Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nicole
THE PAINTING WAS A ROSSETTI.
‘Roman Widow, or D?s Manibus,’ the Muse intoned as Nicole stared down at the framed piece.
In it, a single figure robed in gold sat just off-centre.
She had the stylised face and famous red hair of the Pre-Raphaelite women, and her pale skin was wan against the silky fabric of her draped garment.
To the figure’s left sat a stone memorial with a small basin below it, wreathed in pink roses.
Remi drew closer. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen this before.’
‘Ah, that’s because it’s supposed to be in the Museo de Arte de Ponce, in Puerto Rico,’ the Muse said.
Westmoore had explained that many paintings believed to be elsewhere in the world – like the Dante painting in Paris, or The Wild Hunt Of Odin, also known as ?sg?rdsreien, that should have been in Oslo – were forgeries to keep the real ones safe.
Nicole drank in the details of the painting. In each hand, the figure held a harp. One was entwined with flowers but both were made with spotted amber and black tortoiseshell.
‘Ancient harps,’ Remi said quietly, her brow pulled together as she studied it. ‘I think I’ve only ever seen something like these on the frescoes in Pompeii.’
‘They’re four-sided,’ Nicole said, hinting at what Remi had theorised about the Dagda’s harp.
Her friend only made a thoughtful noise.
An unusual type of pink rose – a dogrose – was entwined in the strings of the harp. It had fewer petals, which made it look more like a poppy, and symbolised both love and pain.
But it was the memorial-like object to the right of the widow that drew Nicole’s attention. It looked to be a carved box of honey-coloured stone, set in a recessed niche in the wall behind the figure. An eagle, rams’ heads, and an inscription in Latin decorated it.
But it was wrapped with a curious item that looked like an over-long, flexible torc.
‘What is that?’ Nicole asked.
She hated that she didn’t immediately know. That something about the painting hadn’t revealed what all this was for.
‘It’s supposed to be a bridal girdle,’ the Muse said, clearly unamused by the object.
Remi scrunched her nose. ‘Ew.’
The Muse chuckled. ‘They were more decorative, to be worn around the waist. Not sexually restrictive like chastity belts. May I?’ She glided between them with the glass lily in hand.
Her fingers were poised in a painterly curl that matched the painting as she reached for a circular seal on the frame. There were four of them, like gold disks, one on each side.
The Muse turned each one a certain way, before reaching the one at the top and twisting it as if it was hinged, to reveal a slot inside. She lifted the flower and placed it face-first inside like a key, then, using the pinched back of it, turned it.
The frame clicked and the strange little tap below the urn in the painting actually began to leak.
‘Wait!’ Nicole cried. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It reveals what’s beneath,’ the Muse said calmly.
As it did, the liquid pooled over the surface.
‘If you would, my dear,’ the Muse said, gesturing to Remi. ‘Sing.’
‘Sing what?’
‘Anything.’
Remi curled her bandaged fingers into her palm, then sent a cautious look Nicole’s way.
‘It’s okay.’ Nicole nodded. ‘I’ll be right here and I’ll be fine.’
Remi deliberated a moment before her lips parted and, hesitantly, a note formed. Nicole bent closer as Remi did and the liquid rippled. Before Nicole could drag Remi backwards – after the lesson she’d learned with the Nymphs – the image changed.
The harp no longer had seven strings, but three.
The effigy on the urn was no longer written in Latin, so the name was readable, and instantly recognisable.
Then the final piece of the painting changed: the girdle around the stone effigy transformed.
Into a torc.
‘So you see,’ the Muse said, in that hypnotic voice, ‘why the Wake could never know.’
Amazed at the painting’s metamorphosis, dread sank through Nicole.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, her awe transformed into concern. ‘I see.’
She felt Remi’s eyes slide to her but tried not to react.
Kyan.
The passage had rewritten itself to spell one of his mythological names.
Cú Chulainn.
Kyan had been entwined in this conspiracy since at least 1902, when her mother had tried to stop him taking the oath. Was this the reason? Was his torc – that torc she’d seen around his neck in the very first vision she had ever had of him – the next goddess-blessed item they needed?
‘Freya believed it was forged by one of the Irish gods,’ the Muse said.
Goddess-blessed. A god would know how to hide blood in something like that, which would make this the second item, the artefact.
It was more and more evidence of the gods and their lost treasures; of that epic Irish civilisation that had shaped the supernatural world.
Nicole sucked in a shaky breath.
‘Do you believe it?’ Nicole asked. ‘That the gods could have made his torc?’
The Muse’s eyes glinted, dark and ensnaring.
‘My girl, you haven’t even scratched the surface of this world’s powers.
Ancient civilisations were not as separate from the divine or the supernatural as society is now.
You’ve lived as a human too long if this truth startles you.
Gods walked the earth for millennia and the Irish gods were gods of the arts. ’
Divino artista …
That had been the first of her mother’s clues to Estwood.
The Muse continued, ‘The myths say that before the gods came here, they lived in a world of the occult magic and beauty and pleasure, where there were five islands in which they learned and revelled in all their luxuries. But then, of course, Ireland called. And so they came.’
Nicole tried to blink away the spell of her words.
‘Which one?’ Nicole found herself asking. ‘Which god did she think made the torc?’
‘Most likely Goibniu, the Divine Blacksmith. He and his brothers, Credne and Luchta, created many masterpieces: astrolabes that charted the dark expansive universe, blades that could cleave stars from the cosmos. Torcs fit for the necks of the most blessed royalty.’
Nicole sank onto the couch.
Everything was tied together.
Everything.
She must have said it out loud because the Muse said, ‘Is it not peculiar that so many of the ancient immortals have returned? Irish gods? A mythic warrior of royal blood? An artefact imbued with the power to destroy the Wake, which represents, of all things, the right to rule?
‘A Morrígan-blessed girl with the Empyrean inside her who is able to find these artistic treasures? A Siren of incredible power. And of course … the last Druid.’
‘How did you know about the Druid?’ Nicole asked sharply.
The Muse smiled. ‘I may be a creature of unusual origins, but I can still sense things. I still hear things.’ She looked out to the Liver Building, a regal stone bird poised atop its clocktower, the river sparkling silver behind it.
‘This torc,’ Nicole said. ‘How do we find it?’
‘The next item is Kyan’s torc,’ Nicole said.
They had all returned to his dining room. She loved the feeling of progressing, of having a base and the next mystery solved.
But she didn’t love the look on Kyan’s face.
He looked like he’d seen a ghost. It wiped clear the private, intimate one that had been in his eyes since she’d stepped foot back in the townhouse.
Callum leaned back, breathing deeply. ‘Well, that complicates things.’
‘I haven’t seen my torc in … a long time,’ Kyan said carefully. He shook his head. ‘It can’t have blood in it.’
‘Why?’ her father asked.
‘I would have noticed something like that.’
‘Are you sure?’ Nicole asked softly.
His eyes, haunted, concerned, met hers. ‘I … suppose not.’
She wanted to go to him, take his hand.
Bells straightened from where she sat sleepily at the head of the table and Nicole tried to ignore the memory of her with blood down her face last night. Kyan stood stiffly to her left and Callum to her right.
Nicole pulled out her mother’s bestiary. ‘I suppose one way to know is to go and check it out for ourselves.’
‘Did our darling Muse give you a location?’ asked Callum.
‘She said the last time she’d been able to check in on it, it was in the National Museum of Ireland’s archaeological building. There’s just one problem—’
‘Just one?’ Dylan asked dryly.
Nicole almost smirked as she flicked to the right page. ‘It’s being guarded by a Tène.’
Callum whistled.
Dylan tensed. ‘A what now?’
She spun their mother’s bestiary to reveal an exquisite gold-leafed drawing of what looked to be a dragon, made of pure metal.
Tènes were metallic fire creatures, ribbon-like and shapeshifting, that usually attached themselves to art or weapons made of metal.
‘They’re born from the energy formed when metal is heated at temperatures high enough to melt it,’ Nicole read. ‘Hence why they were often depicted on La Tène artworks such as shields and armour, and sometimes torcs.’
Her mother had sketched out the Wandsworth Shield – a circular shield of bronze from a few hundred years before Kyan’s time – which had been rediscovered in the River Thames in the 1800s.
‘Many of them like to nestle onto the crafted object and remain there. Others latch themselves onto different pieces that take their fancy. Human art historians believe the elements to be just decoration, not living creatures. But they are very real, very alive. And very territorial of their treasures.’
Dylan looked like he was about to start pacing, or a vein was about to burst in his temple. ‘So you’re telling me we need to fight a dragon to get Kyan’s torc back?’
Remi laughed a little desperately.
‘It’s so adorable,’ Bells said, stroking one of the illustrations, which showed it as a tiny, intelligent-faced little creature.
‘It can literally kill you,’ Dylan said. ‘Don’t even get close.’
‘Only if you threaten their hoard, then they don’t stay so tiny,’ Callum said.
Dylan eyed the drawing with new suspicion. ‘Just how big are we talking?’
‘About the size of a skyscraper,’ Kyan answered.
‘And how do you fight them?’ Dylan asked. ‘A transformation?’
‘You avoid their breath – which is hot enough to flay the skin from your bones,’ Kyan said. ‘They don’t breathe fire.’
‘Oh, good.’
Before Dylan could worry further, their father rose. ‘We need to find it first. Which I’m sure we can do when we get to Ireland.’
‘The family and I will go,’ Nicole said to Kyan. ‘You don’t have to come. You can just tell us what it looked like.’
He met her gaze and the memories of last night’s closeness warmed her skin.
‘I’ll have to track this Druid anyway. I just—’ His jaw flickered. ‘I’ll come. The plan tonight should buy us some time.’
‘I’ll start booking the ferry,’ her father said. ‘We can’t leave the car and all its weapons and books, so we’ll have to take it. After you get your information from the Speakeasy, we’re best all travelling separately, and as soon as possible.’
Remi got up. ‘That means you and I need to go shopping.’
Nicole blinked, confused. ‘What in the world for?’
‘A dress. You can’t walk into the Speakeasy in that.’