CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
In the Basil Hall-ward The-ater, Davina and I had to wait for the sec-ond years to fin-ish their re-hearsals be-fore we could sneak be-low the stage. We took a seat in the back row where I’d sat weeks ear-lier, right af-ter dis-cov-er-ing Or-lagh’s dead body. And de-spite the fact that I was there with the fiercest ad-ver-sary I’d ever had, I couldn’t deny that it felt good not to be alone.
We sat in terse si-lence, half lis-ten-ing to Hero and Ur-sula dis-cussing Benedick’s love, un-til, with a vis-ceral jolt, she let out an-other in-vol-un-tary whim-per. One hand went to the makeshift patch over her miss-ing eye, while the other dug its fin-ger-nails into the vel-vet arm of the chair be-tween us.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly, re-sist-ing the urge to rest my hand over hers. Her moan left an echo in my chest.
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
I knew be-yond all doubt that she wasn’t fine. I couldn’t imag-ine the pain she was in—not to men-tion the aw-ful per-ma-nence of her in-jury. The im-pact on the way she moved through the world. She was a bal-le-rina—that loss of depth per-cep-tion, of pe-riph-eral vi-sion …
But from ev-ery-thing I knew about Davina, cod-dling and coo-ing wasn’t the way to go. And so I opted in-stead for dis-trac-tion.
“What’s the plan?” I wrapped my fur coat tighter around me. “Once we get down there?”
She nod-ded grate-fully. “Well, as long as our por-traits are still there, we can take pho-tos of them, and our match-ing wounds. And of the dead sub-jects’ rav-aged paint-ings too. It’ll at least be proof of how it’s hap-pen-ing, if not by whom. Then we hide out for a while, be-hind that screen in the cor-ner. And hope Dr-ever—if he is the killer—comes down tonight. Film him slash-ing the por-traits so we can take the ev-i-dence to the po-lice.”
The po-lice. The only place all of this could end. The only peo-ple who could re-ally bring Dr-ever to jus-tice. Did that mean I was fated to lose my mother no mat-ter what? Would she re-ally fol-low through on the threat?
Maybe we’d be able to have Dr-ever charged with-out dig-ging up the dis-tant past. There was no need to bring the orig-i-nal Masked Painter into it, af-ter all.
Or we could seek our own jus-tice, as Davina had sug-gested. But I didn’t think I had the stom-ach to take Dr-ever’s life.
Whorls of dread snaked around my lungs like adders. “What if the slashes he makes tonight are fa-tal? Should we just sit back and let it hap-pen?”
Davina con-sid-ered this for a sec-ond. “If it’s one of our paint-ings, we’ll have to con-front him. Like I said, I’m good with a knife.” She tapped her front teeth with her fin-ger-nail. “But any-one else…”
The cal-lous-ness stole my breath. But then again, I sup-posed we’d have to let it hap-pen, so the ev-i-dence was air-tight enough to seal a guilty ver-dict, de-spite the ab-so-lute lu-nacy of the method and the weapon.
It was al-ready go-ing to be a stretch, I re-al-ized, to get the po-lice on board with this the-ory—let alone a court of law. At this point I’d come to ac-cept these ca-bal-is-tic hap-pen-ings at face value, de-spite the fact it all de-fied the laws of physics, of re-al-ity. But for a judge or jury to com-pre-hend it …
Through the ab-stract mus-ings ap-peared a sud-den bone-chill-ing re-al-iza-tion.
“What about my mum?” I asked, so quickly the words rolled into one.
“What about your mum?”
“Her por-trait is in there too.” My stom-ach cramped un-com-fort-ably. “If he ap-proaches hers, and it looks like he’s go-ing to kill her … what do we do?”
Davina’s ex-pres-sion be-trayed no emo-tion. “That’s your call.”
Would I throw my-self in harm’s way to save my mother, no mat-ter how much I hated her? It was a more com-pli-cated ques-tion than Davina could ever know.
Un-less, of course, she did know. We were so hor-ri-bly sim-i-lar.
I took a few ex-tra breaths be-fore my next ques-tion, feel-ing the chilled, dusty air of the the-ater ex-pand in my chest. “What about your par-ents?”
She stilled be-side me. “What about them?”
“Who are they?” The ques-tions al-ready felt like an in-tru-sion, and yet I found my-self burn-ing to know. “What’s your re-la-tion-ship with them like?”
“I grew up in fos-ter care.” From the way she said it, it was as though she had to ex-er-cise great self-con-trol to say the words at a nor-mal speed, in-stead of rush-ing over them as quickly as pos-si-ble.
“Oh. Were you ever…?”
“Fos-tered? Yeah. Twice. The first time, when I was five or six, ac-tu-ally went pretty well. It was a cou-ple who al-ready had a bi-o-log-i-cal kid, and they wanted to do some-thing good to com-plete their fam-ily. They treated me well. I think they loved me, ac-tu-ally.” She swal-lowed hard. “But then I started act-ing up when I was eleven or twelve. I don’t even know why, re-ally. But they ended up send-ing me back.”
I panged for her. “That’s aw-ful.”
“My own fault, I guess.”
“No, it’s not,” I in-sisted. “Parental love should be un-con-di-tional. They wouldn’t ditch their bi-o-log-i-cal child if things started to get hard.”
“What-ever. It’s in the past.” She shrugged, but it was so far from ca-sual that I felt al-most em-bar-rassed to be wit-ness-ing her care-ful per-for-mance.
On the stage, the Watch of Messina gath-ered to dis-cuss their polic-ing for the night. Dog-berry’s mal-a-prop-isms were butchered by a skinny stu-dent with shaggy black hair.
“You said twice,” I pushed on. “Who were your next par-ents?”
“Par-ents is a stretch. They took in a boat-load of teenagers for the money. I shared a bed with three other kids. Su-per fun as a four-teen-year-old girl. I left when I was six-teen. Got my-self a schol-ar-ship to bal-let school, and there was a board-ing wing so I stayed there. I worked in a bar on the week-ends, saved up enough to buy my-self driv-ing lessons and a car at sev-en-teen. I slept in it dur-ing the hol-i-days.”
No won-der she was so wrapped in barbed wire. “Do you know who your bi-o-log-i-cal par-ents are?”
“Nope.”
An-other sim-i-lar-ity we had semi-shared, un-til re-cently. I hadn’t known who my fa-ther was, and it had gnawed at me for decades.
The sec-ond years fin-ished off their run-through of Act III and seemed to de-cide that was quite enough for one night. They hoisted rum-pled back-packs on to slim shoul-ders and lol-loped to-ward the exit, not pay-ing Davina nor me any mind.
“Let’s go,” I mut-tered, once their echo-ing voices faded from the lobby be-hind us.
We made the trip through the trap-door and down the cor-ri-dor to the gallery in taut si-lence.
When the nar-row pas-sage-way opened out into the cav-ernous room, I could not sti-fle the gasp.
It was ex-actly as we had thought.
Cam-ran’s pic-ture hang in tat-ters, the slices match-ing pre-cisely the wounds on her body. I hadn’t seen Van Der Beek or Barr in death, but theirs too were rav-aged by a feral blade, the can-vases al-most en-tirely shred-ded as they hung side by side.
The wounds were so wild and im-pre-cise that surely, surely the po-lice sus-pected some-thing sin-is-ter. And yet to what could they pos-si-bly at-trib-ute those strange, seem-in-gly old wounds on the corpses? What knots were they ty-ing them-selves into try-ing to ex-plain this to the vic-tims’ fam-i-lies?
And then there was me—and Davina.
We hung side by side, her por-trait only hours younger than mine.
At the sight of the lac-er-a-tion over her eye, Davina sank to her knees.
In my own, I barely rec-og-nized my-self. This was not how the por-trait had orig-i-nally looked, when the paint was still fresh.
Harsh cheek-bones jut-ted through my skin, hol-low pock-ets sink-ing be-neath the ra-zor edges. My skin was pal-lid, sickly, and there were pur-ple bulges be-neath my blood-shot eyes. There were nicks and notches all over my neck and col-lar-bones, and one glar-ing cut across my face—care-ful, con-sid-ered, clean com-pared to the fu-ri-ous slashes on the oth-ers. A cal-cu-lated wound. For some rea-son, that chilled me more.
As hideous as she was, the girl in the por-trait looked how I truly felt. Starved, ex-hausted, ter-ri-fied for her life. I felt a surge of sym-pa-thy for her. She looked so young.
I could’ve stared for hours, but I was keenly aware that Dr-ever might ap-pear at any mo-ment. Davina was still crouched on the ground, as though wor-ship-ping at the al-tar of her own suf-fer-ing, so I spurred into ac-tion. I took pho-tos of my por-trait, of Cam-ran’s and the other vic-tims, and of Davina’s over her shoul-der. Then I tucked my phone into my pocket and crossed back to my paint-ing, clos-ing my fin-gers around the edges of the gilded frame.
But when I tugged—gen-tly, at first—it held firm to the wall. I tried to lift it up-ward, imag-in-ing it to be fixed by a hook, but it didn’t give. Even when I put my whole weight into it, grip-ping tight and yank-ing back, it stayed welded to the wall.
Doom gath-ered in me, dark and churn-ing. A small part of me had hoped we’d at least be able to re-move our paint-ings from the gallery—so that even if we couldn’t free our-selves from the shack-les, we could keep them safe from fur-ther dis-fig-ure-ment.
But the Masked Painter, wher-ever he was, had not lied.
The an-chor was, in all mean-ing-ful ways, per-ma-nent.