Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales) (24 page)

“You mean you humored her?”

“No.” Fin looked as serious as Stevie had ever seen her. “I believed her. It was so real to her that I felt it too. August spoke about entering other realities. She talked about dark, slithery forces attacking Richard, trying to blacken his name. I don’t mean the Tudors making him out as a villain; I mean something deeper. Those malign intentions were embodied in a person who was a dark force in his own right. Someone snaking through the night, whispering in one ear after another. She called him Dr. Fautherer; a name you won’t find in the history books. The way she described him sent shivers right through me. I felt it too. I physically sensed this force myself, and it terrified the crap out of me.”

Stevie felt a horrible thrill, recalling the shadow that haunted Frances Manifold’s house. And the unseen museum thief, who’d been invisible but solid enough to put her in hospital.

Fin added, “Either my eyes are going funny, or you’ve had a little cat-shaped cloud in your hair all day.”

“You can see it?”

“I’m not claiming any psychic or witchy powers. Maybe it’s a reaction against my parents’ Catholicism or maybe it’s my Celtic blood, but I’ve always taken deep interest in the occult side of life, folklore and old gods and faeries and all that. I’ve heard many stories from sensitive people who’ve had glimpses. My friend August actually
touched
it. I’ve always sensed the same aura around you. They say the Otherworld has many layers and different aspects, some benign and some dangerous. So tell me.”

Stevie put her hands to her face in prayer position, stifling a laugh. The world was falling apart in every direction. She’d assumed that she had Fin’s measure; a straightforward, mainstream mother with a lovely husband and a cozy two-child family. Not an offbeat bone in her body.

How bizarre, that your perception of someone could change so abruptly. Stevie blinked. She’d got Fin completely wrong, only seeing what she expected to see. Fin the everyday mom had morphed into Fin the wisewoman.

She said as much, and Fin raised her eyebrows. “Who says I can’t multitask?”

“If I tell you … it won’t make much sense.”

“Give me a try. ‘There goes a woman with problems of an interesting nature,’ I thought the very first time we met.”

In as few words as she could manage, Stevie told her about Daniel’s artwork, Mist’s story and her own. At the end, she spread her hands and said, “Can you help me?”

Fin pulled a rueful smile. “This is out of my league. But you need to know that you can talk to me, and that there are layers to the world we can’t explain. It follows that there’s a good chance you’re not crazy. I kind of envy you, actually.”

“Don’t,” said Stevie. “I’m scared.”

“You’re bound to be. Seriously—at the risk of sounding like a rubbish fortune-teller—you’re going on a journey. You’ve no choice, Stevie. The silver pard is a clear manifestation of the Otherworld.” She indicated the phantom cat. “The main thing to accept is that entering the Otherworld is about transformation. It’s a journey you embark on only when you’ve lost everything.”

Stevie shuddered. The room felt like a fridge. “What happened to your friend, August?”

“She … we lost touch.” Fin gave a small, regretful shrug. “I like to think she found her way into the world that had so enthralled her.”

*   *   *

Snow was falling as Mist left the Jewellery Quarter station and turned down Vyse Street. As he came in sight of the museum, he saw Stevie. She was standing under a streetlight, staring upwards at white flakes whirling down through the glow. She wore her pale Russian-style winter coat, her hands buried in the white fur cuffs. The hood was up, so all he could see was the tip of her nose. Snow had settled on the hood and on her shoulders, and there were no footprints in the whiteness around her. She hugged herself and stood motionless, as if she’d turned to ice and didn’t care.

He hadn’t meant to come back; he knew his presence might draw danger to her. Yet they were tied together in some unfathomable way and here he was again, as if he’d known in his core that something was wrong.

“Stevie?” he said. “Why are you out here?”

She looked at him with wide, blank eyes. Her face was a porcelain oval, haloed by white fur and wavy amber strands of hair.

“The snow’s so beautiful.” She spoke faintly, as if in surprise. “I’ve nothing else to do, and nowhere to go.”

Mist held out his hand to her. “That’s not true. Come with me.”

10

Helena

Daniel woke with the sun in his eyes. Thin curtains filtered the light, shifting in a slight breeze to give glimpses of bright blue sky and striped desert.

He looked at Oliver sprawled beside him in the king-size bed, his white-blond hair splayed on the pillow. Lying here in a luxurious log house with molten sun touching their skin, he reflected that the miserable London winter seemed a lifetime ago.

Daniel remembered how freaked out he’d been as he prepared to leave his studio for the last time … no, beyond scared: floating in a different reality. Utterly burned out. He had been serious with the blue nylon rope. Even now, he didn’t know what he would have done if Oliver had not arrived at that moment.

Oliver had saved him. Yet it was Oliver who’d driven Daniel to the brink in the first place. It was all very well vanishing to start a new life, but you couldn’t leave behind your own brain with all its fears and obsessions.

His lover woke up with a sleepy smile and reached for him.

Oliver’s eyes were different colors, one blue, one green. He was almost albino, with white-blond hair, pale brows and lashes, his elongated face pale like the inside of an oyster shell. There wasn’t a hint of fat on him, but enough muscle to make him as stocky as a boxer. In contrast, Daniel felt ugly, with his skinny frame, sand-brown untamable hair and crooked spectacles. He’d grown quite a beard over the last few weeks, too. Couldn’t be bothered to shave. Oliver—smooth-chinned although Daniel had never seen him use a razor—had expressed no opinion on the beard.

“What are you thinking?” said Oliver.

“That I really should call my mother, after all.”

“No, you shouldn’t.” Oliver rose over him, pinning him down with his hands on Daniel’s upper arms. His face was changeable, according to the light. In London’s gloom, he’d looked quite lined and rough like a handsome gangster. In Nevada sunlight he lost ten years, his face as smooth as an angel’s.

“Come on, we’ve been through this. You said she was suffocating you. A controlling harridan who’s undermined you all your life. You had to make a clean break.”

“Yes.” Daniel called to mind the reasons he’d left; their arguments, her disapproval, her attempts to change him. Would Frances have been so sour if his father hadn’t died? He had no way of knowing. He thought,
Probably I’d have had both of them on my back.
The note he’d left was ambiguous, by intention. Let his mother think he was dead; he doubted that she’d even care. “I know. A moment of sentiment. Stupid.”

“Let’s have no more of that. No weakness. You’ve cut the apron strings. Now you’re free to be yourself.”

“Yeah.” Daniel felt a smile forming. “Free at last.”

“And you have me to thank for that, don’t you? You’ve nothing to worry about except your work.” He touched Daniel’s forehead. “I wonder what else will emerge from that vision factory of yours?”

“Don’t know. An icon of you, I think. Saint Oliver.”

“Flatterer.” Oliver’s mouth came down on his, stifling any reply.

The phone rang. Oliver leaned over to answer it, then rolled out of bed and quickly dragged on the jeans and white T-shirt he’d left crumpled on the floor the previous night. “It’s the front gate. I’ll go down and see what they want. You stay where you are, relax.”

Daniel lay back with his hands under his head, trying to do as he was told. He should be happy, but doubts gnawed relentlessly. Oliver had been fretting about the missing triptych,
Aurata’s Promise
. It must be held up at Customs, he’d said, or lost. If the crate didn’t turn up soon, he’d sue the carrier.

Daniel dared not tell him that the triptych was never going to arrive.

From the moment they’d met, Oliver had overwhelmed him—with attention, enthusiasm, sheer physical presence, everything. Only twice before in his life had he experienced a flash like that. The first was when he’d met Stevie; the second, when his mother brought home her “unidentified carved stone object,” an artifact he’d seen in dreams for years. Each flash was a channel opening in his brain to let signals come pouring in on a beam of white light; scenes, images, names. He couldn’t interpret their significance, yet he had to paint them, like a medium conveying messages from the Otherworld.

“That’s all I am,” he’d told Oliver. “A medium.”

He’d been struggling with his career. Supernatural beings depicted in the style of Byzantine saints were too esoteric for most art buyers. His technique of layering gesso and tempera and gold leaf onto wood was painstaking, too slow to be commercially viable. Caffeine and speed helped him work long hours, only to crash him into paranoia. Although the Jellybean Factory was a prestigious location, he could barely cope with the harsh reality of paying his rent. Soon he’d have to vacate, and then what?

He’d be a failure, as his art teachers had predicted. His mother would roll her eyes and tell him to get a proper job. Daniel would rather be dead. The point was not only personal ambition, but the deep certainty that
the world must be made aware of these hidden mysteries.

He couldn’t explain why, except in the vaguest terms: that a nonhuman history had been lost; that it was rising again, and this meant danger. Or wonder. Both, in fact. Yet he couldn’t make anyone
see
. Often he felt like a madman, talking to himself.

Then Oliver had walked into his studio. Rock star, or crime godfather; he had that air of power about him. Not a man who’d tolerate the word “no.”

He’d found Daniel’s work on the Internet, he claimed. For an hour he paced, looking intently at every panel. How did Daniel know about these things? What other ideas were in his head, waiting to emerge? Daniel answered as best he could. The conversation continued into the evening, like a police interrogation. Oliver’s face was granite-hard with a mix of suspicion and gleeful curiosity.

“Icons for the New Age? What you’ve created here is incendiary, and you don’t even know it,” Oliver said at last. “I want your work.”

“All of it?” Daniel was caught between flattery and pure shock.

“Every piece. And I want more. You won’t turn down the offer I’m prepared to make. Half a million dollars, down payment. You need drugs, alcohol, anything else to get the visions flowing? You need your rent paid? You’ve got it.”

Daniel was struck dumb.

“There’ll be conditions, of course. You need to take certain pieces off display immediately. And I want to watch you work, which means just you and me. No visitors. Consider me your patron, and yourself in the position of a court artist. It’s one hell of a privilege.”

Mesmerized, Daniel fell. Within days they became lovers.

Daniel had never understood himself to be gay until then. Of course, it helped explain why his relationships with Stevie and other girls had foundered. He’d never even fantasized about his own gender—but Oliver was different.

A strange, feverish time ensued. The memories ran together like wet paint. He’d always worked hard, but with Oliver there, he couldn’t stop. Artists were supposed to leave their studios by nine each night, but he was adept at sneaking back in to work until dawn. Oliver supplied him with remarkable drugs he hadn’t known existed, but they only opened a channel for the new visions that flowed from Oliver. As with Stevie, Daniel only had to look into his eyes and pictures came.
Aurata’s Promise
was one of those works.

When first Oliver saw the triple image of regal statues in a ruined palace, a priestly figure contemplating a globe-like mechanism, and in the center an auburn-tressed beauty pointing to heaven and hell against the background of a city in flames … he went ominously still.

Things changed swiftly after that. He told Daniel that it was time to leave. He instructed him to ship all his work to a certain address, produced reams of fake ID documents and booked first-class tickets to Los Angeles.

Daniel, delirious with exhaustion and fully under Oliver’s spell, went along with him.

A corner of his mind argued in a small, clear voice.
You’ve sold out. You have literally sold yourself. Buried your work in a private art collection for money, like some kind of rent boy. How does that square with warning the world?

Hence the moment with the rope.

“No one must ever see my artwork except you?” he asked on the flight, too late.

“And I’m paying you handsomely for that privilege,” Oliver agreed.

“It’s not about money. It’s about forging a reputation as a serious artist. I’m not there yet, and I never will be if no one sees my work.”

“But this is infinitely more important than
you
. As I’ve told you, what you are painting, my dear friend, is too dangerous to be seen. This isn’t just my opinion, but the judgment of the higher authorities to whom I answer. Don’t you understand that you are portraying the end of the world?”

Those words had hung in Daniel’s mind ever since, terrifying. Oliver overpowered him. He was so beautiful, and so strong. You couldn’t defy him, any more than you could defy a god.

Yet Daniel had committed one small act of defiance. He’d sent a secret cry for help to Stevie. She would know what to do.

Perhaps he and Oliver were both insane. The icons were only pictures. He’d let himself be brainwashed, purchased at a rich man’s whim, all because he wanted to escape his mother … who, after all, wasn’t evil or cruel, only aggravating.

Ten minutes later, the bedroom door opened and Oliver came in, gripping a folded wooden panel between both hands. He held up the Gothic point beneath his chin and opened the side flaps, displaying the blazing colors within.