  “Octel is a demon,” he said. “And like all demons, iron and its alloys are toxic to him. If he stays for more than a day or so in this world, in the modern world with all its steel and technology, he’ll get iron poisoning.”

  From his portrait, Terrence the demon stared confidently at Maya and Benjamin. “I’ve seen Terrence in the Plaza regularly,” said Maya. “Iron doesn’t seem to bother him.”

  Attention fixed on the portrait like a greyhound on a rabbit, Benjamin said, “He’s made a sacrifice.”

  “Oh,” Maya said, horrified.

  “No.” Benjamin shook his head and looked at Maya. “He has sacrificed his TrueName. It’s a trick that demons and Fey use to stay here on Earth.” He stood and walked over to the demon’s portrait. “A TrueName is a secret name, tied to the demon’s soul and only given to trusted friends. A TrueName can be used to force a demon to do anything, even something he doesn’t want to do.”

  Turning back to Maya, he said, “To stay here on Earth, a demon writes his or her TrueName on a sheet of paper and hides it somewhere, usually somewhere close to home. The risk of exposing a TrueName to discovery is the sacrifice that gives a demon immunity to iron poisoning.”

  Maya nodded to show she understood, although she didn’t know where he was going with this. “Octel must have done that in order to hang around and work for Adam.”

  “Right,” Benjamin said. “And if we can find his TrueName, we can compel him to give us the letter.”

  “That’s great! But how do we find this paper with his TrueName on it?”

  The corners of his mouth lifted a bit with a sly smile. “I have a theory,” he said, his gaze fixed on, but not quite looking at her. “The problem is getting to Octel in time. When are we supposed to meet Adam? Seven?” Maya nodded and he continued, “I need to get his keys and look for a padlock key before then.

  “Back when I first came to the Real, I rented a storage unit. I was staying in a cheap hotel, and being a thief myself, I knew I shouldn’t keep anything valuable in my room. So my best guess is that Octel is storing his valuables in a self-storage unit. There’s one just a few blocks from his apartment.”

  A swarm of questions flew around Maya’s brain like angry wasps. They all clustered in a bottleneck at her mouth until finally she just asked the most pertinent question. “So how do we find Octel?”

  “What time is it now?” He lifted his left arm and stared at his watch, rubbing his jaw with his other hand, thinking. Maya’s attention moved from his face and down to his watch, noticing, for the first time, that it was a TAG Heuer, an expensive diver’s watch. It was an incongruous luxury on the tall thief, especially since everything else he wore came from, by his own admission, thrift stores.

  She was about to ask him about the watch, when he said, “Octel is a creature of habit. He almost always has lunch at the Bluewater Café at noon. It’s the ideal location, busy with plenty of distractions.”

  “And thieving is like stage magic. The more distractions the better, right?”

  Benjamin slid his arm around her and pulled her against his side, leaning his face down to hers. “You learn fast, my young apprentice.”

  She brushed the tip of her nose against his. “Come to the dark side. We’ve got cookies,” she said and kissed him.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “No offense, Maya,” said Roland, “but this plan of yours is like a redneck car, held together with duct tape and chewing gum.” Because he knew Maya well, he noted, “And don’t make faces at me. Your face will freeze that way and you’ll scare away your pretty thief.”

  With her shoulder lifted, holding the phone to her ear, Maya reached into her refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. “He’s seen me in my pink flannel pajamas.”

  “Good point. He’s braver than a marine.”

  Maya left the kitchen and turned to
ward the living room, and started past her bedroom. She stopped and stared into the room where she had first met Benjamin under less than ideal circumstances.

  “He loves you, Maya.”

  Roland’s voice shook her from her reverie and she continued into the living room, where Benjamin was sitting on the couch, a white bag from his favorite deli before him on the coffee table. For Maya, the very thought of picking Octel’s pocket, even though she wouldn’t be the one doing the picking, was better than any appetite suppressant. It did the opposite for Benjamin, and he had developed a craving for a sandwich and fries.

  “I hope so,” Maya said. “Wish us luck, huh?” She sat next to Benjamin.

  “Call me if you need help. Call me if you don’t.” Roland laughed. “I sound like your mother.”

  “Roland’s a great guy,” Benjamin said after Maya hung up.

  “He is.” Maya leaned her head against his shoulder and they lapsed into the comfortable silence that still amazed her.

  Benjamin set the bag back on the coffee table and Maya studied the deli’s logo, a steaming cup of coffee with Joe’s Deli above it. Out of habit, she began to imagine how she would improve the logo. Art and design. Her creativity was as much a part of her as…as the magic that ran through her blood.

  “So you can’t touch anything that has your image, even photographs?” she asked.

  Benjamin paused, the sandwich at his lips. He lowered it and said, “No. I mean yes.” He grinned at her confusion. “I can touch photographs of me, no problem.”

  “So what about drawings?” she asked. “Something drawn after you came to this world?”

  His gray eyes narrowed with thought. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s see.” Maya stood and hurried for her studio. “Try this one,” she said a couple minutes later. “It’s one of the series I did after the famous diner drawing.” She handed a sheet to him.