CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bile leaped up my throat; a hot sting of shock.
Or-lagh was dead.
But she should not have been able to die.
Un-less marred by some bru-tal ex-ter-nal force, their bod-ies will never change. They may cheat even death.
Some bru-tal ex-ter-nal force. Which meant … she had been mur-dered?
Ev-ery in-stinct screamed at me to run. To call the po-lice. To hide far, far away. Be-cause the killer could still be in Drum-mond—or this very room. But as though com-pelled by some greater power, I took sev-eral quak-ing steps to-ward the desk. My con-scious-ness seemed to shim-mer and de-tach from my body, and I floated off to the side as though watch-ing my-self as a spec-ta-tor, not a par-tic-i-pant.
I touched a hand to Or-lagh’s—the one wear-ing the cameo ring—and flinched. There were still some fi-nal ves-tiges of warmth. She couldn’t have been dead for long. My breath shud-dered in my lungs, like a ghost try-ing to rat-tle it-self free.
Just as I was won-der-ing how she’d been killed, I spot-ted a long pur-ple cut slant-ing di-ag-o-nally down her throat, dis-ap-pear-ing into the shad-ows in the crook of her neck like a road dis-ap-pear-ing into a for-est. The churn-ing in my stom-ach in-ten-si-fied.
There were sim-i-lar marks all over her face too. I had only failed to spot them at first be-cause of how se-vere her wrin-kles were. Judg-ing by the folds and crevasses, she must have been over a hun-dred years old.
Pulling back her wasted shoul-der, I found what was likely the killing blow.
The fab-ric over the bust hung loose enough that it could not cover the stab wound over her heart.
Only … there was no blood. It was a dark pur-ple gash, but the skin was not bro-ken.
It was the same with the other marks all over her face and dé-col-letage, from nar-row punc-ture wounds to vi-cious gashes, all the same strange, un-tex-tured pur-ple.
The con-tents of my stom-ach fi-nally broke free, and I reached the waste-bas-ket un-der the desk just in time.
I was in the same room as a dead body. And still the largest ques-tion on my mind was …
Why?
Why had some-one mur-dered Or-lagh?
And why now? Right af-ter she’d com-mis-sioned the Masked Painter for the first time in years?
The same hideous, self-ish core that had black-mailed Davina was most wor-ried about what that meant for me.
Would I ever be able to track down the Masked Painter again? If I couldn’t, how could I ever re-verse this hor-ri-ble mis-take?
Was I in dan-ger too?
Think-ing fast, I re-al-ized this might be my only chance to find the Masked Painter my-self. I dimly re-called Or-lagh telling me she didn’t have a mo-bile phone, only the vin-tage land-line on her desk. Which meant, un-less she had a pho-to-graphic mem-ory, she likely had a phys-i-cal stack of con-tacts some-where. Could I find the Masked Painter’s phone num-ber?
There. An an-tique-look-ing Rolodex next to the phone.
I ran my fin-gers over it. The last con-tact she’d looked up was Dr-ever, Cameron. This struck me as odd—wouldn’t she know his ex-ten-sion num-ber by now?—but I didn’t have time to worry about him.
In a panic, I re-al-ized I had no idea how she would file the Masked Painter. Did she know his real name? Have her own se-cret code name for him?
I flipped through the Ms and the Ps, but found no Painter, Masked. I started fran-ti-cally turn-ing each card, hop-ing to find some-thing that sparked recog-ni-tion. Noth-ing.
In the cor-ri-dor, there were foot-steps. Mul-ti-ple sets, over-lap-ping, and the mur-mur of voices.
The des-per-a-tion over-rode my ba-sic in-tel-li-gence, be-cause the peo-ple out-side could well have been the killers. I should have hid-den, but I did not. I did what I usu-ally found so im-pos-si-ble.
“Help!” I shouted, feel-ing so weak and afraid that the thought of tak-ing mat-ters into my own hands was over-whelm-ing.
At the sight of the two fig-ures who en-tered the room, I didn’t know whether to be re-lieved or hor-ri-fied.
Davina and Dr-ever.
Dr-ever’s mouth fell open at the sight of the corpse.
“It’s Or-lagh,” I choked out, still tast-ing acid at the back of my throat. “She’s dead. And she’s … old. An-cient.”
I couldn’t bring my-self to say the word mur-dered. Af-ter all, my only rea-son-ing be-hind the de-ter-mi-na-tion was some-thing she had told me about the ex-quis-ite paint-ings, and I wasn’t sure how much of that to give away in the heat of the mo-ment—if ever.
It was sup-posed to be a se-cret.
And yet what if that se-cret had led Or-lagh to her grave?
“What on earth,” Dr-ever whis-pered, clap-ping a hand to his mouth at the sight of the with-ered ca-daver. “It can’t be…”
“Look at the ring.” I pointed to the apri-cot-gold cameo, which was now far too big for the bony fin-ger it hung upon. “The freckle above it.”
Dr-ever gripped the door-way for sup-port, face ashen. His tie was loose, his top shirt but-ton un-done. Sus-pi-cion sprung up in my mind. What had they been do-ing?
“Good god,” he said, a coarse-ness to his tone.
“There are scars all over her face and chest.” My voice was a tremu-lous mur-mur. Dead body, dead body, dead body. “But they don’t look fresh. Maybe she’d been cov-er-ing them up.”
My mind reeled. None of it made any sense. Had her body been yanked back to its true state the mo-ment death be-fell her? Is that why the scars looked old—be-cause they were in-flicted upon her younger body? But no. If her younger self had scars, her im-mor-tal-ized self would too. They had to be new.
“Why does she look like that?” croaked Dr-ever. From his re-ac-tion, I had to guess that he had no idea about the Masked Painter. “Are you sure it’s her?”
“No,” I said un-truth-fully. “But the ring, and the freckle … they’re ex-actly the same.”
Dr-ever nod-ded, pat-ting his blazer pocket and pulling out a phone. “I’ll call an am-bu-lance. And the po-lice.”
Davina stood stock-still in the door-way, as white and silent as a mime. She stared at Or-lagh with a kind of rev-er-ent hor-ror, and all at once I re-al-ized that she had likely been men-tored by her as well, be-fore I’d black-mailed Dr-ever.
Was she still be-ing men-tored? Or had that op-por-tu-nity been torn from her too?
Had Or-lagh also told her about the Masked Painter?
I didn’t see Davina’s por-trait in the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite, but then I hadn’t looked at all of them in great de-tail.
The po-ten-tial re-al-iza-tion un-stead-ied my foot-ing even fur-ther.
“Are you al-right?” I asked her, as Dr-ever slipped into the hall-way to make the call. It was hardly a peace of-fer-ing, but it seemed like the right thing to say in the mo-ment.
“We should get out of here,” she replied, and her tone chilled me. It was like ice, emo-tion-less, and a thought so painfully ob-vi-ous struck me that I wanted to kick my-self for not re-al-iz-ing it ear-lier.
What if she was the killer?
At first I’d been partly re-lieved at the sight of her, a fa-mil-iar fig-ure with whom to share the bur-den of the dis-cov-ery, but didn’t it make sense that she might have had some-thing to do with this?
Hell, maybe they both did.
I thought of Davina’s hand curled around my pony-tail, the vi-cious sting of a loosed lock, the pe-cu-liar sat-is-fac-tion on her face when she held it up to the light. The sub-tle vi-o-lence to her, writ-ten all over the sharp ridges of her face.
And it fit.
Maybe Cam-ran had caught them in the throes of pas-sion. Maybe there was a con-fronta-tion, in which she threat-ened to go to the dean. Maybe the two of them knew they would lose ev-ery-thing if that hap-pened—Davina her fu-ture, and Dr-ever his rep-u-ta-tion.
The last con-tact open on the Rolodex had been Dr-ever, Cameron.
Had Or-lagh called him to con-front him?
Had it all gone sour af-ter that?
Davina had put on a good show, when she first walked in—the way her mouth fell open, her eye-brows shot up, the lit-tle start of shock like an elec-trode pressed against her skin. But we were here as bud-ding ac-tors, and she was bet-ter than most. Dr-ever too had en-joyed a de-cent level of stage suc-cess be-fore the work dried up.
If any-one could feign in-no-cence, it was them.
“You’re right,” I said fi-nally, care-fully, lay-ing down the waste-bas-ket on the par-quet floor-ing. I was sud-denly deathly afraid. “We should get out of here.”
Though my pulse hadn’t truly re-cov-ered from the shock of find-ing Or-lagh, it kicked up once more, a fran-tic skit-ter-ing, a rush of blood to my tem-ples. If they had killed her, they had the ex-act same rea-sons for killing me too—I knew enough about their af-fair to black-mail Dr-ever with it. What was to stop them from mur-der-ing me right now?
I started walk-ing to-ward Davina, and she moved to block the door-way. As I drew close, I smelled that fa-mil-iar to-bacco-breath, the musky rose per-fume, and some-thing al-to-gether head-ier. There was a kind of car-nal in-tox-i-ca-tion to her di-lated stare, a rum-pled-ness to her out-fit, and I won-dered whether she had fi-nally won Dr-ever over.
When she stuffed a hand in the pocket of her leather jacket, my heart lurched.
A knife? The same knife wielded against Or-lagh?
“What are you do-ing?” I asked, try-ing to keep my-self steady de-spite the tremor in my legs and the quiver in my voice. “You just said we should leave.”
I can’t be about to die. I can’t be.
And yet if she wanted to mur-der me, there was re-al-is-ti-cally noth-ing I could do to stop her. I was frail, mal-nour-ished, the mus-cles in my limbs at-ro-phied from star-va-tion, my vi-sion dizzy with hunger. I didn’t stand a chance. There was a flicker of in-tel-lec-tual thought in the back of my head, a kind of flinty un-der-stand-ing of why a pa-tri-archy might want its women to feel like this, but I was too caught up in the per-ilous mo-ment to pluck it from the sand and ex-am-ine it in more de-tail.
Davina pulled the ob-ject out of her pocket. Not a knife but a lighter.
“You don’t fool me, you know.” She flicked the flame up and down, a com-pul-sive habit turned im-plied threat, and I felt like the room was twist-ing and spi-ral-ing, a spin-ning top about to teeter earth-ward.
“What?” I croaked, a sense of doom cas-cad-ing around me from all sides, a sense that one de-ci-sion to cap-ture a pri-vate mo-ment on cam-era was on the brink of un-rav-el-ing ev-ery-thing.
“The act you put on,” Davina said. Flick, flame, flick, flame. “Play-ing up to that in-no-cent beauty. I know it’s not who you are. I know there’s a dark-ness in-side you.” Her zom-bie-pale eyes, un-til now locked on the gold glint of the lighter, snapped up to me. “And I want you to know that no mat-ter what hideous things you may have done—” her gaze flit-ted to Or-lagh and then back again—“I am not afraid of you.”
Fear and con-fu-sion warred in-side me.
Was she threat-en-ing me? It felt as such, and yet she had a way of talk-ing that slith-ered and crept around the edges of my un-der-stand-ing, noth-ing con-crete enough to grab with both hands, a spec-tral shadow that shifted un-der too fierce a gaze. Did she do it on pur-pose, to wrong-foot me? Some-how I sus-pected not. It was just the way she was, enig-matic and re-con-dite—and po-ten-tially a cold-blooded mur-derer.
Not for the first time in my life, I wished that other peo-ple thought and com-mu-ni-cated the way I did, in col-umns and rows, clear and or-derly, easy to parse and eas-ier still to eval-u-ate.
Per-haps it was just my imag-i-na-tion, but the room had be-gun to fill with the stench of de-cay.
A cold, an-i-mal rot.
“Let me go,” I said, gath-er-ing up all the scraps of con-vic-tion I had left.
She smiled, broad and mean, and then stepped aside. “With plea-sure.”
The re-lief of break-ing free was cut short when I re-mem-bered what she’d said to Maisie in the atrium of Aber-nathy.
You have to play your cards at the right time, you know? Same with Penny’s re-venge. It’s all very well hav-ing pocket aces, but they be-come a lot more pow-er-ful if a third ap-pears in the river.
She was just bid-ing her time.