CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
“And there’s no way he could have known ear-lier? And just not told you?”
She shrugged. “I mean, he could’ve made an ed-u-cated guess. I don’t know how much of our al-ter-ca-tion he saw—af-ter you took the pic-ture. What are you think-ing?”
“The killer had to be some-one else with a key,” I mut-tered, low and fast. “What if Or-lagh and Dr-ever were close? Maybe she’d shared the se-cret of the gallery with him. Cut him a copy of the key in case some-thing hap-pened to her. And … his con-tact card was the last thing she’d looked up on her Rolodex be-fore she died.”
Catalina was lis-ten-ing to all of this with wide, shin-ing eyes. “So you think Dr-ever might have killed Or-lagh.”
I turned to Davina. “Is there a way she could’ve found out about you two? Threat-ened him, maybe?”
“I sup-pose,” she replied. “But—”
“Look, why else would he have said you ‘ru-ined his life for noth-ing’? If the only con-se-quence was re-cast-ing the lead in a play, I’d hardly call that a ru-ined ex-is-tence.” I felt elec-tri-fied by my string of re-al-iza-tions. “But if he’d taken an in-no-cent life just to pro-tect the se-cret…”
A vague hor-ror started to play out over Davina’s mar-ble-white face. It re-minded me of her Lady Mac-beth au-di-tion—the fear writhing in-side her like a feral beast, af-fect-ing her ev-ery move-ment. “But what about Van Der Beek and Barr? Why would he have killed them?”
The sec-ond and third mur-ders were the two that didn’t fit neatly into any the-ory, so I zoomed out and looked at it with a broader lens. “Same as most se-rial killers, I guess? Did it once and liked the way it felt?”
She ad-justed the makeshift eye patch tied around her head. Her move-ments were timid, care-ful, hy-per-aware of her in-jury. “So why not kill us too? Why just maim?”
“Maybe he’s a sadist. He gets off on our fear,” I mused, again em-ploy-ing that wider scope in the ab-sence of con-crete ev-i-dence. “He’s toy-ing with us be-fore the killing blow. Men have done far worse things to far more women. It’s not to-tally be-yond the realm of pos-si-bil-ity that he en-joys in-flict-ing pain. Do you think he’s that kind of guy?”
“I don’t think so.” Davina’s words were like step-ping stones over a river; she tested each one for sta-bil-ity be-fore mov-ing on to the next. “He’s the kind of sap who’d risk his ca-reer just to save me from sleep-ing in a cold car. But then again, I’ve watched enough doc-u-men-taries to know it’s al-ways the ones you least ex-pect.”
Catalina was ner-vously fold-ing origami boats from a stack of book re-ceipts she’d found in her wal-let. There was al-ready a fleet of around twenty lit-tered across the cof-fee ta-ble.
“So what are you go-ing to do?” she asked. “If it re-ally is Dr-ever—but you can’t go to the po-lice…”
Davina’s knee jerked even more er-rat-i-cally. “I think we should go down to the gallery tonight. Even if we don’t catch him, we can take our por-traits down and hide them some-where else. Then at least we’ll be safe from mu-ti-la-tion.”
I swal-lowed hard, my throat ragged as a cliff edge. “What scares me is that … even if we catch Dr-ever, and he’s some-how ar-rested and charged and sen-tenced, we still don’t have a way to re-move these an-chors. I don’t want to be rooted to that paint-ing any more.”
“You want to age?” Davina asked, in-credulity punc-tur-ing the words. “Grow im-per-fect?”
“Not es-pe-cially,” I ad-mit-ted. “But it can’t be any worse than this. It’s not just the wounds, ei-ther. I went to the sit-ting freez-ing and half starved. That’s how I’ve felt ever since, no mat-ter how many blan-kets I wrap my-self in, no mat-ter how much food I eat. I feel half mad from it, like a starv-ing wolf.”
Davina stared at me for sev-eral beats. “Me too.”
“You too?”
“Not so much the cold,” she mur-mured. “But the hunger. I’ve been hun-gry for as long as I can re-mem-ber.”
There it was.
Even though I’d sus-pected it of Davina—with her sharp bones and bal-le-rina limbs and feral glare—the con-fir-ma-tion still filled me with de-spair. I thought of how dif-fer-ent the three young women sit-ting in this kitchen were, and of how ab-surd it was that we were all, in some way, con-nected by the same stupid, mean-ing-less de-mon. Of how even the most strong-willed among us still found her-self fix-ated on some-thing so triv-ial.
We were bright and young and bril-liant, alive with glit-ter-ing prom-ise, and yet we went to such ex-treme lengths to keep our-selves small. No mat-ter the cost.
“How fucked up is this?” I said with a bit-ter laugh. “The things we’ll sac-ri-fice to be beau-ti-ful.”
Davina gri-maced. “Girls don’t want beauty. Girls want power. And some-times beauty is the clos-est sub-sti-tute.”
I let this idea sit for a mo-ment. My con-ver-sa-tions with Or-lagh, Catalina and now Davina had fol-lowed sim-i-lar paths. They had all ex-plored the idea that the thing we truly wanted wasn’t ac-tu-ally beauty. It was what-ever we be-lieved beauty could buy us.
Sex. Iden-tity. Power.
Love.
Sud-denly Davina winced, a short sharp sound with an-guish ap-pear-ing abruptly on her face. Her hand raised to her eye again, and her pos-ture sank around her core.
“Are you in pain?” I asked, lean-ing to-ward her. I’m not sure what I planned to do, but the in-stinct was there, to lay a palm on her fore-arm.
“I’m fine,” she said fiercely, with the dis-tinct air of some-one who was not fine at all. “I still hate you, by the way.” There was an air of per-for-mance to the sen-tence.
“I know,” I said evenly, feel-ing a lit-tle sad for her.
She was an enigma I felt com-pelled to dis-en-tan-gle; a yarn I yearned to un-ravel un-til I found its be-gin-ning. I wanted to un-der-stand why she was like this, so tightly coiled with ha-tred, so barbed with de-fense mech-a-nisms, and yet, in re-al-ity, she was a lit-tle girl putting on a big show. I wanted to draw a map of our shared ground and chart a path across it. I wanted to un-der-stand her, to shine a light on her good parts, be-cause we were so sim-i-lar that it might il-lu-mi-nate my own.
Catalina be-gan talk-ing once she was sure our con-trived ex-change was over. “I want to help you both. Re-ally, I do. It’s just that the thought of go-ing down to the gallery scares me, and I don’t think phys-i-cal fight-ing is my strength, as badass as my DnD char-ac-ter is.” She made the fi-nal fold in an-other re-ceipt. This boat some-how had a mast. “But maybe I can help you an-other way. I’m a skilled re-searcher. I can try and find the Masked Painter, learn as much as I can about this very pe-cu-liar magic, so we can free you from the suf-fer-ing.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
“So it’s set-tled, then,” Davina said, climb-ing to her feet with an aura of ad-journ-ment. “Penny and I will go down to the gallery tonight.”
“Tonight,” I agreed, feel-ing like some-one who’d just agreed to walk a tightrope over a gap-ing crevasse.
Just one false step from fall-ing to my death.