Chapter 22
Quoth
…the light isn’t right, her hair isn’t luminous the way it is in real life, and I don’t like the shadow on her shoulder. Perhaps if I add another layer—
CRASH.
“Argh!” I leap out of my chair as a stack of paintings skids across the floor. Mina’s startled eyes blink from the middle of the disaster zone.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just me.” She scrambles to pick up the paintings. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s…” It’s fine, I try to say, but my mouth stops working.
My skin bursts with feathers, my organs twist. Mortified, I turn away from her to grip the windowsill, forcing slow breaths as I talk my body out of becoming a raven.
I glare down at my arms, still human but covered in itchy black feathers. Don’t turn don’t turn don’t turn…
He’s so beautiful, Mina’s thoughts press against the edges of my skull. I wish he didn’t feel like he had to hide.
The feathers retract into my skin. My organs settle back where they should be. I relax my shoulders and turn around. I did it.
She did it.
“You didn’t shift?” Mina asks, her voice gentle.
“Sometimes I can control it.” I bend over and pick up the brushes I’ve scattered everywhere, suddenly unable to look at her, this beautiful creature who has deigned to venture up into the gloom of my world.
I don’t want her to know I’ve been painting her like a creepy stalker, or thinking about her and Morrie together. “Did you want something?”
“Morrie’s trying to hack a Cayman Island bank account before the pizza arrives. I thought I’d see if you were okay.”
I lean across the bed and flick on the lamp so she can see. I pat the bedspread. “Sit.”
Mina sits, and I’m grateful that from where she’s sitting, even if she did have full vision, she wouldn’t be able to see the canvas. Sitting on her hands, she swings her legs and watches me. Her thoughts churn in my head, and they are about me.
She thinks I’m upset, but how can I be upset when she’s here? When she feels this way about me?
“I do not care about what Morrie said,” I tell her. I need her to stop worrying. She can save her feelings for Morrie.
Mina shakes her head, her curls tumbling over her shoulders. “That wasn’t what I saw. You looked upset when he called you useless, which, by the way, I don’t believe for a second.”
“Why? It’s true.” I move towards her. I can’t help it. I’m a half-bird, half man, and she is a bright and brilliant jewel. “I offer nothing to the world I’ve found myself in, and I remember so little of the world I left that even if I were somehow to return, I would be a stranger.”
She snorts, which is adorable. “You’re being sarcastic, right?”
“I am not.”
“Dude, you realise you’re an amazing artist, right?” She points to the painting hanging over the bed, of two skulls nestled amongst a field of blood-red roses. “That is sick. It could be an album cover.”
It’s an old piece. The outer petals are too large, a socket on the left skull is too high. She can’t see all the imperfections, all the bits that I should have done better. “Thanks.”
“I have a tattoo that’s kind of similar.” Mina turns and, before I can protest, lifts the edge of her shirt to show me the ink curling around her lower back. “Ashley and I got matching ones. I love it, but the artist is nothing compared to you.”
Breathe, Quoth, breathe.
I whip my gaze to the floor.
Think of unsexy things. Think of Heathcliff’s pile of dirty laundry. Think of Morrie’s shower singing. Think of the village cats chasing you… think of anything but that patch of perfect skin…
I shove my arms behind my back so she can’t see the feathers pushing through.
“I’m nothing compared to the artists on the walls downstairs,” I mumble once I can speak.
Mina sits back down. A few more deep breaths and the feathers retract again, but the memory of her soft skin remains, mingling with the vision of Mina’s head thrown back and those tiny, perfect moans she made when Morrie brought her to the brink.
“You mean all those prints of Picasso and Rembrandt? When you compare yourself to the greatest artists of human history, yeah, you’re probably lacking a bit. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have talent. Did you choose the prints downstairs?” Mina asks.
“Morrie put them up for me after he caught me reading books in the Art History section.” I smile at her, trying not to think of Morrie’s hand in her panties. It was a sweet thing that Morrie did. But watching me, Mina’s thoughts turn sad again. “They are not prints.”
Mina’s startled by that revelation, but she decides to feign ignorance. “I know – even if you don’t – that they’re your way of borrowing some surcease of sorrow, but why don’t you sell your paintings?”
I groan at the line from my least favourite verse as I flop down on the bed beside her. “Tease me with that poem and you may find a present on your shoulder when you least expect it. I cannot sell my paintings. No one wants them. Morrie says they’re too morbid.”
Mina leans over to another easel to study a bird’s eye view of a cemetery, where the groundskeeper digs a fresh tomb while mourners line the aisle between graves.
“They’re morbid as fuck, but that’s a selling point.
Plenty of people would have something like that on their wall.
I know I would. You could even take commissions, maybe offer your services to bands and fashion labels.
You wouldn’t feel like you were useless if you contributed something, left your mark on this world. ”
“You don’t have to be nice to me, Mina. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Say it one more time like you believe it.” She slides her hand from under her leg and pats my knee.
Big mistake. Her touch lights a flame in my heart, and all my foolish hope bubbles to the surface, pulling down the walls I put up to protect myself.
As the walls tumble down, she flows into me, her thoughts are so close and clear that I see the world through her.
I’m seeing myself. I feel what Mina feels when she’s with me, and it’s the depth and the longing that stops my breath. I am more than a friend to her. I am more than… whatever she and Morrie are.
I’m a mirror for her pain.
I see her in her memories as a young girl hiding in Nevermore Bookshop because she had no friends, finding solace in books and friendships in her imagination, and how the shop is her solace once more, but because of us, because of me.
“I am fine,” I whisper. “You are here, and I am happy.”
She withdraws her hand from my leg, and the corners of her eyes glisten. “You’re happy I’m here?”
“You fill me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”
“Well, you’re the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,” she shoots back.
A grin spreads across my face, but it’s snuffed out when I get another gust of her thoughts, and I sense how much she wishes she could take my pain away. “I hear your thoughts sometimes. More than the others. I’m sorry about it; I don’t mean to disturb your privacy. I can’t control it.”
“I understand. I’ll try not to think anything filthy while you’re around.” She smiles, but her cheeks flush. “I know you saw Morrie and me… that was so wrong. I shouldn’t have done that while you were there.”
“You have nothing to apologise for, not to me, or to Heathcliff.”
She stares at me, not understanding at first. I dare a wink, and her cheeks burn a deeper red as realisation dawns.
He’s heard my thoughts about Heathcliff, she thinks. He knows all the filthy things I imagined…
Yes, yes, I do. And not just about Heathcliff. About me.
And I wish… I wish we could make them real.
“You should embrace the chaos, Mina.” It’s as close as I dare to speaking my longing aloud. “It’s okay to not know what you want.”
“And you should do something with your paintings.” She rubs her cheek, which is still adorably red. “Another few weeks and you won’t be able to move in here for all the unsold work.”
“If I sold them, I’d have to talk to people – a gallery owner, an agent.”
“I’ll help you. I’ll act as your agent if you like. A lot of Marcus Ribald’s haute couture customers are big in the art world. I bet I know some people who could help you get started.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Embrace the chaos, Quoth. Isn’t that what you told me? Why do you hide up here in the attic anyway? There’s that whole bedroom downstairs that would fit a lot more artwork inside.”
“Bedroom?” She can’t mean—
“The master suite at the end of the hall. I peeked inside when I was searching for you—”
“You didn’t go in, did you?”
Shit. Shit. I knew we should have told her. We could lose her in there if we’re not careful.
“Of course I did. I had to check that you weren’t hiding under the bed.”
I lean forward, studying her, reassuring myself that it’s really Mina, our Mina, and not a Mina from another time. “What did you see?”
“Just… a bedroom. There was a four-poster bed and some furniture covered in drop cloths. A pentagonal bathroom in the turret. Oh, and a beautiful wardrobe. I’d kill to have that room.”
“Mina, you can’t go in there again. This is serious. It—” My plea is interrupted by a bellow from downstairs.
“Pizza’s here!”