Chapter Thirty-Seven
Nicole
‘ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY?’ NICOLE ASKED REMI AS THE pair of them strode down the bustling street towards Manchester Art Gallery the next morning. ‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’
‘I feel like I have a killer hangover,’ Remi said, her voice slightly raspy. ‘But I’m fine. I needed to get out of the house anyway.’
Nicole chewed the inside of her mouth. Was it because Remi had performed the song that she seemed all right this morning? Because she was a Siren and Bells wasn’t?
‘Are you all right?’ Remi asked, shooting Nicole an arch look.
‘Me?’
For a ridiculous moment, Nicole thought Remi knew about her fevered moonlit moments with Kyan.
‘Yes. You’ve been in a state of panic since you brought us home last night and then disappeared early this morning,’ Remi said.
After watching over the girls until they awoke to find them both better than everyone expected, if exhausted, Nicole had returned to the Muse.
But the enigmatic creature refused to give Nicole any more clues.
Nothing on the type of flower they were looking for, and no hint at a location.
Even when Nicole offered her gifts, such as someone to come and paint her, or a new nightgown from one of her favourite designers – which cost over three thousand pounds – the Muse declined anything but her lost flower.
Meanwhile, Lawna had gone to Zixuan to discuss hiding the news about the cathedral, while her father looked after Bells.
Her sister claimed she was fine, but she had a jagged cut on her foot, a possible concussion, and mild ringing in her ears, which had also been slightly crusted with blood. Their father had insisted that she rest.
During the hour-long train ride here, Nicole had watched Remi for signs that she wasn’t as all right as she claimed. Her friend was too quiet and tense. Her eyes hadn’t lost their distracted glaze of guilt and concern all morning.
‘I was just trying to be thorough,’ Nicole said. ‘I thought I seemed relaxed.’
This was the first time she’d been in a city away from the family since they’d found out about the Wake. She’d tried to smother her anxiousness but clearly she was doing a terrible job.
Remi smiled. ‘You keep pressing that broken button to your thumb, and walking slightly behind me as if you’re my bodyguard. Come round here.’ As Remi grabbed her arm to pull her closer, Nicole realised she was indeed fiddling with her mother’s sleeve.
She’d pulled on the tweed jacket, hoping it might be a lucky charm and exhaled a laugh as they passed cafés and dodged a tram, scouting behind them frequently just in case.
‘Touché. But I won’t stop looking out for you.’
Remi slid her a glance, eyes amused.
‘And I know you,’ Nicole said. ‘You avoided my question.’
If anyone else were to look at her best friend, they’d see only the picture of elegance.
But Nicole could feel the lingering distress in Remi’s energy.
She didn’t have the same ease to her walk.
She didn’t have that usual creamy scent of her night-time lip balm either, because she hadn’t had a chance to do a night-time routine.
And of course, her bandaged fingers scented of blood and herbs.
Remi curled them into her palms, now.
‘Are they okay? What happened last night?’
Her friend breathed deeply and gave a weak smile. ‘They sting, like they’ve been burned or … played to the bone. But it’s nothing your dad’s salves can’t fix.
‘Last night, though? I don’t really know.
I think that when I originally touched the—’ She didn’t say ‘harp string’ aloud.
‘It did what Callum suspected. I found it weeks ago, but the moment I touched it, it was like I’d plucked it.
I could feel a vibration in my fingers, and it hasn’t stopped for weeks.
’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t shake it until I started playing music, but it only left me frustrated, like I couldn’t get some crucial thing out.
Then once I gave in to the feel of it and let it inspire me, that song emerged and I couldn’t stop … ’
Nicole nodded and had to hope that if her mother hadn’t left instructions further along this path, that Remi’s father would find some guidelines or ancient instructions in the Siren Archives to protect her from the instrument’s dark allure.
Nicole stopped as they arrived at the gallery. ‘When you want to talk more, I’m here.’
Remi glanced at her, tenderness flickering in her eyes. ‘Never thought I’d find siblings in this life.’
‘You’ve had three for a few years, now.’
Remi’s nose wrinkled. ‘Except for that awkward day when Dylan and I kissed. What a disaster.’
‘I could have lived my whole life without being reminded of that.’
Remi laughed and headed inside.
Built from paler stone than Liverpool’s gallery, the classical building with its Ionic columns sat low and majestic on a modernised street, like a remnant from another era.
Inside, the square entrance reminded Nicole of a Roman villa.
The opening hall rose above them, double-storeyed, with a set of stairs across that led up to the rest of the gallery’s rooms. Hanging around the second floor were what looked like small copies of the metopes on the Parthenon: tableaux of centaurs and men fighting.
As Remi went to the front desk, Nicole busied herself scanning the posters for any painting or exhibit that might house even slightly supernatural-looking beings or artefacts.
‘One audio tour, please,’ she heard Remi say, before flashing her supernatural ID, the iridescent circle on it catching the light.
Nicole kept hers tucked away, just in case the Wake had some kind of flag on it.
Tour acquired, they strode up the steps, affording her a better look at the Old Masters’ paintings lining the mezzanine.
Herbert James Draper’s seaweed-clad Nymph lifted open a giant pearlescent oyster to reveal a sleeping baby inside instead of a pearl.
The solitary, pondering Grecian women of John William Godward draped themselves on marble chairs and gazed away from the pristine blues of the Mediterranean landscape behind them.
As they walked, a change, like a pane of warm air, brushed over Nicole’s skin.
‘Do you feel that?’ she asked.
‘Mhmm. Supernatural wards. There.’
Nicole followed Remi’s gaze up to the Centaur reliefs. A plaque revealed they were plaster copies of sculptures from the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae.
‘Those might be a problem.’
‘Why?’ Nicole knew the stories of Centaurs, knew that they’d been hunted to near extinction by those that wanted their wisdom.
‘Because those bad boys are the security here. Something supernatural gets stolen, they’re going to come to life.’
‘Like the Babewyn?’
‘More like they grow to life-size and intervene.’
Nicole cast her senses up. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat or breath – but if they were stone creatures, she wouldn’t. ‘They might be enchanted sculptures, not living creatures.’
‘I vote you fight them,’ Remi said. ‘I don’t want plaster dust on this coat, it’s vintage.’
Nicole shot her an amused smile. ‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that.’
Because if they weren’t real supernatural creatures, they were unlikely to emit a kill scent. Which meant she’d be fighting them off just as she was.
‘Come on,’ Nicole said, heading into the first gallery room.
Thankfully, midweek and early, the place was basically deserted.
‘So, what do you think we’re looking for?’ Remi asked as she dug into the sleek black handbag tucked under her arm.
She swapped out the headphones on the recorder she’d been given and passed Nicole one earbud. Nicole noted a supernatural family using one, who wore matching dark coats, perhaps enchanted to disguise their petal-like skin beneath.
‘A painting of a flower?’
‘It’s as good a guess as any. Since we know what our background context is though, and what we’re really looking for, perhaps it’s best to also search anything to do with Empyreals, Sirens, Pre-Raphaelites, and Irish myth? And – anything you sense that’s different.’
Remi nodded. ‘Okay, a little of everything.’
As Nicole slotted the earbud in, Remi clicked play.
The first room was a modern exhibition, but the second brought them face to face with a Rossetti painting.
‘She looks familiar,’ Remi said.
The room was full of Victorian paintings.
On the right was the Ancient Greek poet Sappho, an enormous Leighton painting, and a few by Evelyn De Morgan.
Nicole scoured each for a painted flower or floral details in the frames.
As they passed, some paintings’ varnishes shimmered like lenticular cards.
Not so protective and pane-like as the one on the Dante painting, which had needed complete removal to see beneath.
These allowed supernaturals roaming the gallery to see through them easily while humans remained oblivious.
In the next room, Remi paused.
‘This one gets my vote,’ she said as they stopped before a seven-foot-tall painting that filled the height and almost width of the entire wall.
Nicole didn’t need to read the plaque to know the subject.
‘Odysseus and the Sirens,’ she mused, stepping closer. The plaque read The Sirens and Ulysses by William Etty.
Remi was right, the painting had a palpably disturbing aura, something that made her Empyrean instincts stir in interest.
‘Sirens, of course,’ continued the recording, ‘are not winged as human myths proclaim. Humans developed this lie of being “seduced” to justify their hunting of the winged and clawed creatures. Here, though, we have one of the first artistic depictions by a human painter of—’
‘There’s definitely something about it,’ Nicole mused.
‘But maybe it’s a distraction. Or—’ She thought of the way her flesh was crawling.
‘A trap? Let’s do a full scope first, in case we miss anything.
Besides, if we’re going off everything the Muse said, she specifically mentioned Nymphs, not Sirens. ’
‘She also mentioned Helen of Troy and Aphrodite.’
‘But she only called one of them “secret-keepers”.’