Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  Not a painting. The painting. I knelt before it, the hush of satin like the sigh of awe I couldn’t properly give voice. As I looked at her face, a moment of déjà vu rushed into my head, rocking me back on my heels. The white neck, the green velvet bodice. The hood circling the auburn waves like a halo born of earth rather than heaven. “Kirpatrick,” I whispered, awed. “Kirkpatrick painted this.” I knew the careful hand, the unabashed celebration of textures rendered by a brushstroke so fine it erased the evidence of its own making. “This was the woman in Kirkpatrick’s painting.”

  What I had read as judgment on our first meeting, had in fact, been surprise, in Kirkpatrick’s limited bandwidth of facial expressions. And perhaps distaste for the pale imitation of the savior he remembered.

  “Yes,” Mark said. “She saved his life. That’s how I met him. In saving yours, he finally repaid the debt.”

  My fingers floated out to trace the white curve of her face. The texture was glass-smooth under my fingertips, like a mirror reflecting the past rather than the present. “Is it true?” I asked. “Am I pretty much the genetic equivalent of microwaved Lily leftovers?”

  Mark’s sigh was heavy enough to create a flurry of dust motes in the blue light of pre-dawn. “Hanna, I will give you the story you want. When I can.”

  This wound was too old, too deep to avoid irritation. “Please,” I said, staring at my own face on a centuries old canvas. “Please don’t do this to me. Not again.”

  Mark deliberately avoided looking at my face as well as the ghost of it captured in the gilded frame. “If I could tell you more, I would.”

  Rage boiled in my belly. I turned back to the painting. For a brief moment, I felt the satisfying rip of stiffened canvas as I slashed her face to ribbons with the blade I didn’t have.

  Who are you trying to hurt?

  “Think about this, Hanna. For one minute. Listen to me.”

  I half glanced over my shoulder. “What?”

  “Look at the sheet. Pick it up.”

  I did as bidden. The pattern of wear followed the jutting swirled and flowered recesses of the frame I had traced with my fingers. A sneeze erupted from my nose as a cloud of dust swirled out from the sheet. “But I saw this painting on a wall.” I said.

  Mark smiled, pleased with my observation. “Correct.”

  “Which means someone came up here, got the painting, hung it, took a picture, and put it back? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Indeed not,” he said.

  “There are no footprints!” The realization came to me all at once as I scanned the area, seeing the trail of my skirt and the distinctive marks of my own bare feet.

  “Who do you suppose could come up here, retrieve a painting, hang it on the wall, take a picture, and depart without leaving a single footprint?”

  “Not a vampire,” I answered. “Or a werewolf. But a demigod...”

  “They’re fucking with you, Hanna. And you’re letting them. I will tell you about her when I can. I’m not hiding some shrine of a secret love from you. Her painting has been here since Kirkpatrick gave it to me. The room you are staying in is the most secure in the castle. Yes, she stayed there. But so have many others.”

  “Did you love her?” The question came from a place neither polite or practical.

  Mark looked like he’d taken an uppercut to the gut. He’d been on a roll. He hadn’t expected this. At last, he looked not at me, but the painting. “Love isn’t a useful—”

  “Did you love her?” I asked again, meeting his eyes, and refusing to look away.

  If I had ever thought myself the victim of a broken heart before, I had surely missed the mark. For what I saw in Abernathy’s face at that exact moment buried an axe in my sternum. “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you love me?” I would have given every sunset, every leaf wet with rain, every treasured experience in this life or any other to take those words back the second they left my mouth.

  Abernathy’s jaw hardened, his eyes going cold and dark as tree bark. “I can’t,” he said.

  A cold finality settled in my chest, shrinking my heart to a pebble lodged between my lungs. My nose stung, my eyes filling treacherously with tears. I bit the inside of cheek hard enough to taste copper on my tongue.

  “You will always have my protection,” he said. “Whether you want it or not.”

  “I know.” It was not a presumption, but an understanding. “I’ll stay on at the gallery through the wedding. There’s plenty of planning needed between now and then. But after that, it’s probably best that we—that I move on to something else.”

  Mark nodded, offering me his arm. “I’ll take you back to your room.”

  I looked at it, craving its warmth, his touch, more than I craved air, but shook my head no. “I know my own way.”

  On the flight over to Scotland, it had been Mark’s sleeping face I’d studied. On the way home, I scrutinized the snoring Joseph, whose body held half the DNA responsible for the werewolf I loved.

  And I did love him.

  This was the only reasonable conclusion given the facts. And the facts pissed me off. Lying would have been so much simpler than the truth I acknowledged in the form of a list. Written, of course, in the notebook where I recorded my tasks with a pen whose voluptuous ink rivaled the thickness of a balsamic reduction.

  Number one: my stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a brick when Allan told me Mark wouldn’t be boarding the private jet home, owing to a yet another meeting with the Pharaoh, aka, Akhenaten.

  Number two: I couldn’t stop staring at Joseph’s hands, so much like Mark’s, and remembering how they’d felt shoving me down on the mattress. Looking at them, I couldn’t squelch the feeling that they belonged to me. Belonged on my skin. The piece of a puzzle God himself had architected in a moment of divine humor, or hysteria.

  Number three: I’d written down a list of everything Mark had said to me from the moment we’d arrived in Scotland until the moment he’d let me submit my resignation and return to my room alone. Next to each group of words, I’d scratched out possible interpretations, all of which read something like: Nope. Totally doesn’t love you.

  Number four: If I had a daisy—or any flower, for that matter—I would pluck the fuck out of those petals. He loves me, he loves me not because he is a heartless, self-centered, stubborn, irascible bastard, he loves me...

  Heartbreak fucking sucked.

  “You know his mother was Li’il Red Riding Hood, right?” Allan leaned over the arm rest as I stared at Joseph’s face with unhealthy interest.

  “I think Joseph mentioned something to that effect. At least, he said something about being the Big Bad Wolf.”

  Allan’s smile revealed the edges of his elongated front teeth. “He had dat reputation a long time ‘afore he met her.”

  “Her being Mark’s mother?”

  “S’right.” He caught the elbow a passing flight attendant. “Bring us a voddy and soda, will ya, love?”

  “Of course, Lord Ede. And anything for you, Lady Hanna?”

  I had a feeling this story would benefit from the application of liquid courage. “Extra dirty martini. Three olives.”

  The flight attendant—Paige, this time—nodded, and was gone.

  “Right, where was I?” Allan rubbed the salt and pepper stubble on his pointy chin.

  “Little Red Riding Hood?”

  “Yes, of course. As it ‘appens, the woodsman were actually a witch hunter. ‘e’d sharpened his axe, determined to find Li’il Red Riding Hood, and toss her on the burning pyre once and for all. He was heading over to her house in de woods, bent on chopping her ‘ead off, when dis wolf showed up, and run him off. After de wolf scared de woodcutter away, de rumors grew and de story got twisted.”

  “Mark’s mother is a witch? I thought he was a pure bred.”

  “Was a witch. Bein’ the son of a purebred werewolf is about as pure as anyone gets dese days. Well, except for you, that is. Which, I imagine, is why K
aferine wants you dead. She never could accept that her mother was a witch. Always ‘ated not being from a pure line.”

  Paige returned with our drinks, settling them carefully down our respective lacquered wood tray tables.

  “How did she die?” I asked when she’d returned to the galley. “Mark’s mother?”

  Allan glanced at Joseph’s sleeping face before answering. “She was one of twenty-two what were burned that day. On Abernethy Hill. Mark was only fifteen when it ‘appened.”

  He watched his mother burn.

  I knew it at once and completely. He fought the men who arrived to take her. Maybe even killed some of them. When overpowered, he followed them. And stayed until it was done.

  “She didn’t deny it,” Allan said. “Spat at her captors.”

  “Where was Joseph?”

  Allan’s shoulders sagged toward his chest. “In ‘is time, Joseph were one of de strongest, one of de brightest. But rules is rules. We are forbidden from transforming in front human beings, and de mob dat took her were too many for him to fight off. For all of us to fight off.”

  The sorrow in Allan’s eyes infected my chest like a viral colony. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

  “Mark left Castle Abernathy after that. I couldn’t blame him. He wanted something beau’ifuw.” His dark gaze found mine through the barrier of Gucci frames. “I suppose he found it.”

  “Are you on his payroll?” I asked with narrowed eyes.

  “He’d be bloody lucky to be on mine!” Allan laughed a refreshing cackle. “Croesus comes to me when he needs a few quid.”

  “Understood,” I said.

  “D’you understand why I’m tellin’ you this?” The warmth in his eyes begged from me compassion I might have refused a lesser man. “Mark is de way he is for a reason.

  “I love Joseph like me own brother, but his love of Mark’s mother was a disaster from the word go. At least, the daughter they had is likely responsible for the death of her own mother, if not more. Your predecessor included.”

  I repressed the urge to grab Allan by his red and purple striped bowtie because I was a grown ass woman capable of working on things as I’d promised.

  But barely.

  “You know about her?” I hissed. “What do you know about her? What did he tell you?”

  “He didn’t have to teww me anyfing,” Allan said, squeezing his lime into the effervescent liquid before him. Hundreds of tiny essential oil droplets burst from the zest, catching the light in the cabin. “I bloody introduced ‘em.”

  I took a healthy slug of my own drink, appreciating the searingly cold, briny liquid. “Tell me everything.”

  “I kept tabs on Mark as ‘e roamed all over Europe, makin’ money and becomin’ a big name in the art world. When fings started to go souf with Joseph, I called him home to take over de empire. He was onwy about two ‘undred and firty, and a right mopey bastard. I fought introducing him to a nice girl might do de trick. Of course, she was also a pure blood heir, which would have made him de most powerful werewolf in all de world, if they mated. Seemed like a good idea at de time.” He shrugged.

  I pictured a young (in werewolf years, anyway) Mark called home to bear the weight of an entire empire. Stoic and cantankerous as he tended to be, companionship would have been my first recommendation as well. “But they didn’t mate. Klaud said she died unmated.”

  Allan turned his eyes toward the window. The sky slid across the twin rectangles of his glasses. “Yes, she did. And I’m afraid that part of the story in’t somefink I can teww you.”

  “Not you too.” I slid down in my cushy leather seat, sulking as I sipped at my drink.

  “You know I’d teww you if I could, my love.” Allan took a goodly gulp of his own. “So, how about this weddin’ we’re plannin’ eh?”

  “Oh my God. The wedding!” With the trip to Scotland and all that had transpired there, Steve and Shayla’s wedding had all but disappeared from my mind. I clicked onto my phone’s home screen to check the date. “It’s the day after tomorrow!”

  “That’s right,” he agreed. “The wedding guests will be arriving already, I suspect.”

  “What do you need help with?”

  “I measured everyone afore we left, so the clothing is aww arranged. I fink Joseph had a decorator coming to gussy up de gallery, and he called de caterer you recommended. I fink we ought to be pretty well set.”

  “I am such an asshole,” I said, feeling even lower than I previously thought possible. “I feel like I haven’t done shit to help with this.”

  “You’ve had pwenty on your plate, I’m sure,” Allan said.

  “Not for much longer.” I pulled the skewered olives out of my glass and slid one off with my teeth. “I resigned.”

  “I know,” Allan said, swirling the contents of his glass. “Mark told me. What’ll you do now?”

  I’d asked myself the same question at least a hundred times since the moment I’d resigned and always came back to the same answer. “Get my PhD. I’ve always wanted to.”

  “I’ve a good many friends in de academic world, should you need a recommendation.” Allan’s normally buoyant face looked leaden, even as he said this.

  My heart leapt at the thought of admission to the storied halls of somewhere like Cambridge or Oxford, but I swallowed the excitement. “That’s very generous of you Allan, but if I’m going to do this, it will be on my own steam.”

  “On your own human steam, you mean.” He skewered me with an assessing gaze.

  “It’s what I am.” I shrugged.

  Allan took a sip of his drink. “It’s half of what you are. And the lesser half, if you ask me.”

  I hesitated on the words ‘I didn’t’, but was glad I didn’t speak them after what came next.

  “Have you ever stopped, even for a moment, and asked yourself why de ‘ell you love art the way you do?”

  “Lots of people love art,” I said. “Museums wouldn’t even exist otherwise.”

  “There’s loving, and there’s loving. You love it for the same reason your grandmother loved it. She was drawn to it. She made it. She didn’t fight dat side of her nature.”

  “Technically, she didn’t even know what that side of her nature was before she found those letters from Lily,” I said.

  “You’ll want to be careful of anyfing Klaud tells you,” Allan warned. “Vampires are good at giving you just enough of de truth to let you fill in de rest wif assumptions.”

  A little pang of guilt tugged at my heart. Not that I ever jumped to hasty conclusions...

  “Anyway, it’s true ‘at Mark had been keepin’ en eye on de heirs he was aware of, but it wasn’t until he learned his sister had been hunting dem that he stepped in.”

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the protection he provided to my family,” I said, sitting forward in my seat. “It’s just that I’m super-weirded out about this idea of my being some kind of quasi-reincaration of an uber-powerful heir who I happen to look just like.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Allan said, signaling to Paige for a refill, “I bet it started generations earlier than your gran. You, love, are the completion of a cycle centuries owd.”

  “But I don’t want to be a completion?” I asked, shooting the remainder of my martini. “What if I just want to eat cheese and be happy?”

  “And who says you can’t do dose fings and be a werewolf?” Allan pushed his glass aside to make room for the impending refill. “All I’m saying is, don’t ignore this part of yourself, Hanna. Not ‘tiww you’ve heard what it has to say.”

  I laughed, equal parts nervous and dismissive. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Easy,” he said. “Listen. Don’t argue wif it. Don’t mute it. Don’t numb it.”

  “I’m not saying you need to become a teetotaler, I’m saying you need to listen to what de werewolf part of you wants before you decide to silence it forever.”

  “I guess that makes se
nse,” I said.

  “Of course it bloody does.” Allan slid down in his seat and pulled a blanket in the Abernathy tartan up to his chin. “Sleep if you can. ‘ese next few days are gonna be ‘ell.”

  If I had known just how right he would be, I might have listened.

  Chapter 18

  “Is that...black light paint?” My taxi driver leaned across the empty passenger seat, staring at the front of the house containing my apartment. A strobe light pulsed behind one of my windows. The other lay in shards on the front lawn. “Welcum home Henna?” he read.

  “Hanna,” I corrected, handing him a wad of cash.

  “Right. Well, thanks. Have fun.” He winked at me.

  “I’m not sure if that’s humanly possible.” I dragged my suitcase out of the back seat and hauled it behind me up the winding sidewalk. At the point where I usually began to search for my keys, the front door burst open, ejaculating a handful of topless women into the night. Their squeals shattered the darkness as their horny pursuer gave chase.

  And he was horny. Literally. Two small horns poked up through his mop of curly hair, precisely like those on the Renaissance statues of Moses prey to a mistranslation of the Bible.

  On the other hand, the only cloven hooves Moses had to deal with belonged to sacrificial animals. Not so for the thing chasing six jiggling tits across my shared lawn. It had a man’s torso, sure as day. But the area below his umbilicus ended abruptly at waistline of his fur pants.

  Yes. Fur. Pants. Only, they weren’t pants. Pants would have covered the erection stabbing into the night. Fucking satyrs.

  A satyr. On my lawn. And half naked women. Even now, House of Pain’s “Jump Around” floated out my window. My broken window.

  Inside the stairwell, the glow of black lights turned smoke into a pale blue miasma floating out of my open door. In the mist, more topless women rode the banister. I had to step over what appeared to be three separate homeless people passed out on the stairs to get to my apartment. And that’s where shit really got weird.