CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Thank god,” ex-claimed Catalina, as I walked back into the flat with-out Davina. “I was so wor-ried.”
And then her arms were around me, and my face was pressed into the soft skin of her neck, and she smelled of fresh-baked cin-na-mon buns. A lock of her hair tick-led my nose, but I found my-self not want-ing to pull away. I wanted to col-lapse into her, the safe haven of her, but I felt that if I did I might start cry-ing and never stop. I wanted to apol-o-gize to her, but I wasn’t re-ally sure why.
“You were?” I asked, ears still ring-ing, limbs still trem-bling.
“Davina’s al-right too, isn’t she?” Catalina looked be-hind me, as though ex-pect-ing my neme-sis-turned-some-thing to ap-pear in the door-way.
“She’s fine.” My mouth was dry and rough. “Just wanted to get some rest.
“I was a cow-ard not com-ing with you.” She pulled away and looked me up and down, check-ing for in-jury. Be-hind her, the kitchen coun-ters were laden with baked goods on cool-ing racks—car-damom buns and cin-na-mon swirls and some-thing that looked dis-tinctly like a birth-day cake. “If any-thing had hap-pened … god, I would never have for-given my-self.”
“Why?” I frowned. It wouldn’t have been her fault. Not even by the elas-tic rea-son-ing Davina and I had stretched in the gallery.
She squeezed my up-per arms, then turned to flick the ket-tle on. “Be-cause I care about you.”
The way she said it was so hon-est and easy, with not a shard of barbed wire to be seen. What must it be like, to feel so safe and jus-ti-fied in your own emo-tions? To share them with such can-dor, with-out fear?
“What hap-pened?” she asked, grab-bing a few mo-saic-pat-terned side plates and pil-ing them with one of each of her bakes. “You are okay, aren’t you?”
“I’m okay. So is Davina.” The mem-ory of our in-ti-macy burned in me, hot and vis-cous, al-most shame-like in tex-ture, but I didn’t have the band-width to un-pack it.
In one breath-less rush, I rat-tled off ev-ery-thing that had hap-pened in the gallery—ex-cept, of course, Davina’s hands on me—be-fore show-ing Catalina the footage I’d cap-tured of An-gus Ar-ras be-ing carved up from be-hind the por-trait.
“So the world will wake up to news of his death,” I fin-ished, study-ing her stunned face. “God knows how the po-lice are go-ing to ex-plain it away this time. They must al-ready be scratch-ing their heads af-ter Lyle and Celia.”
“Be-hind the por-trait.” Her Span-ish ac-cent was com-ing through stronger, as though the shock of the video were pulling her back to her roots. “The killer is … be-hind the por-trait?” Killer like keeler.
“I don’t know how it’s pos-si-ble, ei-ther.” I took a huge bite of car-damom bun. It was de-li-cious—flo-ral with rose petal, warmed through with com-plex spices, with a punchy sweet-ness that melted over my tongue. “If you don’t open a book-store-bak-ery some-day, by the way, it’ll be an im-mense loss to the hu-man race.”
She was too be-wil-dered to ac-knowl-edge the lat-ter part, ab-sently brew-ing her pot of tea. “Maybe there’s a se-ries of tun-nels that wrap around the gallery, and some-one has found a way to ac-cess them from the back. That way they can kill with-out ever be-ing caught.”
“I guess that’s pos-si-ble.” I wiped my ic-ing-sticky hands on my jeans. “But we didn’t hear any foot-steps at all.”
“The earth is packed tight around there. It likely muf-fles sound.” She watched my face care-fully. “What are you think-ing?”
“I can’t put my fig-ure on it,” I replied slowly. I re-played the video on my phone, paus-ing at the pre-cise part that was play-ing on my mind. “It’s the way the can-vas al-most bulges around the knife. Wait—no. It’s the way there is no knife.” The re-al-iza-tion was the flicker of a forked ser-pent’s tongue. I held up the paused screen. “See? When the gashes ap-pear—if a killer was slash-ing through from be-hind, you’d see the tip of a blade, wouldn’t you? But there’s noth-ing.”
I quashed the de-spair welling in-side me with an-other car-damom bun, still warm from the oven. A kind of giddy eu-pho-ria came with it—even though I knew they wouldn’t sa-ti-ate me, I was eat-ing. And the fear, the sense of fail-ure, hadn’t yet caught up to me.
Be-cause what did it mat-ter if I ate a damn sugar bomb? If the por-traits couldn’t be re-moved from the wall, and the an-chors were per-ma-nent, and the killer was some-how be-hind the por-traits … how could I ever save my-self? It was only a mat-ter of time be-fore the warn-ing wound on my cheek man-i-fested more fa-tally. All the star-va-tion in the world couldn’t give me power over that.
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Catalina chewed the in-side of her cheek, caus-ing the now-fa-mil-iar pucker on ei-ther side of her lips. “I’ve al-ways be-lieved there’s some-thing out there that goes far be-yond what the hu-man brain can even imag-ine. And yet this is proof. It’s proof that there’s some-thing else out there, and I still can’t process it.” The words them-selves were wispy, ethe-real. “Un-less … no. It can’t be real.”
“Un-less what?”
“While you were down there, I checked a few books out of the li-brary about the his-tory of Do-rian. I started read-ing through one to dis-tract my-self—by Basil Hall-ward, who founded the school.”
“I thought you were stress bak-ing?” I ges-tured to the cakes.
“I can do two things. Any-way, my think-ing was that if there was one se-cret tun-nel snaking away from the the-ater, what’s to say there weren’t more? What if there was some-where Dr-ever could lie in wait, away from the eyes of the rest of the cam-pus? What if there was a se-cret en-trance to the gallery that we didn’t know about—a trick wall panel or some-thing? I thought that even if we couldn’t catch the killer that way, maybe we could try to block off the en-trances to keep the paint-ings safe. Seal the gallery, so to speak.”
“And?”
She shook her head, a corkscrew curl tum-bling loose from its tor-toise-shell clasp. “I couldn’t find any-thing along those lines, re-ally. A lot of the so-called ‘his-tory’ seemed to be myth and leg-end rather than ar-chi-tec-tu-ral draw-ings. And much of the folk-lore con-cerned the paint-ings and mir-rors on cam-pus. This piqued my in-ter-est, of course, but there was no men-tion of the Masked Painter or the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite. The au-thor did posit, how-ever, that the paint-ings and mir-rors were not only haunted but also sen-tient and in-ter-con-nected.”
I frowned. “Sen-tient and in-ter-con-nected how?”
“Like a huge, puls-ing or-gan-ism ex-ist-ing along-side—weav-ing through—the cam-pus. There was a lot of non-sense, hon-es-tly, and it was hard to de-ci-pher what the au-thor was ac-tu-ally say-ing. Half of it was pseudo-in-tel-lec-tual ram-blings about the phi-los-o-phy of lim-i-nal worlds, and an-other quar-ter was a re-count-ing of a per-sonal ex-pe-ri-ence with one of the huge mir-rors in Drum-mond—he’d been phys-i-cally un-able to look away from his own re-flec-tion for thirty-six hours, be-cause he was wholly con-vinced there was some-thing wrong with it. An un-can-ni-ness to his own ap-pear-ance. He wet him-self right there on the stair-case with-out notic-ing. And there was an-other anec-dote about a stu-dent throw-ing an egg at a por-trait of her pro-fes-sor, and a bump ap-pear-ing on the fore-head of an-other por-trait across cam-pus.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I was so tired, and none of this made any sense. “Catalina, what in the ever-lov-ing fuck are you talk-ing about?”
“Among all that waf-fle, there was an anal-ogy that stuck with me.” She strained the tea leaves and placed a steam-ing turquoise clay mug in front of me. “Are you fa-mil-iar with how trees com-mu-ni-cate through mush-rooms?”
I blinked at her, be-mused. “Is this a hip-pie van-life thing or a sci-ence thing?”
“Both. My par-ents used to talk about how all the trees in a for-est are en-tan-gled in com-plex sym-bi-otic webs of in-ter-be-ing. They con-stantly com-mu-ni-cate with one an-other through the enor-mous fun-gal net-works that live in their roots. It sounds like an acid trip, but it’s ac-tu-ally been rep-utably proven. They have this whole in-vis-i-ble un-der-world that al-lows them to move and live as a sin-gle or-gan-ism.”
“I’ll never look at mush-room risotto the same way again.”
De-spite the sit-u-a-tion, Catalina couldn’t help the im-pul-sive bark of laugh-ter. “Did you just make a joke?”
“I did.” I nod-ded sagely. “I’m not sure I care for it.”
A broad smile spread over her face. “Any-way, this book’s au-thor pro-posed that a sim-i-lar kind of sym-bi-otic sys-tem had de-vel-oped be-tween the paint-ings and mir-rors at Do-rian. Al-low-ing them to com-mu-ni-cate, to live and breathe as one. To feed on de-cay.”
I ran my fin-ger over the top of a cin-na-mon swirl, and licked at the or-ange-peel frost-ing. “I don’t un-der-stand. What are they com-mu-ni-cat-ing? And what do you mean liv-ing?”
“That’s just it. The same way that com-mu-ni-ca-tion be-tween trees is largely be-yond hu-man com-pre-hen-sion, so is the sup-posed cen-tral or-gan-ism of Do-rian. It’s like a colony of ants watch-ing the con-struc-tion of a su-per-high-way—they fun-da-men-tally do not pos-sess the in-tel-lec-tual so-phis-ti-ca-tion to process the how, let alone the why.”
Un-like when Davina and Cam-ran said things I didn’t quite un-der-stand, I didn’t feel the same sense of self-loathing with Catalina—more of a twin-kling, al-beit dis-qui-eted, cu-rios-ity.
Be-cause … per-haps I did un-der-stand. Not in a way that could be ar-tic-u-lated through words and hy-pothe-ses, but in a deeper way—one carved from ex-pe-ri-ence, from feel-ings of ill con-tent.
I thought of the sil-hou-ette I’d seen in the fore-ground of the mir-ror in Drum-mond. And in my own bath-room, the way the mir-ror seem-in-gly glitched, back when I was ex-am-in-ing the wound on my face. How it had flipped sides for a split sec-ond, that re-al-ity-de-fy-ing lurch, the feel-ing of the floor yanked from un-der me. The not-quite-right color of my eyes.
Speak-ing of eyes … I re-mem-bered the arc-tic-blue glare seem-in-gly peer-ing through my bed-room mir-ror. I’d been so sure it was Davina some-how.
None of it quite made sense, and yet it made per-fect sense. I thought of am-bu-lance lights il-lu-mi-nat-ing the paint-ings in Drum-mond, the way their back-grounds shifted and stirred in un-nat-u-ral ways, as though a torch were be-ing shone into the den of a myth-i-cal beast and awak-ing it from a long slum-ber.
And I won-dered.
“So how does any of this re-late to the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite?” I asked. “And the paint-ings be-ing de-stroyed from be-hind?”
Catalina was quiet for a long while, be-fore even-tu-ally mur-mur-ing, “Maybe there isn’t a killer. At least not in the way the hu-man brain can un-der-stand. Maybe the or-gan-ism has fed on de-cay for so long that it’s de-stroy-ing it-self from within.”
Dread lurched in my chest, like a fal-con try-ing to take flight with-out re-al-iz-ing it was chained to the ground. “And in turn, it’s de-stroy-ing us?”
She nod-ded, face pale in the moon-light. “That’s my fear.”
“So how do we stop it?” I asked, a creep-ing ur-gency in the words. Al-most a plea—I was sub-con-sciously beg-ging her to know the an-swer.
“I think we’d have to do that from the in-side.”
“How?”
A solemn head-shake. “I’m sorry. I have no idea.”
A vast, empty help-less-ness sprawled out in-side me, un-der-pinned by an aching ex-haus-tion. And as much as I wanted to stay with Catalina, eat-ing cakes and mak-ing bad jokes about the sit-u-a-tion, I had the burn-ing urge to be alone. To un-pack the chaotic events of the evening. To try and wrap my head around ev-ery-thing she had just told me.
“I’m go-ing to try and get some sleep,” I mur-mured.
Catalina stared out onto the Great Lawn, which rolled away from Aber-nathy like a dark ma-gi-cian’s cloak. “I don’t think I’m go-ing to be able to sleep. Maybe I’ll go back to the li-brary. Do some more re-search.”
Sur-vey-ing the mounds of sweet treats dot-ted around the kitchen, in-ter-spersed with text-books and re-search pa-pers and her own hastily jot-ted notes, I was over-come with a wave of emo-tion—grat-i-tude, and awe, and some-thing richer still.
“Thank you,” I said, swal-low-ing the lump in my throat. The words seemed so in-sub-stan-tial. “Your brain as-tounds me, you know that? The way it makes sense of such enor-mous ideas.” A strange, wist-ful smile twisted across my face. “I wish I was more like you.” And it was true. If I could be like any-body else in the world, it would be her.
“Hey,” she mur-mured softly, clat-ter-ing an ic-ing-coated wooden spoon into the sink and cross-ing over to me. She took my hands in hers, fix-ing me with a mean-ing-ful gaze. “Don’t say that. I mean, I’m pretty great. But you’re an amaz-ing per-son, Pen. You have a heart like a train. And I’m glad to know you.”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
The charge be-tween us grew as our eyes did not shift from each other. She moved her head to-ward me the tini-est frac-tion, an al-most im-per-cep-ti-ble tilt, and some-thing in my chest soared—like a great bird spread-ing its wings over a vast plain.
But no mat-ter how won-der-ful the sen-sa-tion, I couldn’t act on it. I squeezed her hands in re-turn, tuck-ing the urge to kiss her into my back pocket. It would’ve felt cheap-ened, some-how, af-ter what I’d done with Davina in a mo-ment of fren-zied lust.
“Have fun in the li-brary,” I whis-pered. Dis-ap-point-ment fell be-hind her eyes like a cur-tain as our hands parted. I smiled, then winked. “I won’t wait up.”
The last part was a joke—a light-hearted barb at how the li-brary was bet-ter than any party, for Catalina.
Lit-tle did I know how much I would live to re-gret it.
Be-cause by the next morn-ing, she was gone.