The Canvas Thief

by P. Kirby

  “I do?”

  “Adam underestimates you.”

  “Well, honestly, why shouldn’t he? What can I do?”

  “Magic.” He turned and looked at her over his glasses, yellow-orange firelight flickering on the lenses.

  Trapped in the vampire’s gaze, Maya stared back. Her natural reaction was denial, but she knew he was right. Benjamin and Adam were proof that she could do magic. But what good did that do? She couldn’t, no she wouldn’t, conjure any more drawings to life.

  Studying the vampire’s face with an artist’s eye, she struggled to understand what he wanted from her. It came to her as she noticed a faint scar on his forehead, just at the hairline. “What else can I do with this magic? Besides making Adam an army?”

  Breas’s eyes narrowed and he smiled, and there was nothing pleasant about the expression. Maya shivered, realizing his smarmy smirk was preferable to that smile.

  He pointed at a section of text in Elvish. “You are the architect of Adam’s existence. You have the ability to define his reality, even if it isn’t your reality.”

  Knowing that he wanted her to figure it out, that asking would just earn her a nasty remark, Maya tried to make sense of what he just said. “‘Isn’t my reality.’ You mean like a dream, or illusion?”

  “Yup,” he drawled. “Oh, and it’ll work best if you give him something he wants to believe.”

  “If Adam’s lost in this fantasy, he can’t hurt anyone again, right?” And he couldn’t use Octel’s TrueName either, so she could still hold up her end of the bargain.

  “Right.”

  Maya nodded and got up to get her sketchbook and a pencil.

  “I have to go alone. Adam will be suspicious if I show up with anyone,” Maya told Roland over the phone. “This has to work. It has to.”

  The murmur of a television came through the receiver. She could hear Roland’s deep breath. And then he said, “I know, Maya. I know. I just hate the idea of you…alone.”

  “Honestly? So do I,” Maya admitted.

  She hated the idea so much that when Breas had left earlier, she had said, “You’re not coming with me?” The petulance in her voice embarrassed her.

  Breas had sneered and then pointed out the obvious. Adam would be on his guard, expecting Maya to try something. No one had followed him to Maya’s house, but Breas didn’t discount the possibility that Adam knew about his visit. Maya had to go alone.

  “And remember, once the spell is triggered, don’t let Benjamin touch Adam,” Breas had said by way of goodbye.

  “Because their link will break the spell,” Maya had replied. There wasn’t much risk of Benjamin wanting to give Adam a brotherly hug, but she thanked Breas for the reminder anyway.

  “It’s six-thirty. I’ve got to leave for Adam’s place now.” Maya promised to call Roland with any news and hung up.

  Just as Maya had gathered up two large portfolios of drawings, one for Adam, one for Benjamin, her purse and car keys, her house phone rang. She almost didn’t bother to answer, worried that she was already running late.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Adam. “I want you to bring the drawings to a new location.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I said so,” Adam said cheerfully and he rattled off directions to the new location before she could protest. “If you leave now, it should take about thirty-five minutes to get here. Don’t be late.”

  After she hung up, Maya stood in the dark living room—the fire having faded to a few small hot cinders—clutching the portfolios. Dark panic started to rise in her chest. Should she call Breas? It was a wonder he had helped her at all. He obviously expected her to think for herself.

  The drawings were created based on her memory of Adam’s house, memories which were clouded with the horror of watching Benjamin being beaten and shot. So they probably weren’t that accurate. The backgrounds shouldn’t matter anyway; it was the characters and events that mattered. Right?

  There was no help for it now. Maya’s feet started moving and then she was out the door.

  Chapter Thirty

  Peter Angel was waiting for her. He slithered out from the shadow of the porch which ran the length of the strip mall, covering each business’s front entry. The hot orange flare from his cigarette made his weathered face look craggier and crueler, if that were possible. He came right over to her car and waited by the door like a nicotine-stained vulture.

  Adam’s new meeting place was an abandoned outlet mall several miles south of Santa Fe. Maya parked in front of the former jewelry store, as specified by Adam, and collected her portfolios. She also crumpled a scrap of paper to prime her magic against Adam’s attempts at Mesmer and stuck a paper sticky note onto her left palm.

  As soon as she got out of the car, Peter grabbed her arm. “Let go,” she said, jerking her arm away and managing to swing her elbow at his face.

  Peter, unfortunately, dodged the blow, but he snarled and said, “Your redheaded girlfriend is waiting for you.”

  Determined not to give the creepy little man any victory, Maya started toward the abandoned store on her own.

  Peter hurried to her side. “You a lesbo? If you like your men that pretty, you must be some kind of dyke.” He took a drag on the cigarette and exhaled a plume of steaming toxins into the cold air and at her face. “Of course, I like girl-on-girl action…” He continued in this irritating vein as they entered the building, but Maya’s mind whirled with anxiety over what was to come and she heard little of his blather.

  They entered a showroom—empty glass display cases covered thickly in dust, one fluorescent light fixture flickering overhead—and Peter grabbed her arm again and directed her toward a hallway in the back, to the left. There was an exit at the back of the hallway. Three doors were to the right, the last, closest to the exit, a bathroom. The middle door was open, weak light shining from the doorway and casting a pale yellow rectangle on the hall’s wall.

  Peter shoved her into the room. “Here she is, boss.”

  Adam sat behind a desk of the particle board modular variety with a fake oak veneer, looking as though he owned the place. Henry—oh, Henry—Maya felt a hot knot of embarrassment and guilt over her latest, albeit forced, creation—loomed nearby, a shotgun aimed at Benjamin, who stood by the desk.

  Benjamin. Her heart leaped at the sight of him, and she felt a giddy glow that must have been obvious to everyone in the room. He looked at her, face calm but eyes bright with emotion. She had the feeling he was trying to memorize her face. For the first time since they’d met, he looked truly tired, dark half circles under his eyes joining the collection of bruises on his face. He looked away, attention shifting to Peter, his expression hardening to icy calculation. Maya noted Benjamin’s lip was split and swollen.

  “Cowards beat their prisoners,” Maya said, meeting Adam’s confident stare.

  Adam looked confused and glanced up at Benjamin. “Oh, that. Peter did that. Payback, I guess, for the bullet in his leg.”

  “And for this,” Peter said, pointing to his own swollen lip. “And for setting my lap on fire.”

  Adam laughed and shook his head as though Peter were a favorite but crazy uncle. His violet eyes, bright with a human warmth that belied his psychopathic nature, met hers. “Are those the drawings?”

  “Yes,” Maya replied. Without looking at Benjamin, she walked up to the desk and handed Adam the portfolios. “The top folio has Benjamin’s drawings. Every drawing of Benjamin.”

  “Thank you,” he said, his smile enhanced with a stream of Mesmer. Setting the portfolios on the desk, he opened it to the first page. “What a goofy expression.” He looked up at Benjamin, who stared down at the drawing, the image of him in the diner, his face blank. “She really captured your essence, didn’t she?”

  Benjamin looked at Maya and she saw goodbye in his dark eyes. Swallowing her broken heart, she turned back to Adam, who was starting to page through the portfolio. “What are you doing?” Maya asked.<
br />
  “Checking,” Adam said, with a pleasant smile, “for the trick you’ve hidden in these pages, some way to send me to EverVerse instead of Benjamin.”

  “Why would I do that?” Maya said with a little squeak of desperation. “If you Fade to EverVerse, that letter gets sent to the Holders and my family is screwed.”

  Adam paused from his examination of the portfolio. “Because Octel stopped by your house, no doubt to whine about the dangerous mission I’ve sent him on.” He smiled at Maya’s guilty expression. “You’re probably hoping he’ll get killed before he can send the letter.”

  “I wouldn’t hope anyone would get killed, except maybe you.” Her ragged nerves were starting to make her legs shake. She almost clenched her fists, before remembering the little bit of paper in her left hand. At this rate, her sweaty hand would have turned it to mush.

  Adam continued his perusal of her portfolio, unhurried and thorough. Maya could feel sweat beading on her lip, her stomach starting to cramp with the stress. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Benjamin, his face still expressionless, shifted his feet slowly, something subtly tense about his posture. Don’t try anything yet, she thought. This can still work.

  “What’s this?” Adam asked, encountering a page that was stuck to the one below it. He spared Maya a weary look. “Really, Maya, how unimaginative.” Using both hands, he started to pry the pages apart.

  Maya’s heart leaped into her head, beating like a kettledrum. “Wait!” she said, knowing and hoping her protest was futile. The pages came apart with a gluey sigh and Maya clenched her fist around the little piece of paper, reveling in vibrations of wood pulp fibers bending and folding. “Esh talfed do’tonen,” she said, and magic galloped eagerly out of her body and into the portfolio.

  Adam darted an angry look at her and then all emotion faded from his deep violet eyes. Shuddering like an addict who had just gotten a delightful fix, Adam turned and looked down at the page he had revealed.

  As graphic novels went it was not the best, scripted and drawn in just under an hour, but it was possibly one of the shortest, spanning just ten pages. The spell, triggered by the separation of the pages, grabbed Adam’s attention, making the story the most compelling he’d ever read. In its pages, Adam would see himself getting everything he wanted—Benjamin Fading to EverVerse, Maya crafting for him an immortal army, and even Breas agreeing to work for him—and as he read, fiction would become his reality. He just had to finish reading all ten pages and he’d be bound forever in the fantasy Maya had created.

  Alerted by the spell’s energy, both Benjamin and Henry were looking at Adam, Henry blinking in confusion and Benjamin brightening with realization. Happily lost in his fictional triumph, Adam turned another page and continued reading. Magical energy hummed from the portfolio like an electric motor.

  “Boss?” Peter said, breaking the sudden silence. “Boss, what’s going on?” When he didn’t get a response, he took a step forward, beady eyes turning on Maya. “What did you do to him, bitch?” His bony hands bit into Maya’s upper arm as he jerked her around to face him.

  “Get your hands off her!” Benjamin said.

  “Whatever you did, turn it off.” Peter emphasized the command with a handgun, which he pulled out of his jacket.

  “Carrying a concealed gun without a permit is illegal,” Maya said, scrambling to remember the defensive spell. What was it again? Cats on fire? The little sticky note didn’t have much crumple left in it, but she squeezed it tighter in her palm. “Cahtshonfear.”

  It worked, almost too well. The air around Maya sizzled, static electricity gathering like a tiny thunderstorm, and then little bolts of lightning shot out from Maya, hitting Peter. The cigarette dropped from his mouth as he gyrated in the electrical field. The gun followed the cigarette, hitting the floor hard, but fortunately not going off. A few bolts backfired at Maya, tiny shocks burning her upper arms.

  Benjamin and Henry, out of range of the worst effects, still staggered back from the mild shock. Adam’s hair developed a bit of an electric poof, but he was oblivious to all around him. Peter joined his cigarette and gun on the floor with a satisfying oomph, flat on his back, still twitching.

  “Wow,” Benjamin said, a goofy grin on his face that matched the one from his key drawing. A few strands of coppery hair stuck out from his head, the consequences of Maya’s spell.

  Maya smiled and then her smile faded. Henry, though somewhat distracted, still held the shotgun on Benjamin.

  Benjamin noted it too. “Hey, Henry. You and I are in the same boat, you know. Taking orders from Adam. And he’s not exactly boss of the year, is he?” Henry listened but said nothing. Perhaps his neck still hadn’t healed entirely from being broken. Benjamin lifted his hands and then took a slow step toward Maya.

  Adam turned another page and Maya wondered how many he had read. Five? Six?

  “I’m just going to stand here by Maya, okay? I’m still in range, so you’re not really disobeying orders.” Henry lifted the weapon higher, still aimed at Benjamin, but his attention was divided between the redheaded thief and Adam.

  Benjamin slid up next to Maya and squeezed her hand. “What did you do to Adam?” he murmured.

  “Trapped him in his own wet dream,” Maya replied, voice equally low, using Breas’s description of the spell.

  Benjamin crooked an eyebrow at her description and grinned. “World domination and so forth?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Brilliant!” His grin widened and then he winced and touched his swollen lip.

  Adam turned another page. “Just a few more pages,” Maya said, her voice low and breathless. Benjamin released her hand and put his arm around her waist, snugging her tight to his side.

  On the ground, Peter coughed and hacked like a cat with a hairball. Wobbling, eyes bleary and red with broken blood vessels, he pushed himself to his elbows and glared bullets at Maya and Benjamin. “Turn it off,” he rasped. “Turn off your fucking voodoo.”

  As an answer, Benjamin nonchalantly stretched out a long leg and kicked Peter’s handgun into a corner.

  Peter’s curse was garbled by another cough. Sparing Benjamin a brief snarl, the stringy little man turned his attention on Henry. “Get those pictures away from Adam.” When Henry, who was clearly overwhelmed by the situation, but more concerned with keeping Benjamin in the shotgun’s sights, didn’t move, Peter struggled to his feet and half staggered and half fell toward the desk.

  “Boss!” He leaned on the desk with one hand and shook Adam’s shoulder with the other. He tried pulling the portfolio from Adam, but Adam held it in a viselike grip. “Help me out, Henry.” Henry squirmed, trapped between keeping guard over Benjamin and Peter’s request.

  Maya and Benjamin didn’t move, uncertain what to do. Maya knew Adam wouldn’t release the portfolio, but attempts to separate him from it would delay the spell’s completion. Henry, however, still had the shotgun trained on Benjamin, and Maya, remembering the mess Ms. Kalman’s shotgun had made of Benjamin’s shoulder, not to mention her wall, was loath to test Henry’s aim at close range.

  “Henry!” Peter commanded through another cough. With a sigh, Henry lowered the shotgun and moved toward Adam, gaze still darting to Benjamin. Setting the gun on the desk, he reached a big meaty hand toward Adam.

  Just as Maya had a terrible, crushing realization.

  “No, don’t touch him!”

  Henry, now focused on his task, clamped his hand on Adam’s shoulder and gave his boss a firm shake.

  And the spell broke. It ruptured with a deep, resonant, almost psychic crack. There was a pause, like a drawing of breath, and then the energy which powered the spell roared out of the portfolio, out through Adam, who shuddered and then slumped facedown onto the desk. Henry, also caught in the flood of escaping power, fell back against the wall and slid gracelessly to the floor. No one—except Peter, who gingerly shook Adam’s shoulder—moved.

  “That didn’t just happen.” May
a’s whispered protest rang loud in the sudden, hard silence of the little office.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Benjamin said, “but we’re getting out of here. Now.”

  Before Maya could speak, Benjamin propelled her out the doorway. “Go,” he said, and darted back into the room. Magic, Benjamin’s familiar power, feathered light touches over her skin. She caught a glimpse of his hasty, but effective Fist of Air spell shoving Peter out of his way and Benjamin yanking the top portfolio out from under Adam’s face.

  He joined her and motioned toward the back exit. “This way.” One hand in hers, the other holding the portfolio, he pulled her down the hall, through the exit and out into the cold night.

  Benjamin had no idea what to do next. Getting away from Adam, Peter and Henry—Henry and the shotgun, especially—was the obvious plan. Running was a poor excuse for a plan, especially since he was inexplicably tired, but it would do for the moment.

  They ran along the outskirts of the mall, keeping to the shadows, passing the back doors of shoe, clothing, more jewelry and even a furniture store. In many cases, large commercial trash bins hunched by doors, many still filled with the detritus of now-defunct businesses, often more trash out of than in the bins. In the dark, Maya stumbled despite his efforts to steer her around any obstacles.

  “The trick is to feel the ground with your feet. Don’t bother trying to see where you’re going.”

  “See with my feet,” Maya repeated, stumbling anyway. In her voice, he heard forced humor.

  “Let’s stop here.” He guided her to a stop behind a large metal trash bin. They’d covered close to a block and were near the corner where the east-west leg of the mall turned and headed south. “We can see Adam and company if they come this way. They can’t see us.”

  Maya, her features lost in the moonless dark, was panting, but not, he noticed, as much as he was. Unable to see her clearly, he set the portfolio on the trash bin and then pulled her close, where he could see her with his hands.