Fairytale (4 page)

She swallowed her doubts, lifted her chin,
and went to him, running her hands over his frail back until the
spasm passed. He was old. When had Raze become so old? He’d always
been the strong one, he’d always been the one to take care of her,
right from the start. That awful night at St. Mary’s when all the
other children had obeyed the sisters and joined hands and made
their way out of the burning shelter. All but Brigit. She’d let go.
She’d gone back, looking for Sister Mary Agnes. And she’d ended up
trapped in an inferno more terrifying than anything that Dante
fellow had dreamed of.

Her hands tightened on Raze’s frail
shoulders. He’d heard her screams that night. He’d come after her.
Somehow, a man she assumed was one of the bums who slept in the
park across the street, had pulled her out of that hell. And she’d
been with Raze ever since. She’d been convinced that because he’d
saved her from the fire, because he’d taken her from the orphanage,
that somehow made her his little girl. And she’d loved the old man
with all her heart from the instant he’d rescued her. He’d wanted
to return her to Father Anthony. But she’d cried and pleaded and
begged to stay with Raze, and he’d been too soft-hearted to send
her back.

Razor-Face Malone had become the only family
she’d ever had. He’d saved her life. So now she’d do what she had
to do to save his.

“Come on, Brigit,” Mel called from his spot
in the corner. “Break’s over.”

She nodded in response to the slightly whiny
voice. Mel sat on the bare floor, back against the naked lath wall,
legs crossed. His gray chauffeur’s cap was too big for his puny
head, but managed to look jaunty anyway. And besides, it covered
the bald spot.

“The quicker you finish up, the quicker you
get a warm bed and some medicine for Raze.”

“You don’t have to keep reminding me of
that.”

“I think I do,” Mel said, getting to his
feet. “Hell, with your talent, you should have been into this scam
years ago. You could’a been
rich
by now.” He gave a sharp,
slanting nod and a wink. “You stick with me, and you’ll get that
way soon enough. I got
connections
now.”

“No.”

He shrugged and paced the room. He was better
off than she and Raze. But he got that way because he was a crook.
Oh, she knew, she wasn’t much better herself. But aside from
pinching a few groceries and a wallet here and there, she’d been
fairly honest, out of respect for Sister Mary Agnes, and the things
the nun had taught her.
Not
for any other reason. Not
because of morality or values. Hell, with the way the world treated
people like her and Raze, she didn’t figure she owed anyone
anything. She’d do what she had to do to survive.

And when she wasn’t surviving, she’d race
through the alleys and vault mesh fences and cartwheel in the
gutters. Because she had to. Raze said she had too much energy and
she’d explode if she didn’t let it out.

Not today, though. Today she was tossing
Sister Mary Agnes’s teachings aside, using all that pent-up energy
to make her hands obey her mind. She was taking the step that would
brand her as much a criminal as Mel was. And still, there were men
far worse. At least Mel had never
hurt
anybody. His game was
the con, though he had yet to score big, as he put it. Deep inside,
Mel was good. If Brigit didn’t believe that so firmly, she wouldn’t
be doing this.

Lately, though, he’d been keeping some bad
company. These
connections
he kept talking about. One of
them was a man named Zaslow, a man Brigit knew was evil just by
looking at him—as if she really were half-fay and could read a
man’s heart by plumbing the depths of his eyes. This entire scam
had been Zaslow’s idea. Fencing stolen artwork was, Mel claimed,
Zaslow’s specialty. So when Mel had offhandedly mentioned Brigit’s
“gift” in one of his endless efforts to impress the man, a plot had
been born.

Raze coughed again, and Brigit caught her
breath. He was getting worse.

“I know, I know,” Mel said, a touch of
mockery in his voice. “You’re only doing it this one time. You keep
telling me. But you wait ‘til you have that money in your hands,
kid, You wait ‘til you
smell
that green, and then we’ll see
if you’re so damn noble.”

Brigit closed her eyes. There was no sense
talking to Mel. He’d been a small-time con all his life, and he’d
convinced himself she was his ticket to wealth untold.

But she vowed, she
swore
on Sister
Mary Agnes’s memory, that she would only do it once. Just this one
time, and only because Raze’s life depended on it. She didn’t like
being even remotely involved with a man like Zaslow. It made her
feel soiled and low.

Raze hadn’t wanted her to do it, even this
one time. He’d fought tooth and nail against her going along with
this thing. He said it was wrong, plain and simple. But Brigit
didn’t see that she had any choice in the matter. Raze was
dying.

He was dying. That talent she had for seeing
things in a man’s eyes had shown her that when she’d looked into
Raze’s. And she’d known then that she’d do whatever it took to save
him.

She sighed and crossed the floor of the
condemned apartment to the easel that seemed as out of place here
in this ruin as a diamond in a dime store. A color print of the
Matisse was Scotch-taped to the crumbling wall. She clamped her jaw
against the memories the sight of it evoked; memories of Mona Lisa
on construction paper, hanging crookedly above a small wooden bed,
and of the awed expression Sister Mary Agnes wore when she stared
at it. Better not to let the thought of that horrible night enter
her mind now, or her hands would start shaking. She had to finish.
Now, while the afternoon sun was still slanting in through the
broken windows, giving her so much light to work by.

Brigit drew a breath, squared her shoulders,
took one last glance at the Matisse nude, and then surveyed what
she’d done so far on canvas. It would be a perfect likeness. She
didn’t know how she knew that, she simply did. And she didn’t know
how she could wield the brushes and match the colors the way she
did, either. There was no technique to it. She’d never had an art
lesson in her life. She just studied the image she wanted, kept it
focused in her mind’s eye, and...and painted.

Raze coughed again, a deep, racking cough
that sounded painful. Brigit picked up a palette and a brush.

***

Bridin

1995

It was time.

Bridin knew it, sensed it the way birds sense
the proper time to migrate. It was time to get out of this place.
It was time to find her way back to Rush.

She needed help. She needed her sister and
Raze. The time had come to get a message to them. And the method
came to her just as easily as the knowledge did. Brigit might not
understand it, when she saw it. But Raze would. And he’d know the
time had come. And even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Bridin
would simply send the message on its way with a fairy’s wish
clinging to its tail, and the same protective spell as the one cast
by her mother over her book and her pendant, coating it like fairy
dust to keep the Dark Prince from going anywhere near it.

When she’d finished perfecting every last
detail of the intricate painting that would be her message to her
sister, Bridin clasped her pewter fairy pendant in her right hand,
lifted it, and pointed its quartz crystal toward the canvas. In a
strong, steady voice, she chanted:

“By the powers of the fay Darker forces, keep
at bay. To my sister, wilt thou flee. Bring my Brigit back to
me!”

Bridin felt the magic surge through her, down
her arm into her hand, and from her hand into the crystal. It
zapped from the glowing stone— a pale amber ray of light that
suffused the entire painting for just an instant, and then
vanished. Bridin sank into her bed, exhausted.

There. It was done. Soon she’d be with Brigit
again. And together, they’d find a way for Bridin to get back to
Rush. They’d raise up an army there, and they’d send the Dark
Prince back into the far reaches of the forests where he belonged.
She’d free her people from his evil rule. She would.

Present day

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Reid. I didn’t
know.”

Adam got to his feet, carefully lifting the
painting, his hands touching nothing but the frame. He eased it
back onto its hook above the golden oak mantel. Then nudged it a
millimeter at a time until it hung perfectly straight.

Damn cleaning service. Damn strangers,
sometimes a different one every week, coming in to clean the place.
You could tell them a hundred times, leave them a thousand notes,
and they would still forget. He missed the old days. He missed the
full-time maid he’d had to let go. He missed having enough money to
pay for her even more.

Hell, he was only hanging on to the house by
a thread. But to lose it would be to admit defeat...defeat to a man
he’d learned to despise. And that was something he couldn’t do.

He didn’t care to analyze his other reasons
for clinging to this oversized money drain. Like the woods out
back, it was something he didn’t care to explore further.

He turned to the woman who was still
trembling a little in reaction to his bellow when he’d walked into
the study to see his prized possession on the floor. “No one,” he
said slowly, resisting the urge to snatch the brass-handled poker
from the rack of implements near his side, and shake it in her
face.
“No one
touches this painting. Tell your boss that if
one of her people forget that again, I’ll...”

He gave his head a shake. He sounded like an
obsessed fool. Then again, that was exactly what he was, wasn’t he?
“Never mind. Just get the hell out of here.”

“Yes, Mr. Reid. I’m sorry. I wasn’t
told.”

She backed through the tall double doors,
pulling them closed, probably in a huge rush to get out of his
sight. He couldn’t blame her, could he?

He swallowed the panic he’d felt when he’d
first come into the room to see the bare spot on the stucco wall
above the fireplace. Everything else had been in place. The brass
candle holders and the antique Navajo pottery on the mantel didn’t
seem to have been moved. He bit his lip, and stared up at the
painting. He ought to get rid of the damned thing before it drove
him completely nuts. Short trip, he knew, but there was no sense
rushing it. Getting this thing out of his sight might slow the
deterioration of his common sense considerably. But he couldn’t
sell the painting. He wouldn’t.

It
wasn’t the quality of the work that
had so captured him the first time he’d seen it hanging in the
Capricorn Gallery on the Commons a year ago. Though it was very
good, it was the subject that enchanted him.

A forest where flowers unlike anything real
bloomed in riots of color. Where every boulder and every pebble
were gemstones. Every swirl of tree bark, a work of art. Hidden
among the twisting foliage, timid creatures of no known species
peered at the spectacle in the central clearing. They only appeared
when one looked at the painting from just the right angle. He’d
owned it for weeks before he’d spotted all of them...and he
wondered even now if there were more to be discovered. In the
distance one could see towering castle spires, gleaming like silver
beneath a jewel-blue sky. And in the clearing, in the very center,
a pool of crystalline water with dense green reeds concealing the
woman who bathed there. She was only a hazy outline. Tiny bits of
flesh visible here and there between the reeds, slanted ebony brush
strokes for her eyes, and swirling ones for her long, untamed hair.
None connected. Just bits. An abstract figure. Scattered jet and
peach-toned pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But if you stood back and
squinted, you could almost see her.

And when you looked at her that way, she
seemed to be looking back.

When he’d first laid eyes on the painting,
he’d wondered if maybe he was finally having the breakdown he’d
been expecting for so long. But that concern hadn’t stopped him
from buying it. Nor had his shortage of funds.

The woman...and the place. The mythical
forest where she bathed. They were the ones he’d seen in that
ridiculous dream he’d had when he’d been...what? Seven? Didn’t
matter. He’d been convinced it hadn’t been a dream at all. That
he’d actually visited this place while he was on one of his
reckless treks into the forest. He’d been convinced for a time that
he’d stumbled upon some secret doorway to an enchanted glade. That
he’d talked to a fairy. That he’d seen his own future.

Unfortunately, he’d felt compelled to run his
mouth about it until his mother had suggested therapy and his
father had taken the strap.

Smack!

You’re a man, Adam. My son, do you understand
that?

Smack!

A man does not believe in fairytales!

Smack!

A man knows the difference between the truth
and make-believe!

Smack!

Do you think you know the difference now,
Adam?

Yes!

I don’t. But you will, Adam, you will if I
have to take every bit of hide off your ass. You will.

Smack! Smack! Smack!

“Mr. Reid?”

The woman’s voice broke the memory. Adam
carefully unclenched his fists, stopped grating his teeth, reminded
himself that the stench of stale liquor on hot breath wasn’t real.
He blinked twice, and shrugged it off as easily as he always did.
It was no big deal. It didn’t
bother
him anymore. Not in the
least. His father’s brutal methods had made Adam tough, and they’d
certainly taught him the difference between fantasy and reality.
Dear old Dad. Probably didn’t even realize he’d done Adam a favor
by being so cruel. He hadn’t hung around long enough to see the
results. He’d sold everything he owned, including the house and
property, and he’d walked out on his wife and only son.