Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
I take Onix to doggy daycare and board him for three days.
It’s a precautionary measure, probably overkill, but I feel like I am going to war and I need to make sure that he won’t be left stranded in case I don’t make it back.
I pack too much food, pay for him to get an extra walk and a peanut butter Kong every day, double-check that Winona’s still listed at his emergency contact, and smother his gigantic block head with kisses before I say goodbye.
Onix seems to understand that this is no ordinary drop-off, because he whines and resists his favorite trainer when they come to take him to the back.
When he’s safely stowed away, I get ready for the exhibit.
It may be my last night on Earth, and so I dress to kill.
The black floor-length dress I find last minute at the nearby Saks skims down my body from the top of its mock neck down to the floor, the monotony broken by a mesh-covered slit that snakes scandalously up my thigh and across my chest. I brush my hair into glistening silver finger waves, follow a tutorial for makeup that transforms me into an almost unrecognizably glamorous version of myself.
I should be going crazy, but I’m strangely calm.
The missing puzzle pieces are turning up, and I’m starting to make a picture out of this strange, macabre chaos.
The dreams that have afflicted me since Julian first sat down next to me at the Edison Mansion?
Well, that’s because he’s a creature who infiltrates dreams to seduce unsuspecting victims. My series of unexplained ailments?
Withdrawal, from the intoxicating effect of his presence.
Julian breaking my heart in the most efficient, devastating way possible, erasing himself as thoroughly as he could from my life, then reappearing in my dreams to beg me for forgiveness?
I did it for you. To protect you.
He is the thing that makes the least sense here.
An immortal spirit who listens to Tyler, the Creator and tries to convince me to ditch my iPhone for a Huawei, who tumbles around my living room with my dog and brings me coffee in bed.
The one who kisses me like I’m the first gulp of oxygen after a deep dive, who refused to touch me for three months because the one time he did, he took a part of me with him.
He loves you, Rose’s note says, and I read the words over and over, as mystified by them as I am by their writer.
I ignore the pang in my chest and focus on logic—and logically, they make sense.
If Julian had meant to deceive me in order to siphon away my life, he would have ravished me nightly, not held me at a proverbial arm’s length.
His hesitance, his hunger, the helplessness in his voice on our last night together… that had all been him holding back.
Because he loves me. Julian Conrad loves me.
Maybe that love is worth enough that he’d be willing to stop Leila and save Brandon’s life.
That’s what I tell myself as I drive to Rose Callahan’s gallery opening. I am going to him for answers. I am going to him because Sophie loves her father and shouldn’t grow up without him, because Winona needs her coparent.
Not because I miss him. Not because I want to nuzzle my head into his chest again and try to guess the notes in his cologne or play him a song that he already knows by heart.
The Ulrich Art Corridor is a little-known gallery in the western suburbs.
For as high-profile an artist as probable-succubus Rose Callahan, the fourth friend in Julian’s painting, is, it’s a small, unassuming venue.
But of course, if I’m right, Rose is elusive for a reason, and a bigger, more accessible space might have placed her identity at risk.
The organizers seem to take her confidentiality seriously; I have to sign a waiver at the door promising that I will not take photographs or video of any kind.
The gallery hall is separated from the lobby by a wall of glass.
Inside, a harpist in an emerald-green dress strums at her instrument as guests mill amongst strange sculptures and large, looming canvases.
I push through the double doors, taking a glass of champagne from a passing waiter before I go inside.
I down it in one gulp, readying myself. Any moment now, I will see Julian again.
It may be across the room, or while examining a piece, but our eyes will meet.
I’ll tell him that we need to talk, and he’ll say yes or deny me or delve into my brain.
Or maybe I’m wrong about him loving me, and he’ll kill me here, he and his succubus sisters feeding from me like a pack of ravenous hyenas instead—
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone knock back champagne like a shot,” a man’s voice says behind me. “Nervous?”
I turn to find a white man in a brown tweed suit smiling down at me. He’s somewhere north of sixty and has a harmless, fatherly aura that lowers my hackles some.
“I’ve had a long day,” I answer and he falls into step beside me.
“I’m Harold,” he says cheerfully. “You?”
“Sean.”
Harold beams.
“What a lovely name. I’m partial to gender-neutral names myself. We named our eldest daughter Ryan,” he says. He doesn’t wait for me to respond before barreling ahead with another question. “You a fan of Callahan’s?”
“Not really,” I confess, distracted by a tall man who could have been Julian until he turns to reveal a flat-nosed profile.
“Well, you’re in for a treat,” Harold says. “She’s been one of my favorite creators for years. This tour is her first time showing her face—and she opens every one with a performance.”
This gives me pause.
“I didn’t hear anything about a performance,” I say.
“You wouldn’t. You signed the waiver, right?
She has a pretty intense team. Her lawyers crack down hard on anyone who tries to spoil her show.
” He grins conspiratorially. “I only know because I’ve been to a few of her openings myself.
Each one is different, and they’ve all been magical.
Benefits of retirement: you get to follow your favorite artist around the country like a rock star! ”
I smile despite myself. Harold is sunshine in human form, one of those rare people who can lift even the lowest of spirits.
“It sounds like I have a lot to look forward to.”
“You do,” Harold assures me. The lights in the hall dim, the harpist stops, and he shimmies his shoulders in excitement.
“It’s starting!” he exclaims. He raises his full glass to my empty one. “I’m going to try and get a closer look. Enjoy the show, Sean!”
“Enjoy!” I say, bemused, as he rushes to the center of the room.
Other guests follow suit, and I scan the crowd, my frustration mounting.
The card had been so clear: Come to him.
Julian has to be here. I expect Leila is too, taking a night off from haunting her current husband to search for her next one.
But even as the room fills, they are nowhere to be found.
The harpist begins to play again, thrumming her chords so softly that I hear the collective intake of breath as the show begins. I wander closer to the center of the room, where everyone has gathered around a sculpture: a thin, oblong, egglike structure that has begun to crack.
“It’s hatching,” someone whispers.
They are right. My vantage point is not ideal, but even from where I stand, I can see thin arcs of porcelain-like material fall to the ground.
The harpist times her strums to each of the strikes, punctuating the captive’s escape with a chord that turns the process from a violent emerging to a magical one.
Excited murmurs run through the crowd, guesses on what will emerge from the shell, comparisons of this entrance to her last. A fist punches through and hangs in the air in victory, and the crowd cheers like their team has just scored.
The final crack sounds like the Earth is splitting, and the egg collapses, falling to the floor with the tinkling of fallen glass.
Dust or smoke or steam emanates from the inside, and a wave of heat passes over the room, so quickly that I would’ve assumed I had imagined it if the men in front of me hadn’t nervously chuckled and fanned themselves.
The room goes quiet. The music cuts out.
A crouched figure emerges from the fog. It is naked, with sagging, liver-spotted skin that folds in on itself in strange, unnatural ways along its abdomen.
Its long-clawed hand nearly drags against the floor, and its tubular breasts are peaked with thick, fingerlike nipples that sway over its folded stomach.
Its face is broad and strange, mouth set too wide, nonexistent lips going straight to blocky, too-big teeth.
Gray tufts of hair sprout in patches across its scalp and on its upper lip.
Its bulbous eyes spin, searching the room.
Humanoid, but not human. We regard it in silent revulsion, and it regards us back.
Uncertainty ripples through the room; we aren’t sure if the creature in front of us is real or part of the performance, if what we have witnessed is the birth of a monster.
In front of me, someone claps their hands together and stage-whispers, “Wow, her special effects makeup is always so incredible!”
Then, suddenly, the music resumes. It is frenzied now, and the monster’s head swivels, as if searching for its source.
It steps forward, and all of a sudden the heat that we felt upon its hatching intensifies, and the creature is engulfed in smoke.
It screams, high, human, like a child, as the lights flicker red.
Even obscured, I can tell that it is melting.
Muck drips from its elevated stage, a blood-curdling, bubbly mixture of flesh tones and crimson. The guests who’d been standing the closest jump back as it oozes near their feet.
Finally, the music quiets again. The harpist plays a soft, sweet melody, and the smoke clears.
Where the monster once stood, there is now a woman.
Her short black hair is gelled in wet swirls around her forehead and neck, and her sharp, vulpine features contrast with her shapely, Rubenesque body.
She looks like a tawny Botticelli’s Venus, arising from the water in her seashell, except she is dressed in a skin-tone tattered dress, and her body is streaked in soot.
The people around me are cheering, but I am frozen. Because I know this face too, and not just from the paintings.
Rose Callahan is none other than Margaret West.
Or perhaps more accurately, Margaret is Rose. Forty years younger, yes, but just as alluring. Her eyes catch mine. It shouldn’t be possible across the room, but they hold for a beat, and I could swear that her lips quirk into a smile.
Someone hands her a microphone.
“Welcome,” Rose says, “to Transmogrification.”
The crowd bursts into applause as she comes down from her platform.
A crew sweeps behind her to clean the mess of destroyed porcelain and goop from the gallery floor while she glides through the crowd.
Her existence, the fact that she is walking around, gesticulating with Margaret’s mannerisms, smiling her knowing smile, is greater than any evidence I could have gathered in Harrison & Conrad Galleries.
Even knowing the truth, my brain still tries to reject it: maybe she’s Margaret’s kid, or a lookalike niece—
She stops in front of me.
“Don’t you look stunning,” she says, with a teasing smile. “Love the hair.”
I clutch my bag in front of me like a shield. There’s something regal and controlled about her that inspires wonder alongside fear. I’d wanted to run away screaming from Leila, but I want to prostrate myself before her.
“Hello, Margaret,” I whisper.
Her smile shines with genuine delight, and she lifts a finger to her lips, leaning in close.
“It’s Rose now, remember?” She rests a gentle hand on my shoulder and adds with warmth I do not expect, “So you’ve figured us out, have you?” When I flinch, she chuckles. “It’s okay. I’m glad. It’s nice to not have to pretend.”
My throat feels parched, like the champagne I drank a few minutes before has sucked out all its moisture.
“Pretend…” I start, then swallow down my fear, “to be human?”
Rose pulls back just enough that I can see that her eyes are shining.
“If you asked Julian, he’d say that’s precisely what we are,” she whispers.
“Just different. Enhanced, so to speak. If you asked Leila, she would say that we are so clearly in a different realm. Gods. My perspective…well. I accept myself as exactly what I am, and I think there’s already a name for us.
Ritika tells me you went to visit The Recurring Nightmare.
I’m hazarding a guess that you might know what that is. ”
The harpist is still playing, but I can’t hear the music over the rush of blood in my ears. I have so many questions, but it feels like I might run out of time at any moment, and so I ask the one that has plagued me the most.
“You gave Ritika the note,” I say. “Why?”
If her newfound youth hadn’t just been siphoned from another living being—likely the bulldog-faced husband she’d carted around at PERPETUITY, I realize with a chill—I would almost think of her smile as kind.
“Because, my dear, I’m meddling,” she says. “I haven’t seen Julian quite so happy as he was with you, or quite so miserable as he’s been without. Not for a long, long time. I assumed you’d feel similarly. I’m trying to arrange a reconciliation.”
I suck in a shuddering breath, fighting against an assault of conflicting emotions.
“I’m not sure Leila feels the same way,” I manage on the exhale, and Rose chuckles.
“I’ll work on that one,” she says, beaming. “Truly, Sean. I’m so glad that he found you—”
Her voice cuts out mid-sentence, and she sucks in a pained breath. The hand on my shoulder tightens into a vise grip.
“Rose?” I say, concerned, just as a blossom of red begins to spread along the sides of her dress.
The next few seconds stretch, suspended, before me.
There is a man behind her, just one of the many guests clustering around the woman of the hour waiting for their turn, but when he jerks back his hand, I realize that he’s holding a knife, and that the knife is covered in blood.
I watch him raise it high, watch his crazed lips curl, watch the reflection of Rose’s terrified face in his dilated pupils as she twists to avoid the assault.
In the space that his raised arm makes, I see Leila standing frozen across the room, her face pale with horror.
Screams slice through the air in unison, and I learn what is meant by true terror.