CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
One week later
My mother’s fu-neral was a strange af-fair.
Most peo-ple don’t have to share the griev-ing of a par-ent with the rest of the world, but the turnout was so sub-stan-tial that the small church had to hire se-cu-rity. Peggy Pax-ton was to be buried in the tiny vil-lage she’d grown up in, and the sin-gle street was sud-denly swarmed with fans and jour-nal-ists and pho-tog-ra-phers. It was a na-tional event, but that didn’t make it feel any less per-sonal or dev-as-tat-ing to me.
Aunt Polly and I rode in the same taxi to the church.
The sky was a blank win-ter blue, the sun hang-ing low and somber over the rolling fields of the Scot-tish Bor-ders. Nei-ther of us spoke, or cried. We had said ev-ery-thing that could pos-si-bly be said over the last seven days. My mother’s death had al-ways felt like a loom-ing in-evitabil-ity, but it was still far more painful than ei-ther of us could have ever an-tic-i-pated. But we talked, and we hugged, and we shared mem-o-ries. We sorted out the death ad-min. We laughed and cried some more. We started down the long, wind-ing road of grief.
Now we just had to grit our teeth through the pub-lic bit.
Aunt Polly had been with her when she died in the real world. I tried not to think about how hor-rific it must have been to wit-ness the sud-den and shock-ing evis-cer-a-tion of your sis-ter’s body. I hadn’t asked what state the corpse was in—I didn’t want to know. I wanted to re-mem-ber my mother as the per-son I had met in the lim-i-nal world puls-ing be-neath Do-rian. Warm and clever and lov-ing and kind and self-less and brave.
All the things I wanted to be my-self. The things I wanted to stay with me.
But of course, I was griev-ing this real-world mother too—she was the one I had lived with for eigh-teen years. And though she had made my life a mis-ery, for the most part, I had a new-found sym-pa-thy for her. I un-der-stood why she had been that way—a men-tal ill-ness made per-ma-nent by a sin-gle shal-low de-ci-sion she’d made when she was young. How nar-rowly I had es-caped the same fate.
I chose to be-lieve that, for all her faults, what she had said af-ter my Lady Mac-beth au-di-tion had been true.
I’m so proud of you, dar-ling.
I knew for cer-tain, now, that those emo-tions did ex-ist in some ver-sion of her. That made them real.
The sav-ing grace of the whole ex-pe-ri-ence was that Catalina had made a full re-cov-ery from her near drown-ing.
The mo-ment I had wrenched through the por-trait with my dop-pel-g?nger, Davina had felt a vis-ceral yank to-ward the gallery—an al-most phys-i-cal pain, as though the or-gan-ism she was teth-ered to had sus-tained a crit-i-cal wound. She, Maisie and Fraser had sprinted down there as fast as hu-manly pos-si-ble. Their quick ac-tions saved Catalina’s life—the paramedics got there just in time to ad-min-is-ter in-sulin. She’d spent a few days re-cov-er-ing from pneu-mo-nia in hos-pi-tal, where she Dun-geon Mas-tered an ex-tremely elab-o-rate heist cam-paign with two el-derly women on her ward.
She met me at the vil-lage church, along-side Davina, Maisie and Fraser.
My cav-alry.
I had asked them not to wear black. They were my bright spots in the dark, and I wanted them to show up like that on the worst day of my life.
Davina re-fused, of course. She wore her patented black leather jacket and skinny jeans. But Catalina dressed in clash-ing burnt or-ange and sage green and mus-tard yel-low, Maisie wore a bright pink hound-stooth coat with a match-ing head-band, and Fraser came in full drag makeup—pur-ple and red and lash-ings of gold.
Aunt Polly went to talk to the min-is-ter, and I walked over to my friends. Davina was lean-ing against the wall of the church, one foot pressed flat against it, chain-smok-ing cig-a-rettes. But the other three en-veloped me in a group hug, arms in-ter-lock-ing around my shak-ing body.
“Hi,” I whis-pered to them, dimly aware of the pa-parazzi shut-ter clicks all around us. I tried to block it out. “You all came.”
“We had to drag Davina,” joked Maisie. I could smell her sweet, flo-ral per-fume. “We promised there might be some small chil-dren here to ter-ror-ize.”
I hugged Catalina tighter than any of them. I’d barely seen her since the gallery. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
I didn’t have the guts to ask whether she’d pur-pose-fully gone in af-ter me, or whether a swan had dragged her un-der.
“I’m fine.” She kissed my cheek in a ca-sual con-ti-nen-tal way, and it left a warm im-print on my skin. “But you need to stop apol-o-giz-ing. It’s get-ting a bit an-noy-ing.”
“Is no-body go-ing to tell me how amaz-ing I look?” grum-bled Fraser. “Hon-es-tly. You make such an ef-fort for no—”
“Fraser, you look fuck-ing fab-u-lous,” said Maisie, Catalina and I all at once. We all started laugh-ing, and I knew it wouldn’t look good on cam-era, break-ing into hys-ter-ics on the day your mother was low-ered into the ground, but for once in my life I didn’t care how it looked on the out-side. I cared how it felt on the in-side.
Davina dropped her cig-a-rette butt to the path and squashed it be-neath her black boots.
“I think that’s against the Ten Com-mand-ments,” I said point-edly.
She shrugged, dig-ging her hands into her pock-ets. Things had been a lit-tle awk-ward since I’d told her it was my mother who carved out her eye. “You al-right?”
I nod-ded. “Yeah. I’m al-right.”
It was strange, but ever since the ex-pe-ri-ences in the lim-i-nal world, Davina didn’t scare me any-more. And in the ab-sence of fear, there was also an ab-sence of lust. It was as though the spell she had over me had been bro-ken, and I couldn’t fathom why I’d ever wanted to share those first in-ti-mate mo-ments with her.
Davina was like the de-mon that had con-trolled my mind for so long—dark, al-lur-ing, per-sua-sive, but ul-ti-mately de-struc-tive. And now that I’d seen what that dark-ness could truly cost, now that I’d barely es-caped with my life, I no longer wanted any-thing to do with it. I wanted to choose the light.
Still, it was al-most nice to have chalked up a nor-mal teenage ex-pe-ri-ence: kind of re-gret-ting my first sex-ual en-counter, but know-ing it would make a good story one day. All of this would, in time.
I ges-tured to-ward the en-trance to the church. “We should go.”
Catalina held me by the hand as we walked, and its warmth felt like a mir-a-cle. I would never for-get how it felt to see her limp, life-less, cold and blue as the lake it-self. I didn’t want to let her go, and so I didn’t. As we slid into one of the fore-most pews, Aunt Polly eyed our in-ter-laced fin-gers with a know-ing smile.
The fu-neral it-self was a blur of droned hymns, sobs from near strangers, and over-wrought dec-la-ra-tions of how in-spir-ing a per-son Peggy Pax-ton had been.
I doubted they’d be say-ing that if they knew of my mother’s sins. The dead bod-ies in her wake: Or-lagh, Celia, Lyle, An-gus.
Over the last week, I had waited for the truth about the mur-ders to come to light, some-how, but it never did. Per-haps it never would. And per-haps that was for the best. Keep-ing the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite a se-cret might be the only way to keep Davina safe—be-cause her own por-trait hung there still. She was still vul-ner-a-ble. She was still cold and hun-gry, and likely al-ways would be.
Be-sides, what good would the truth do? My mother, the killer all along, was dead. She had died to save her daugh-ter. There was no more jus-tice to be served. Noth-ing that would bring the vic-tims back.
One loose end did tor-ture me—the fact we’d never been able to track down the sec-ond Masked Painter. My mother had manslaugh-tered the first, but who had painted me? And why?
I might never know.
Af-ter the fi-nal hymn—“All Things Bright and Beau-ti-ful,” iron-i-cally enough—we all filed out of the church. Only friends and fam-ily were in-vited to at-tend the burial, but I could still feel the pres-ence of the pa-parazzi lurk-ing in the trees sur-round-ing the ceme-tery. Watch-ing, cap-tur-ing, sell-ing. The cy-cle that would al-ways re-peat. The sen-tient or-gan-ism that spread not just be-neath the grounds of Do-rian but through our whole so-ci-ety, feed-ing on fear and de-cay.
The maple cof-fin was low-ered into the ground. My cousin Pippa sobbed into Aunt Polly’s dress while Catalina kept hold-ing my hand tightly. Her rings dug into my skin, but I didn’t care. I glanced over at the oth-ers to see Davina star-ing in-tently at a worm wrig-gling in the bare earth. Fraser wrapped his arm around Maisie’s shoul-der, squeez-ing af-fec-tion-ately, and she glowed. Maybe there was hope for the two of them yet.
The burn-ing sen-sa-tion of be-ing ob-served con-tin-ued to in-ten-sify, un-til I fi-nally looked up.
There.
On the other side of the grave, stand-ing be-hind my mother’s old model friends, was a tall, spindly man in a black trench coat.
Star-ing straight at me.
Our eyes met with a surge of recog-ni-tion.
And then he was gone.