CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Driv-ing in the strange com-bi-na-tion of blue skies and el-dritch fog, the van-ish-ing roads could’ve been any-where.
Hunger clawed at me, a feral thing, a beast with spec-tral wings and a black-ened heart.
I didn’t check my rearview mir-ror once.
I couldn’t bear to see that mark, pur-ple and sin-is-ter, threat-en-ing as a dark spot on a brain scan, as a glint of gun-metal from the bushes, as the smell of a stranger’s per-fume in your house.
What did it mean?
Was it a warn-ing? A shot across the bow?
When had it first ap-peared? At the same time as Or-lagh’s? Had I just been so pumped with adren-a-line that I didn’t no-tice the sting of pain?
Ei-ther way, the mes-sage seemed to be this: I could have killed you, but I didn’t.
And there was only one per-son I knew of who wanted to hurt me. Who had even told me as much.
You’re go-ing to re-gret fuck-ing with me. Maybe not to-day. Maybe not this week. But sooner or later, I will come for you. When you least ex-pect it.
Then, in the lobby, with Maisie: Don’t worry. She’ll get what’s com-ing to her.
A dark pic-ture of the sit-u-a-tion was emerg-ing. Davina had rea-son to si-lence Or-lagh. Davina had rea-son to hurt me. Davina even had Maisie lie about her where-abouts last night.
But I’d watched enough pro-ce-du-ral dra-mas to know this ev-i-dence was all cir-cum-stan-tial. I needed proof if I wanted to bring her to jus-tice. But how? And what would I even do if I man-aged to find it? I doubted the po-lice would take any of this se-ri-ously. Es-pe-cially if the por-traits re-ally were the mur-der weapon.
I felt en-tirely un-moored from re-al-ity, as though I’d sud-denly learned that the laws of physics were a lie. That grav-ity was only re-li-able half the time. That the sky was the ground, and vice versa.
As I pulled up out-side our town-house in the Old Town, I tried to set-tle my breath-ing. Maybe this throat cut was a one-off. Maybe Davina would con-sider it vengeance enough to scar me for life. To in-still a deep, writhing fear in me. To let me know she could kill me when-ever she damn pleased. To af-firm her power over me, over the sit-u-a-tion.
I had to find a way to un-tether my-self from that paint-ing. To re-move the threat first and fore-most. Then I could work on com-pil-ing enough ev-i-dence to take Davina down.
And if Or-lagh could no longer help me track down the Masked Painter, maybe my own flesh and blood could.
As I climbed out of the car, I winced at the lance of pain in my ribs, shiv-er-ing in-side my count-less lay-ers of wool and cash-mere. I was al-most bent dou-ble around the snare of hunger in my stom-ach.
I raised my hand and rapped the sil-ver gar-goyle knocker on the pol-ished black door. There was a hand-made au-tumn wreath hang-ing over the door num-ber—sprays of red berries, clus-ters of or-ange leaves and minia-ture glass pump-kins painted gold—which un-doubt-edly came from my aunt Polly. My mother would rather slice off her own eye-brows with a but-ter knife than do crafts.
When there was no an-swer, the sense of un-ease grew. Come to think of it, Mum had never ac-tu-ally replied to my voice-mail. Af-ter call-ing me a dozen times, she’d sim-ply dropped off the face of the planet.
The vague sense of dread sharp-ened into a jagged point.
Had some-thing bad hap-pened to her too?
With a dizzy swoop, I had the hor-ri-fy-ing thought that maybe her own por-trait had been de-stroyed by the same blade as Or-lagh’s. As an act of re-venge it was fairly ex-treme, but I didn’t put any-thing past Davina.
Was I about to walk in on my own mother’s corpse?
So blind-in-gly fright-ened that I was al-most numb, I turned my key in the lock and let my-self in. The scent of white lilies and black cof-fee filled the hall-way.
My fears were im-me-di-ately dis-persed. There were low fe-male voices com-ing from the kitchen. When no calls came out, I as-sumed they hadn’t heard me en-ter. Slip-ping my shoes shak-ily off, I strained my ears to hear what they were say-ing.
“… can’t un-der-stand why any-one would do this to Or-lagh.” It was Mum, her voice laced with ur-gency. “She had a heart of gold. Me, I could un-der-stand, but…”
“You think she was def-i-nitely killed?” My aunt Polly’s ac-cent was far broader than mine or Mum’s, since she’d never left Ed-in-burgh for the bright lights of the Big Smoke. Its fa-mil-iar-ity warmed me. My aunt had been a sav-ing grace while Mum was in re-hab. All six times.
“There’s no other way she could’ve died,” replied Mum. “The por-traits make one im-mune to nat-u-ral death.”
At this, I fal-tered. She’d told Aunt Polly about the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite? I sup-posed Cam-ran had never ex-plic-itly told me to keep it a se-cret, but I felt a kind of brit-tle shame at the thought of any-one know-ing what I’d done. What I’d slav-ishly sac-ri-ficed at the al-tar of some-thing so fickle as beauty.
“But it’s not be-ing re-ported as a mur-der,” said Aunt Polly.
“Maybe the po-lice are try-ing to keep it un-der wraps.”
The air in-side the house was no warmer than it was out-side, and I shiv-ered un-con-trol-lably de-spite my hat, scarf and long leather gloves. The thought that I might never be warm again was tor-tur-ous.
“Surely it would’ve leaked by now.” I heard a ket-tle switch be-ing flicked, and knew my lis-ten-ing time was al-most up—I wouldn’t be able to hear them over the boil. “Do-rian must be crawl-ing with de-tec-tives, and it’ll only take one stu-dent to talk to the press.”
When the ket-tle grew loud enough to drown them out, I padded through the liv-ing-din-ing space and into the big, faux-in-dus-trial kitchen.
“Hi, Mum,” I said, and she jumped at my voice. “Hey, Aunt Polly.”
“Je-sus, Penny!” Mum clutched her hand to her beige cash-mere jumper. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Hi, sweet girl.” Aunt Polly climbed down from the high stool at the mar-ble is-land and threw her arms around me. She smelled of toast and Im-pe-rial Leather soap. “How are you?”
“I’m al-right, thanks,” I said weakly, but I felt any-thing but.
She pulled away and looked me up and down, dis-ap-proval em-i-nent on her face. She was a GP at a small prac-tice in East Loth-ian, though she only worked a cou-ple of days a week these days. “You’re thin-ner. Too thin.”
The hor-ri-ble de-mon in my mind glowed.
Aunt Polly was the an-tithe-sis of me and my mum. Her cop-per hair was duller, mud-dier, and pulled back in a prac-ti-cal croc-o-dile clip. She was short and round—the ap-prox-i-mate shape of a pi-geon—and wore plain, well-worn clothes that she mended in-stead of re-placed. Her wire-framed glasses were non-de-signer, even though Mum made sure she never wanted for money, and her fea-tures weren’t as sculpted. She loved crafts of all kinds—card-mak-ing and cro-chet, home-made can-dles and dried flower ar-range-ments. She was won-der-ful, warm, ma-ter-nal. I had spent a not-in-sig-nif-i-cant por-tion of my ado-les-cence wish-ing she were my mother in-stead.
When Aunt Polly had my cousin Pippa, I was eleven or twelve, and just be-gin-ning to truly un-der-stand how emo-tion-ally ab-sent my own mother was com-pared to ev-ery-one else’s. Aunt Polly had al-ways been amaz-ing with me, tak-ing me on day trips and buy-ing me ice cream, get-ting me my first li-brary card and buddy-read-ing the Percy Jack-son books so we could chat about them over pep-per-mint hot choco-lates. Then Pippa came along, and all that ma-ter-nal en-ergy was chan-neled to-ward her own child. It wasn’t that she sud-denly didn’t care about me—it was more that when-ever she vis-ited us with-out the baby, she wanted adult con-ver-sa-tion, not to mother some-one else’s kid.
I felt bereft, and more alone than ever.
There was one day when Pippa was a tod-dler, still breast-feed-ing, and she grew drowsy and sleepy on my aunt’s nip-ple. Polly gazed down at her, full of love, stroking her cheek and coo-ing that she was a good girl, such a good girl, as Pippa’s eyes drifted care-lessly shut. I left the room in floods of tears, not re-ally pos-sess-ing the emo-tional ma-tu-rity to un-der-stand why it up-set me so much. I thought I was just evil, for re-sent-ing my sweet in-no-cent cousin, for wish-ing she had never been born.
“Shouldn’t you be in re-hearsals?” asked my mum now, some-thing wary and sus-pi-cious on her face.
Ir-ri-ta-tion prick-led be-neath my skin like sun-burn. She had called me count-less times. And now she was be-ing stand-off-ish that I’d come to see her? She was mad-den-ing.
“Dr-ever gave me the af-ter-noon off af-ter the shock of what hap-pened last night.” I fixed a pointed look in her di-rec-tion. “I found her. Or-lagh.”
The peach-pink color in her cheeks faded to a pal-lid taupe. “Oh.”
I turned to Aunt Polly, who was clat-ter-ing around to find a third mug. “So you know about the Masked Painter too, then.”
That fi-nally got a proper re-ac-tion from my mum. “How do you know—oh, Penny. You didn’t. Oh, I warned you to be care-ful.”
As twisted as it was, her luke-warm con-cern felt good.
I took a seat next to her at the is-land, star-ing at the wilt-ing lilies in the gold-fish-bowl vase. Sev-eral red sta-men lit-tered the white mar-ble. “Right, well you could’ve been a bit more spe-cific, couldn’t you?”
Mum rubbed at her face, but not hard enough to dis-guise the jit-ters in her hands. “I thought if I started harp-ing on about im-mor-tal paint-ings be-fore you even met Or-lagh, you’d just chalk it up to my creep-ing in-san-ity.”
“You have a point,” I replied. Aunt Polly laid a cup of tea in front of me, and I took a sip right away. It scalded my throat, and I could al-most feel tiny blis-ters form-ing on my tongue, but I was glad of the sting. It gave me an-other sen-sa-tion to fo-cus on rather than the cramp-ing hunger and the gnaw-ing cold. “Do you have any bis-cuits?”
Mum shook her head ab-sently, but Polly pulled a packet of Bor-ders all-but-ter short-bread out of her plain leather hand-bag. I dunked each piece in the tea un-til it was soft and sweet, try-ing to ig-nore the feel-ing of fail-ure as I ate—the sense that I was los-ing a bat-tle with my-self that I couldn’t re-mem-ber ever de-cid-ing to wage. But at least Aunt Polly looked pleased that I was feed-ing my-self.
“I just don’t un-der-stand how … I don’t un-der-stand.” As Mum spoke mist-ily, her teeth were al-most chat-ter-ing. I looked at her face prop-erly for the first time in years, at the im-pos-si-bly smooth skin and the plump, youth-ful lips, at the ut-ter lack of ag-ing any-where on her body. Even her neck and chest were free of crêpe-like tex-ture. Her hands were al-most iden-ti-cal to mine. “It’s im-pos-si-ble, or so I thought. I sup-pose that’s why I let you go to Do-rian in the first place—be-cause it should’ve been im-pos-si-ble. So how? Un-less…”
“Mum, what are you on about?” I in-ter-rupted, trem-bling with cold de-spite my fur coat.
She picked up her cup of tea, but didn’t drink. She looked some-how both haunted and fran-tic. “I sup-pose—well, look at it this way.” She seemed to be hav-ing a con-ver-sa-tion with her-self. It was un-nerv-ing to watch. “You were al-ways go-ing to do it any-way, that’s the heart of the mat-ter. But how could…?”
At this I bris-tled. “What makes you say I was al-ways go-ing to do it any-way?”
A shrug, as though of-fend-ing me was the least of her prob-lems. “Very few young women would have the in-tegrity to say no to such a thing.”
Aunt Polly scoffed in-dig-nantly. “I’d say no.”
“Well, quite,” said Mum dryly. “Your looks are hardly worth pre-serv-ing.”
“Cow,” mut-tered Aunt Polly, but she didn’t seem too wounded by it. Her own lack of so-ci-etally ac-cepted beauty never seemed to bother her, and I won-dered what her se-cret was. Did she truly not care? How could she not? I was, in many ways, jeal-ous of her.
Yank-ing my at-ten-tion back to the prob-lem I came to dis-cuss, I wiped the crumbs off my flared cor-duroy trousers and said, “I messed up, though. I went into the sit-ting hun-gry and pan-icked and cold, and now no mat-ter what I do, I stay hun-gry and pan-icked and cold. I feel like I’m go-ing mad.”
Mum stiff-ened be-side me. She still hadn’t taken a sip of tea. “An easy mis-take to make,” she mur-mured. “I went into it deeply de-pressed, and look how that turned out.”
I was struck with a sud-den and ter-ri-ble un-der-stand-ing.
“That’s why you’re so…”
A brief, sharp pain darted across her face. “That’s why I’m so.”
“The ad-dic-tion,” I said qui-etly. “The par-ty-ing. All of it.”
Aunt Polly looked down at her hands, criss-crossed with veins and wrin-kles. As they should be.
“I just wanted to feel some-thing.” Mum’s voice was, to the av-er-age on-looker, de-void of emo-tion. But I was so well versed in its ca-dence that I picked up on the mi-nus-cule cracks and crevices be-low the sur-face, like the jud-der-ing to-gether of two tec-tonic plates. “And I haven’t for—god, for nearly two decades, no mat-ter how many highs I chased. No amount of re-hab can fix what’s bro-ken in-side me.”
The state-ment was a whip-wound across my heart. I was born eigh-teen years ago.
She hadn’t felt any-thing then? Any-thing?
Yet the harsh-ness with which I per-ceived my mum’s flaws flick-ered and shifted. She wasn’t just born flighty, ne-glect-ful, shal-low. Cold. There was a far more sin-is-ter driv-ing force be-hind it than I ever could’ve imag-ined.
And I was head-ing down the same path.
The si-lence that de-scended on the room was weighted, charged, and I hoped one of them would break it first. But when noth-ing was said for sev-eral mo-ments, I cleared my throat. I had to tell them the whole story.
“My the-ory is that Or-lagh was killed through her paint-ing.”
Mum’s gaze snapped to me, and I loathed the hard-edged sus-pi-cion on her face. “What makes you say that?”
“There was no blood. No po-lice. I haven’t been asked any ques-tions, and con-sid-er-ing I was the one who found the body, it must mean they’re not in-ves-ti-gat-ing the death as sus-pi-cious. They must be-lieve her to have died of nat-u-ral causes, even if they can’t ex-plain how much older she looked in death.”
Aunt Polly nod-ded. “Okay…”
I shiv-ered again. It felt as though the cold were ex-pand-ing in my bones. “But like you said ear-lier, she shouldn’t have been able to die at all. She said to me: ‘Un-less marred by some bru-tal ex-ter-nal force, they may cheat even death.’ So what if that bru-tal ex-ter-nal force was ap-plied not to her body but to her por-trait? Her face and throat were cov-ered in marks that looked like healed wounds.” My stom-ach clenched at the mem-ory.
“You’re right,” Mum said, but there was a cau-tion to her tone, a guard-ed-ness that I didn’t un-der-stand. “That’s ex-actly how it works. But who would—”
“I made an en-emy.” I swal-lowed hard. “A ruth-less one.”
Mum and Aunt Polly lis-tened in hor-ri-fied si-lence as I filled them in on the au-di-tions, on catch-ing Davina and Dr-ever in his car. I cringed as I de-scribed how I’d black-mailed my way into the lead, but they had to know. They had to un-der-stand why I sus-pected Davina so strongly. I told them about how she’d torn the hair from my head, how she’d lashed me with threats, how Maisie had lied about her where-abouts at the ex-act time Or-lagh was killed. How the last con-tact open on the Rolodex was Dr-ever, Cameron. My the-ory about Or-lagh find-ing out about the af-fair and con-fronting them. The swift si-lenc-ing—whether from Davina alone or them as a pair.
“And then … I found this.”
I un-rav-eled the scarf from my neck and pointed at the pur-plish wound.
At the sight of it, Aunt Polly gasped and cupped her hands to her face. Even Mum looked ter-ri-fied by it—she gripped the edge of the counter for sup-port, as though she were about to faint.
“I don’t know what it means.” I wrapped the scarf back around me, des-per-ate for the slight-est scrap of warmth. “Whether it’s a warn-ing not to in-ves-ti-gate Or-lagh’s death, or pure re-venge. And I don’t know whether she’d do it again. Keep toy-ing with me. But I’m scared.”
The last three syl-la-bles were tor-tur-ous to ut-ter—an ad-mis-sion of weak-ness so at odds with the Pax-ton women.
“Oh, Penny…”
Aunt Polly’s words wob-bled, and it rocked me. She was usu-ally as stead-fast as a farmer, stoic in the face of trauma. She’d had decades of prac-tice car-ing for my mum, af-ter all. She’d de-liv-ered count-less ter-mi-nal di-ag-noses to her pa-tients. She’d ex-am-ined young chil-dren with hor-ri-fy-ing symp-toms, known deep in her bones that they were in trou-ble. But now, fear seemed to have robbed her of the abil-ity to speak.
I stud-ied Mum care-fully. Her pupils darted back and forth like a gam-bler count-ing cards, brain whirring with the in-ten-sity of the men-tal load. But still she didn’t say a word. No sage coun-sel, no gen-tle af-fir-ma-tions that we’d get through this to-gether. Just fren-zied cal-cu-la-tions, for-mu-las that could never bal-ance, para-noid pro-pel-lers spin-ning fran-ti-cally off the face of the earth.
Ex-cept … her para-noia wasn’t un-founded, was it? There had al-ways been this dark se-cret to hide.
“What do I do?” I whis-pered. “Please. Tell me what I should do. Can we track down the Masked Painter some-how? Surely there’s a way to undo these … an-chors, what-ever they are. There has to be a way. We just have to find him.”
The color still had not re-turned to my mother’s face. She shook her head, stiff as a rag doll. “We won’t find the Masked Painter.”
“Why not?”
Her knuck-les were ivory as she clung to her mug.
“Be-cause the Masked Painter is dead.”