Chapter Four
Nicole
NICOLE TRIED TO BLOCK OUT THE REST OF HER FATHER AND Verin’s conversation as she strode through the house. She wasn’t going to run. That only summoned the predator sprawling unused in her veins. So she forced herself to keep a steady stride.
You can protect them better if you hunt, her Empyreal crooned. Just slip out tonight and find something to–
‘No,’ Nicole said aloud, shoving down the urges.
Luxurious hallways blurred past – marble busts and painted ceilings like the swarming, majestic realms of her dreams. Instead of going back out into the dew-glittering grounds, she found herself walking beneath the arched entrance of Elisabetta’s studio.
The large rectangular room was flooded with natural light from windows that overlooked the inner courtyard of the house, granting a warm reprieve from the dark, overcast days they’d waited out over the winter.
Nicole had set up an easel and some of her own painting supplies for when her mind wouldn’t quiet and her body needed something.
The only thing that worked was the soothing dip and stroke of a paintbrush from palette to canvas.
She’d been painting till late last night, a streak of cadmium red still on her wrist.
A paint-smeared notebook rested beside the easel in case she had any particular revelations. It even contained some scribbled Irish she’d tried to learn, before feeling foolish and stopping. A chaise covered in blankets sat to the right, for when Bells wanted to talk or doze while Nicole worked.
Otherwise, the space was untouched, as if Elisabetta had up and left quickly.
Portraits of supernaturals sat unfinished, and sculptures morphed themselves from great blocks of marble, now frozen without her.
A hoof here, a wing there – so thin you could see the light through – and the curve of a Mermaid’s scale-slick hip.
In an attached room was a pigment-creating station where Elisabetta made her paints from scratch.
Nicole looked at it all again. There had to be something she was missing. A detail, a thread …
‘Are you hiding in the studio, or are you coming to eat breakfast?’ Dylan asked distantly.
He didn’t have to speak loudly or even be in the same room as her. After her transformation, she could hear him clear across the house. Focusing her hearing, she located him in the kitchens.
‘I’m going for a jog,’ she shouted for his un-awakened Empyrean senses.
‘I’ve got croissants hot from the oven and filled yours like a sandwich.’
Her lips pursed.
‘It’s going to go cold …’
Nicole smiled reluctantly, the prickling tension in her chest easing. She grabbed her notebook, the scraps of extra paper and copies of paintings stuffed inside curling out and stroking her palm with their time-softened edges. ‘Fine. I’m coming.’
Her skin tingled as she wove towards the kitchens, sweat cooling down her spine.
She pressed the binding scar on her forearm as she walked, reminding herself that everything that had happened months ago had been real.
That she really had been bound to Kyan in an autumn wood, her arm painted with blood in a Celtic knot; the ancient magic of the first of three ceremonies completed while Remi’s words rang with power.
Nicole made a note to check in with her friend later. They shared a set of old burner phones with scramblers to communicate, but didn’t risk calling or writing out the details of their discoveries.
Well, Remi’s discoveries.
When Nicole arrived in the colossal Tudor kitchens, she found Dylan with a tea towel over his wide shoulder and a half-smile on his lips.
The room was unpainted so its old sandstone was discoloured in places, but it only added to the majesty of a space that looked more like a temple to the culinary arts than a kitchen.
His dark gold hair caught the light from windows that stretched the full three-storey height of the room.
They stretched up to an octagonal mirror, which crowned the apex of a vaulted ceiling and reminded Nicole of the oculus in the Pantheon.
On the walls, copper pots and pans gleamed like mirrors, and a fire crackled in the old furnace, its great pulleys and roasting spit currently dormant.
Despite the healthy strength in her brother’s body and decent colour to his face, she knew he was tired, haunted. Could see it in the shadows beneath his eyes, which looked more blue today thanks to the navy apron over his short-sleeved shirt.
He stood before an enormous wooden table, which was scarred by centuries of use, a creamy cappuccino already waiting for her and a plate clipping down beside it.
Her stomach cramped sharply enough to make her feel nauseous: a not-so-welcome quirk of a new metabolism.
Nicole beelined for the steaming croissant he’d filled with thin slices of fresh ham and a fried egg, dimly realising that she’d need two more. Before she could ask, a second plate was placed next to the first, and Nicole looked up at her amused brother.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ he said.
She climbed onto a stool and grabbed the croissant. ‘I love you.’
He smirked. ‘You love me because I feed you.’
‘It’s the one and only reason.’
The spark of amusement in his eyes tempered some of the shadows.
Similar ones had been haunting Bells, and Nicole had been feeling increasingly restless, unable to help.
She wasn’t as skilled a Seer as her sister and father, and whenever she tried to talk to Dylan about the night their mother died, he gently brushed her off.
‘Where’s Bells?’ Nicole asked.
‘I left her napping. She – didn’t sleep well last night.’
That, Nicole knew. Despite being in different rooms, she’d awakened several times thanks to her sister’s gasps or worried whimpers, her heart racing, her senses scanning for danger.
After painting, Nicole could only relax enough to fall back to sleep after mentally double-checking that she’d locked every window and door in the sprawling manor, and reminding herself that her sister’s dreams and night-time visions couldn’t hurt her physically.
The mental strain though? Nicole tried not to think about it.
She groaned as she bit into her breakfast’s light, buttery pastry, dusted with pepper and chives. Nicole wiped away some of the runny egg.
‘Perfection,’ she said around a mouthful. ‘You should be pleased that I’m always complimenting your baking.’
‘You made the same declaration about that random lollipop from one of the petrol stations on the way here.’
‘That thing was freakishly delicious. It tasted like sunshine and happiness.’
‘It tasted like someone electrocuted my tongue.’
‘I didn’t realise you were so dramatic.’
Again, a smile to ease the worry in her chest.
But that was one of the other developments after her transformation: a heightened sense of taste and smell so acute she could almost taste emotions on the air.
She knew the biological reason was because both humans and creatures secreted hormones when feeling different emotions.
Fear, love. Things that helped her body distinguish between someone killing out of malice or self-defence.
But it hadn’t made it any more natural to try to explain that Bells’ laughter tasted yellow.
The idea of seeing Kyan again, of being able to appreciate all his details anew … she firmly pushed that concept back into the mental box where she’d locked everything else to do with him. So she didn’t worry; didn’t need too much.
She glanced at Dylan’s pocket, the place he kept the slip of paper with Callum’s number on. It was worn tissue-thin from the way he checked it daily, as if to be certain it was still there. The muscle in his forearm flickered as he checked it again now, as if he was as tempted to use it as she was.
Noticing her glance he stopped and squeezed his fingers into a fist before sliding a glass of water towards her small feast.
‘You all right?’ he asked softly, leaning on the counter and taking a sip of his own coffee: some kind of bulletproof concoction.
‘Are you?’
His eyes flickered. ‘Touché.’
She smiled slightly. ‘Do you want to talk about—’
‘Any updates on your list?’
Nicole hesitated. Nearly pushed, but let it slide.
Opening up her notebook she looked at the points she checked every morning: the clues her mother had hidden in the Dante painting’s code.
Nicole had written her research in code as well, but kept the lists cycling through her mind daily – they were too important to risk writing down in a way just anyone could read.
· The Wake’s true leaders are creatures, but we don’t know what.
· Only Empyreals can defeat them.
· The oath means any bound Empyreals can’t physically kill or hurt a member of the Wake.
· Thus, a cure for the oath must be found, but may only lie with the ‘God of Oaths’.
· Three ancient ‘goddess-blessed’ items may help destroy the Wake: a painting, an artefact, and ‘something of divine provenance’.
· These must be used in conjunction with the ‘Siren’s Instrument’.
· The last lead for the items is hidden with Mum’s painter, Elisabetta Sirani.
Several questions had arisen, which Nicole had been theorising over ever since:
· Who/what are the Wake?
· What specifically are the three items? Would Elisabetta know?
· Or, more importantly: where can we find them?
· What would we do with them? Could they be used to bargain with the Wake? Or only destroy them?
· Is Kyan okay?
She scratched out the last one. Again.
‘If we don’t find something by the end of the week,’ Nicole said, ‘I’m going to press Verin for more information about Elisabetta so we can try and find her.’
Dylan sighed. ‘Nicole, she’s with an extremely private supernatural faction that sometimes kills people who attempt to enter uninvited.’
‘I know, but …’
I can’t do this any more.
She swallowed the words down.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t. It was that the need to hunt felt like it was subsuming her identity. She didn’t want to resist. It was so convincing. So natural. And yet she was in a situation where she couldn’t freely use the part of her she’d unleashed and embraced in Estwood.
It had saved her that night, and learning to manage it would be invaluable. But training it was the issue.
So she didn’t say that she could keep waiting.
Instead, she ate her breakfast and thanked her brother, then headed back to one of the lavishly painted rooms for another day of combing through her mother’s bestiaries and copies of every painting Elisabetta had ever done.
She wanted to scream; she wanted to hunt.
All she could do was keep researching.
But tonight, she was going to get answers from their mother’s portrait one way or another. Because for once in her life, Nicole wasn’t sure how much longer she could look at art and ponder its secrets.