The Canvas Thief

by P. Kirby

  “Shouldn’t you be doing something useful, like earning your ATF paycheck?” snapped Maya. “Look, Benjamin, it’s my tax dollars…not at work.”

  Adam laughed and slid his gun from beneath his jacket. “Give me Octel’s TrueName. Now.”

  “No.” Benjamin looked around the room, reaching for his magic.

  “No more spells, Benjamin.” Adam leveled the gun at Benjamin. “The TrueName, please.”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

  “No,” said Adam, keeping his attention on Benjamin, but adjusting the handgun’s aim. “I’ll shoot Maya.”

  “You won’t kill Maya. You need her.”

  “I’m an excellent marksman, Benjamin. She won’t die. But it will be painful.”

  Benjamin shuddered, remembering that weapon’s bite, imagining bullets impacting Maya’s flesh. For once in your life, Black, don’t do anything stupid or impulsive.

  “Don’t give it to him, Benjamin,” Maya said, her voice strong for someone facing the deadly end of a gun.

  Benjamin couldn’t stand the misery on her face, which he knew mirrored his. He looked away and said, “You know I have to.” He moved toward Adam, trying to put himself between Maya and the gun, but Adam sidestepped neatly and snatched the envelope from his hands, the weapon focused on Maya the whole time.

  Benjamin started to move back to Maya’s side, but Adam shook his head. “No, brother. You’re coming with me.”

  “Why?” Anger, which had been simmering under the shock of Adam’s sudden appearance, flared in Benjamin’s chest. “You got what you wanted. Fuck off.”

  “I assumed you would go looking for a way to beat me. Octel’s TrueName seemed like the most likely possibility, and you didn’t disappoint me. But I’m not leaving you two together any longer. There’s always a chance you might actually stumble onto something that could truly help you.”

  How had this fallen apart so fast? Benjamin glowered at Adam, more furious at himself for being careless, than at Adam. Anger and adrenaline muddied his thoughts, a coherent plan beyond his grasp. All he could do was fantasize about the happy collision of his fist with Adam’s nose.

  “You do know she kissed me?” Adam’s smooth voice yanked Benjamin out of his angry reverie.

  Benjamin glanced at Maya and back at Adam. “It doesn’t count if you use Mesmer.”

  Benjamin turned to Maya, only to find she stood a step away. Pale gray daylight obliterated her dark eye color, accentuating the fierce determination of her expression. She closed the distance, grabbed his head, her grip catching chunks of his hair, and pulled his mouth to hers. For an instant he was sure, with this gorgeous and strong woman at his side, there was nothing he couldn’t do. The power he’d been compressing rushed free, seeking Maya’s. Maya let out a little moan but pulled him tighter, fingers knotted painfully in his hair. His senses hyperaware, he ran his hands over her body, feeling the skin beneath her clothes.

  “Enough!” Adam’s fingers dug into his shoulder, finding a few nerves still tender from the healed shotgun wound. The kiss broken, Benjamin and Maya stared at the dark tunnel of a gun’s barrel. “Let’s go. Now.”

  Benjamin squeezed Maya’s hand for a second, trying to reassure her, though he had no idea what could be done to salvage the situation. “I love you.”

  The realization that he was truly leaving flooded Maya’s expression and she stared at him in horrified silence.

  “Don’t forget, Maya,” Adam chided gently, “we will be meeting at seven tonight.” He tugged Benjamin’s arm. Benjamin shrugged off his hand, but started to go, walking backward so he could keep Maya in sight.

  “Your car keys are in your pocket.” He turned quickly and followed Adam, unable to face her stricken expression any longer.

  It’s funny how small the world can seem at a time like this. Because at that very moment, it felt as if all the air in the world had compressed tightly into the tiny storage unit. There was nothing in the world except Maya, a pile of old National Geographics, a box of doll parts, an old lamp, and the horrible truth that Adam had outsmarted them and Benjamin had gone, leaving her alone. Alone. To do what? Muster the cavalry?

  She gasped, realizing she had neglected to breathe. There was a thud and then a second thud of car doors being shut. The grumble of an engine starting. The sound of Benjamin leaving her.

  I wonder if the bastard was using a government vehicle to follow us? Her feet didn’t stir, though, rooted to the storage unit’s concrete floor. What good would it do to know? It wasn’t as if she could call her congressman and complain. “A comic book character come to life and masquerading as an ATF agent is inappropriately using government resources.”

  I have to get out of here. I have to do…something.

  Outside, a stiff wind whistled though the rows of storage units, and from it, a cold side breeze darted into the little room and ruffled through the top pages of a magazine. The icy breeze unglued her feet and she started toward the doorway. There was no sign of Benjamin or Adam. Just her little SUV parked where they’d left it, its windshield speckled with tiny drops of freezing rain. She got in her SUV, turned on the engine, cranked up the heat and reached into her coat pocket for her phone.

  Flipping the phone open, she paused, watching raindrops coalesce on the windshield, and debated. Should she call Roland? She had a strange urge to call her mother, which she wrote off to extreme stress.

  She looked down at the phone and frowned, confused. The phone’s little screen was backlit in green. Of all the color options available on the phone, green was the ugliest. Her phone should have had a blue display.

  “Benjamin’s phone.” He had slipped her his phone along with the keys to the SUV. Before she could take the time to think about what she was doing, she searched through his phone list, found the number and called.

  A male voice answered. “Yeah, I’d like two type O negatives. And a beer. Make that two beers.”

  “What?”

  “Unless you’re calling for some useful reason, like taking my lunch order,” Breas said, “go away.”

  “I need your help. Again. Benjamin and I thought we had a way to beat Adam, but it backfired. Now Adam has Octel’s TrueName,” said Maya, trying to circumvent the vampire’s attitude by cutting to the chase.

  There was a pause. “Right. And where’s your wonder twin now?”

  “Benjamin is with Adam.”

  “So you two gave Adam the means of enslaving Octel. Niiice.”

  “I—” Maya considered the vampire’s words. “Enslaved?”

  “With Octel’s TrueName, Adam can make the demon do anything he wants him to do.”

  “It’s like Mesmer.”

  “Worse. With Mesmer, you’re happy to comply. With a TrueName compulsion, you know you’re being forced to comply.”

  “Do you have a TrueName?”

  “Sorry, troll doll. Vampires, like humans, don’t have TrueNames. Why are you calling me again?”

  “I need your help. I can’t do magic—”

  “You magicked up a good-looking boyfriend.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “So accidentally rescue yourself, fair maiden. I’m no hero.”

  “Well, that’s for sure,” Maya said before she could stop herself.

  “Whoa. Would you look at the time. I’m late…for organizing my sock drawer.” With that the vampire hung up.

  Undeterred, Maya was about to call him right back again when her phone rang.

  “I’ve got good news,” Roland said, “and I’ve got bad news. The trouble is, the good and the bad are the same news.”

  “So I can’t ask for the bad news first.”

  “Sorry.”

  Maya’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, her fingernails biting into the soft rubbery surface, suddenly overwhelmed by impatience. “So what’s the news, Roland?” she asked as calmly as possible.

  “I was reading, trying to read—it’s hard since there are paragraphs in t
hat other language—the copies I made of Lore of the Formed.”

  Roland went on to tell Maya what she and Benjamin had already discovered: that Benjamin was tied only to his key drawing, and not to all the drawings she had created of Benjamin.

  “But there’s a catch,” Roland said. “Every key drawing, in this case Adam and Benjamin’s, is tied together with some kind of energy matrix thingamagig.”

  “That would make sense,” Maya said. “Benjamin said he was linked to Adam. They can’t even travel more than about five hundred miles away from each other.”

  “They’re linked through their key drawings. So here’s the good and bad news.”

  Maya ground her teeth through Roland’s pause, knowing full well how much he loved drama, but nevertheless wanting to strangle him through the phone.

  “If you destroy Benjamin’s drawing, Benjamin gets sent to EverVerse, but so does Adam.”

  “So I still lose Benjamin—”

  “But the good news is you get rid of Adam,” Roland finished.

  “And Adam doesn’t know this,” Maya said. “Or else he wouldn’t be demanding that we destroy Benjamin’s drawings and send just Benjamin away.” She lapsed into silence, and stared at her hands, still in a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

  “Dead air,” Roland said. “You okay? How did your plan work out?”

  “Can you come by my house?” She didn’t want to explain everything over the phone and she desperately needed the comfort of a friend at her side.

  “So we also still have the problem of the letter Adam threatened you with.”

  “Right.” Maya stood by Delilah’s aquarium, dropping in tiny bits of food and watching the orange fish gulp them down with zeal. “I feel like I’m Adam’s pet. No right to self-determination. Do what he says, no questions asked.” She closed the aquarium’s lid, unable to stop the slide show of images that ran through her mind: Benjamin rescuing Delilah, Benjamin setting up a new aquarium, Benjamin laughing, Benjamin, his face pale and hair dark in the streetlights.

  Roland, who had been sitting on the couch watching her, got up and joined her by the aquarium. “Come on.” He put his arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the couch. “Sit down. I’ll make you some more tea.”

  “I don’t even know him that well,” Maya said, a few minutes later. “For all I know, he’ll drive me nuts. He’s a thief and totally unapologetic. Who knows what other weird habits he has? I do know he thinks sandwiches are a major food group.”

  Roland, sitting by her side, stared at his cup of tea, his aquiline profile stern as he took in her words.

  “Eric is in love with my nemesis.”

  “Whuh-who?”

  “Dirt,” Roland said grimly. “Or as he likes to say, ‘soil.’” He shook his head, a small smile on his face. “Who would think I’d fall for a gardener? And you know I drive him crazy.

  “You’d think my perfect man would be as fastidious as I am. With the same great sense of fashion.” At this Maya snorted and Roland elbowed her and continued. “But we don’t fall in love with ourselves. We fall in love with other people. And other people are weird and annoying.”

  “Thank you,” Maya said, squeezing his hand, because anything else seemed inadequate.

  The doorbell rang and they both jumped. Stupid hope set her heart beating at breakneck speed. Could it be Benjamin? Did he get away from Adam?

  Roland shadowed her as she went to the door. Maya froze on tiptoe at the door’s peephole, little tendrils of adrenaline starting to tickle her leg muscles. Why was he here? Had Adam already used his TrueName against him? She entertained the idea of not answering the door and calling the cops, and then opened the door.

  “Hello, Octel.” Behind her, she heard Roland gasp in realization.

  “Ms. Stephenson, hello,” Octel said. An occasional snowflake fell, drifting aimlessly, nature not entirely committed to the idea of a full-on snowstorm. Maya wondered if she should invite the demon in out of the cold and then wondered if she shouldn’t, if demons, like vampires, needed an invitation to enter someone’s home; and then she wondered why it mattered at all.

  Octel got straight to the point. “Because of you and Benjamin, Adam now has my TrueName.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maya said automatically.

  The demon continued as though she’d said nothing. “And now Adam has demanded—no, ordered, that is the correct word—that I complete a task for him. And this task, if I am successful, will enrage the vampire Breas Montrose, and will bring grief and war on my people. If I am with luck, and I may be, I will be killed.”

  “Oh,” Maya said, because what else could she say?

  “Only one thing can free me. Adam’s death.”

  “Couldn’t you kill him?” Roland asked. “You’re a demon, right?”

  “The first command that Adam gave me was the prohibition against harming him.” The demon’s eyes narrowed and something shrewd glimmered in their orange depths. “But you have no such prohibition.”

  “I can’t—” Maya said, horrified. And then an idea, a depressing realization actually, blossomed in her mind. “But I can get rid of him. I can make it so he follows Benjamin to EverVerse. Would that solve your problem?”

  “No one returns from EverVerse,” said the demon. “Adam did not tell me when exactly I must complete my task. With him gone, I could…postpone the task…forever. I will be free of Adam.”

  “I can promise you,” Maya said, her voice strong, “that he’ll be gone with Benjamin this evening. In exchange, I want the letter that Adam is using to threaten me. You have it, don’t you?”

  “I have the letter, yes.” The demon’s teeth, shockingly white against his olive-green skin, flashed in a smile. “Let us be in agreement, then. If you banish Adam, I will give you this letter that Adam uses to threaten you.”

  “Deal,” Maya said.

  Without another word, Octel turned and walked away. Maya shut her door, turning the switch on the deadbolt with a decisive twist.

  “Well, that’s that.” Maya stood before the closed door, staring at the smattering of holes in the surrounding plaster, reminders of Ms. Kalman’s attempts at law enforcement. “I don’t want to say goodbye,” Maya said. “I don’t know how.”

  “I know,” Roland said. He put his arm around her shoulders.

  “But my family…”

  “I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Mother Nature had made her decision and was launching an all-out snowy assault on Santa Fe. Maya had a roaring fire going in the fireplace, although the house was already hot. She just couldn’t seem to get warm. Roland, apologizing profusely for leaving her alone, had gone home at three.

  “Go,” she said. “Eric the One-Legged Gardener needs you. I’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll call you at six,” he said.

  Now Maya sat on the banco, tearing strips from an advertising flyer, crinkling the strips into balls, feeling her magic shivering in response, and then throwing the paper balls into the fire and watching them unfold and writhe in the flames.

  It was dark by five, darker than usual because of the thick cloud cover. Maya didn’t bother to turn on any lights, preferring the orange glow of the fire. She seemed to be trapped in two alternating stages of grief—denial, then anger.

  She was in the midst of brutal anger when the phone rang. At the second ring, she got up and looked at the caller ID. “Fat lot of good you are,” she grumbled to herself.

  Instead of “hello,” she said, “How did you get this number?”

  “A little elf whined it at me,” said Breas. Maya was certain she could hear his annoying smirk. “I thought you wanted help.”

  “I thought you were a rock, an island, no one touches you.”

  “Simon and Garfunkel. A little before your time, aren’t they?”

  “What. Do. You. Want?”

  “Open your door.”

  “My…what?” Standing in the middle of her living room
, she stared at her front door for several long seconds. But misery had obliterated her capacity to feel any fear. She marched to the door, unlocked it and flung it open.

  Breas watched her with slightly hooded eyes. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Yeah,” she said, bowing and gesturing with a flourish. “Come in, make yourself at home.” Seriously. What difference could it make? How more insane could life get?

  “That was easy.” Breas strolled in and looked around the living room. “Got a beer?”

  “Beer?”

  “Beer.” The vampire continued to study the room. “Fermented barley and hops. It’s an ancient beverage.”

  “But… Uh, Benjamin left a few bottles in the fridge.” She waved her hand in the direction of the kitchen.

  She was still standing a few feet from the door when the vampire returned with his beer, looking extremely satisfied. “Did Adam break your brain again? You’ve got that stupid look on your face.”

  “The concept of a beer-drinking vampire broke my brain.” She glared at Breas. “You said something about help.”

  “Testy. You need a beer.”

  Maya’s mouth flapped ineffectually for a moment. “You’re right,” she said. “I do.” She stomped past him and into the kitchen.

  She returned to find him sitting on the couch, reading The Lore of the Formed, a non-English page. A small pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, making him look like a cute professor.

  “Can you read it?” she asked. “The parts in the other language?”

  “Elvish. Yes.”

  Rather than pepper the vampire with the inevitable flood of questions that rushed to her mouth—like why an immortal needed corrective lenses—she told him what had happened with Benjamin and everything that they had learned from The Lore of the Formed, and finally about her deal with Octel.

  “Stupid plan, I guess,” Maya said.

  “Not necessarily,” Breas replied, turning a page. “Except Adam, for all his faults, didn’t underestimate Benjamin. You have one advantage, though.”