John to find that his color had gone ashen. Rushkin was smiling at John’s reaction.
“I’m in desperate need of sustenance,” he told John, “but I’ll forgo it if you’ll convince her to finish the piece she’s working on instead.”
“What’s going on here?” Isabelle demanded, feeling utterly in the dark.
“That’s my source painting he’s holding,” John said in a flat voice.
“Have you gone mad? That’s not even close to
John shook his head. “I took the original from the farmhouse, long before the fire, and had Barbara paint that over it. She was hiding it in the cupboard where she keeps whatever bits and pieces she’s been working on that don’t quite turn out.”
“Not exactly an original solution,” Rushkin said. “Did you honestly think you were the first to consider it?”
“How did you know she had it?” John asked.
Rushkin smiled. “I didn’t. It was no more than a lucky guess.”
“And she simply gave it to you when you asked for it.”
“No. She gave it to Bitterweed.”
Thinking that the doppelganger was John, Isabelle realized.
“I’ve been most patient, holding it for an occasion such as this,” Rushkin said.
John gave him an icy smile. “Well, you wasted your patience. I’ll welcome oblivion, if it means I don’t have to share a world with you anymore.”
“No, John,” Isabelle began. “We can’t ....”
Her voice trailed off as John turned toward her. The look on his face was a chilling reminder of how he’d regarded her on that snowy night all those years ago, just before he led Paddyjack away into the storm. Cold and unforgiving.
“You can’t imagine that I’d let another die in my place,” he said.
“Ah-ah,” Rushkin broke in. “I think the choice has been reserved for Isabelle to make.”
John faced the old artist once more.
“Stop me,” he said softly.
And then he lunged for him, but Rushkin was too quick. The blade of the knife pierced the canvas.
Before John could reach him, Rushkin cut downward. Halfway between Rushkin and Isabelle, John simply disappeared from sight.
“No!” Isabelle cried.
She dropped the painting she held and rushed toward him as well, ready to murder the monster, but the change in Rushkin was immediate. Fueled by the life force he’d stolen from the painting, he stood straighter. His shoulders seemed to broaden and he moved without hesitation. The ruined canvas dropped at his feet and the knife rose to chest level, stopping Isabelle in her tracks.
“My creatures might not be able to kill you,” he said, “but I am not constricted by whatever it is that binds them.”
Isabelle’s anguished gaze found the canvas that lay at his feet before tears blinded her. Rushkin pushed her back into the room.
“Finish it,” he said, indicating the ghostly image that looked up from the unfinished painting she’d dropped, “or the next one to die will be one of your flesh-and-blood friends. Nothing inhibits my creatures from harming them.”
The door slammed. She heard the lock engage again. And then she was alone once more with her pain and the knowledge that she’d caused yet another death. She dropped slowly to her knees and gathered up the painting that Rushkin had slashed, holding it against her chest.
Gone. John was gone. She’d grieved for him twice before, first when he walked out of her life, then again when she thought he had died in the fire. This time he was gone for good. She clung to the painting and knelt there, tears streaming, unable to move, unable to think, for her grief. It was a long time before the flood of her despair settled into a hollow ache. Still holding the painting, she slowly rose and stumbled to the worktable. She laid John’s painting gently on its surface. She ran her fingers across the raised relief of Barbara Nichols’s brushstrokes, then had to look away before her grief overcame her again. Blowing her nose in an unused cleaning rag, she stared hopelessly around the confines of her prison, her gaze finally setding on the image of her angel of vengeance.
By killing John, Rushkin had achieved the exact opposite of what he’d intended by the act. She was no longer afraid. She wanted vengeance now, but it would not involve the creation of more numena. How could she complete this painting, knowing what its fate would be? But she had to do something.
Rushkin’s awful threat echoed on and on, cutting across the hollow space that John’s death had left inside her.
Or
Who would he set his numena upon next? Jilly? Alan?
Slowly she picked up the painting and stumbled back to the easel with it. It wasn’t a matter of courage anymore. Rushkin hadn’t left her any choice at all.
She swallowed hard. But that wasn’t true, she realized. There was one other choice she’d been left—one Rushkin would never expect her to make. She could follow in Kathy’s footsteps.
When she walked away from the other three, Rolanda couldn’t help but feel that she had abandoned them— especially Cosette. It was an odd feeling, for it grew from no reasonable source. She knew she was doing the right thing. She definitely drew the line at condoning any sort of criminal activity, and so far as she was concerned, murder topped the list of criminal activities.
And no one was expecting her to condone it, she reminded herself The guilt she felt was self-imposed. Not one of them had said a thing. She’d taken it on herself.
By the time she reached the front walk of the Foundation, she’d decided that what she had to do now was to put it all out of her mind. Never having been a brooder, she dealt with problems as they came up. She’d worry about what Alan and his companions were getting themselves into this evening when she would either have heard from them or be forced to call the police. She concentrated instead on her current caseload. There’d be sessions to make up for the time she’d lost this morning, and god knew how many new files piling up on her desk
A sudden commotion arose from inside the Foundation’s offices as she opened the front door. She recognized Shauna’s voice, uncharacteristically swearing. But before the incongruity could really register, Rolanda was confronted with two figures barreling down the hallway toward her. One of them was Cosette’s friend John. The other was a teenage girl with the pale washedout features and black wardrobe of a neo-Gothic punk. Both were carrying paintings—torn down from the wall of the Foundation’s waiting room. The girl was in the lead. John fended off Shauna with one hand as he followed on the girl’s heels.
No, Rolanda realized. That wasn’t John, for all that he looked to be an exact twin of Cosette’s friend. These were the other side of the coin that Cosette represented; they were Rushkin’s creatures.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Rolanda was swinging her purse. The blow caught the girl in the stomach, doubling her over. Rolanda snatched the painting from her at the same time that Shauna tackled the man who looked like John. The two of them fell on top of the girl, but she scrambled out from under them, a switchblade open in her hand. Rolanda kicked hard, her sneaker connecting with the girl’s wrist and driving it against the wall. The knife fell from the girl’s suddenly limp fingers.
“Call nine-one-one!” Rolanda cried as another of the Foundation’s workers appeared at the far end of the hall.
“Already did!” Davy called back to her.
He charged forward, jumping on the man’s back just as he was taking a swing at Shauna. Rolanda turned to the girl she’d stopped. The girl looked as though she was readying herself for another attack, but she froze when Rolanda’s attention returned to her.
“You might as well give it up,” Rolanda told her. “You’re not going anywhere now.”
The girl nursed her wrist and gave her a hard look.
“Fuck you,” she said.
And then she vanished. One instant she was crouching in the hallway, snarling at Rolanda, hate spitting from
