17. The Paintings Are Listening
Chapter seventeen
The Paintings Are Listening
Fate
Anneliese paints in a cottage the woods are trying very hard to reclaim.
The studio waits at the end of a narrow gravel lane, tucked beneath cedar, alder, and fog. Wide windows gleam between climbing ivy. Bone-white shell chimes click under the porch eaves. Ferns crowd the stone path. Mist coils over my boots like the ground is exhaling secrets.
“Charming,” I mutter to myself. “In a ‘local woman disappears after ignoring obvious atmospheric warnings’ sort of way.”
Three crows watch from a cedar branch with the solemn judgment of tiny funeral directors.
I have not told Dorian I am here. This is becoming a terrible pattern. In my defense, terrible patterns are apparently a family tradition.
Before I can knock, the door opens.
Anneliese stands framed in warm gold light, wearing a loose charcoal sweater, black trousers, and a streak of crimson paint along one elegant wrist that looks alarmingly like blood until I smell linseed oil and pigment.
Probably pigment.
In Everwilde, certainty is for beginners.
“Fate,” she says.
“Anneliese.”
Her mouth curves faintly. “You look as if you have come to accuse me of something.”
“I have range. I may accuse, interrogate, plead, or unravel. Possibly all four, depending on how the tea situation develops.”
“Then I shall make tea dangerous enough for honesty.”
She steps aside.
I enter.
The studio steals my breath like it always does.
It is one vast room beneath high rafters, half cottage and half cathedral, with skylights washed gray by mist. Canvases lean everywhere: against walls, stacked on shelves, propped on easels, suspended from wires.
The air smells of turpentine, oil, old wood, cold rain, and witchcraft worked so deeply into pigment that every unfinished face seems to be holding its breath.
A held breath that has lasted centuries.
The paintings are everywhere.
Portraits, mostly.
A woman with silver hair and foxfire eyes.
A fisherman with barnacles blooming along his collar.
A child holding a broken compass. A faceless bride standing at the edge of the bay.
Alistair in profile, pale face cut from shadow and longing.
A dark forest path that looks too much like the one outside.
Every canvas seems to turn toward me as I cross the room. Not physically. Not enough for denial to become impossible. But enough that the hair on my arms rises.
I stop near a half-finished portrait of a man whose eyes have not been painted yet.
Somehow, he watches me anyway.
“Your art has boundary issues,” I say.
Anneliese closes the door behind me. “So I’ve been told.”
“By people who survived the experience?”
“Mostly.”
I decide not to ask for clarification.
Anneliese moves toward a small iron stove where a kettle already waits. “You came alone.”
“I did.”
“Does Detective Wolfe know?”
“No.”
The spoon in her hand stills. Just briefly. Not surprise. “You and he are still protecting each other poorly,” she says.
“We are not seeing each other, if that’s what you mean.”
“I mean your dance…and kiss…in public.”
“Yes, well, everything is dangerous lately. Affection. Plumbing. Mackerel. Possibly chowder.”
Her eyes narrow faintly. “Chowder?”
“Long story. Not mine to tell.”
A flicker of amusement softens her face, then vanishes.
She pours tea dark enough to look like old blood and sets one cup on a worktable scarred with paint and blade marks.
I leave it untouched.
The paintings make sitting feel like agreeing to be observed from multiple angles.
“You believe the paintings are listening,” she says.
“I believe the paintings at the gallery heard things they had no business hearing. I believe something in the walls is carrying secrets. I believe the curse knows too much too quickly. And I believe you know more than you are saying.”
Anneliese’s gaze moves to the nearest canvas, then back to me. “Careful, Fate.”
“No.”
The word comes out quiet. Firm. Not reckless.
“I am tired of careful. Careful kept my mother silent. Careful made Dorian stand across a hospital hallway like wanting me was contagious. Careful has left matched couples with poisoned wine, rigged sinks, and protection charms doing emergency work at doorframes.”
The studio seems to hold its breath.
The unfinished portrait darkens at the edges.
Attention.
I step closer. “Your paintings warned me once. They reached me at the gallery when no one else could.”
Around us, every canvas seems to listen harder. I spot the one from the gallery opening that warned me about trusting the artist.
Are they friend or foe? Do they have ears?”
Anneliese goes silent. That is how I know the answer is bad.
She turns and pulls a gray sheet from a covered canvas. The painting beneath is not beautiful. It is a corridor. Stone walls. Iron doors. A narrow strip of light. No bodies. No blood. Nothing overtly monstrous.
And yet my stomach recoils.
Because every stone in that painted corridor seems to listen.
“I first felt the ears there,” Anneliese says.
“In prison?”
“In the lower wards. Near Saffron’s cell.”
The name tastes bitter in the room.
Saffron. The vampiress with too many connections to old magic, justice spells, enchanted artwork, and cruelty dressed up as moral balance.
Anneliese’s fingers hover near the painting’s edge but do not touch it. “The walls heard everything. Not footsteps. Not conversations alone. They heard fear before speech. Desire before confession. Secrets before they became words.”
My mouth goes dry.
“The curse?”
She looks around the studio.
“Part of it. Or something allied with it. I did not understand then. At first, I thought the prison had been built with listening wards. Many are. But this was different. Older. More intimate.”
“Intimate listening is a phrase I would like removed from existence.”
“Yes,” she says. “So would I.”
Behind us, a canvas whispers like the wind. Not a word. A soft pressure against my ear, like someone standing too close in a crowd.
I turn too fast.
A painted woman in a blue veil stares back at me from across the room.
Her eyes were closed before. I am almost sure of it.
“Anneliese.”
“I know.”
“That painting just did a thing.”
“Yes.”
“Are we being calm about that?”
“No. We are appearing calm because panic feeds too many things.”
I hate that this is sensible.
Anneliese crosses the room and places two fingers against the frame. “Sleep.”
The painted woman’s eyes close. A shiver moves through me from scalp to spine.
“Paintings spoke to you in prison,” I say.
“Not spoke. They pressed. Attention. Images. Secrets stolen from other rooms and dragged into mine like offerings. Saffron figured out how to use old channels. Portraits. Mirrors. Plaster. Anything made to hold memory.”
“Is that how you contacted me at the gallery?” I ask.
Anneliese’s face tightens. “Yes. I felt you there. Your thread-sight was bright enough to find through the noise. The gallery paintings were already carrying whispers. I pushed through the channel and, thankfully, you heard me.”
“Your studio?” I ask.
“It’s warded, but I’m careful regardless.”
The studio feels suddenly too full. Every canvas. Every frame. Every painted mouth. Every empty eye.
“The paintings at the dance told me things.”
“I know.”
“They applauded.”
Her expression flickers. “That was not me.”
Fantastic.
A new horror with audience participation.
“Then what was it?”
“It could have been your own vision.”
I remember the vision in my room that night. What did she see? Was she the only one?
“The ears are real, right?” I say.
“Yes. Art, walls, mirrors, old rooms—they can carry listening magic. If you see an ear, it can hear.”
“I was afraid of that.”
All the times Dorian and I spoke in half-truths. The gallery. The hospital. My shop. Fate’s Cottage. Every place we thought silence might protect us, every surface that may have been drinking it in anyway.
Anneliese steps closer. “The ears do not hear everything equally. They need enchantment, memory, fear, repetition, or invitation. But once awakened, they pass attention along like a flame...for interpretation.”
“To whom?”
Her eyes turn toward the covered canvases lining the far wall.
“I do not know.”
I do not believe her. Not fully. But I believe the fear beneath the lie.
Anneliese covers the corridor painting again. The sheet falls over it with a soft whisper, and the studio breathes easier.
I do not.
“So public panic over the murders could feed the curse,” I say slowly.
“Or wake channels it can use.”
“Like the ears.”
“Yes.”
The word is quiet, but every canvas in the room seems to absorb it.
I glare at the nearest portrait. “Stop that.”
The painted fisherman does not blink.
Coward.
Anneliese watches me with an expression I cannot read. “You understand now why carelessness is dangerous.”
I nod. “I understand why silence is dangerous too.”
Her face tightens.
Good.
I am tired of everyone treating silence like the responsible adult in the room. Silence is not responsible. Silence is a locked basement with a nice rug thrown over the trapdoor.
“It is a weapon. If we can’t communicate, we can’t solve the problem. We can’t fight back,” I say.
“Yes, the fear is palpable.” Anneliese refreshes her tea.
“Mallory is making people afraid of Alistair,” I say. “The killer is making people afraid of love. The ears are carrying fear. The town is doing half the work for whatever is behind this.”
“Yes,” Anneliese says.
The simplicity of it chills me.
“Then we need to stop the panic.”
“Public reassurance without truth becomes another lie.”
“And public truth may feed the curse?" I ask.
“Exactly.”
I stare at her. “You are incredibly frustrating for someone with excellent bone structure.”
Her lips curve. “I have had over a century to practice both.”
The words are no sooner out of her mouth when the studio shifts. A tightening in the painted air. A faint hum beneath the floorboards. The feeling of an audience leaning forward.
Anneliese notices too. “We should continue outside,” she says.
“They’re listening?”
“Some of them are curious.”