“They made the same covenant with the spirits from beyond that we do,” Rushkin explained. “As the Hellenes did, we connect with those spirits through our art; if they agree with our renderings of them, the art allows them to cross over.”
“You’re talking about
“Yes,” Rushkin said patiently. “Angels and monsters. Beings capable of leaving great good in their wake, but also those that may leave great evil.”
“Please don’t take this wrong,” Izzy said. Her nervousness came back and made her mouth go dry.
She had to swallow a couple of times before she went on. “But this is all a little hard to accept, you know?”
“I thought exactly the same thing when it was explained to me.”
“Well, good.”
“But you have felt the spirit growing in some of your paintings, haven’t you?” he went on. “That sense of connecting with something beyond human scope, of reaching into some mysterious beyond—call it the Garden of the Muses, for convenience. I know you have felt yourself reaching into it and returning with something more in hand, some ... power independent of yourself or the painting on your easel.”
“I’ve felt ... something,” Izzy said cautiously.
“Then trust me in this. When I saw that spirit in the flesh, when I saw him accost you in the lane below this window, I knew immediately that he means you harm. How he will harm you, I can’t say. It might occur today, it might occur a year from now, but he means you ill. This I can guarantee.”
“So what are you telling me?”
“You must not allow him in your company.”
“Just like that.”
Rushkin nodded. “And we must destroy your painting. He will not die with it—not immediately—but it is all that ties him to this world. With the painting gone, he will be drawn back to wherever it was that he initially originated and no longer pose a threat.”
Izzy stared at her mentor with openmouthed shock. She thought of her recent dream, the charred and bloodied limbs strewn in between the destruction of her paintings, and started to feel sick.
“You ... you can’t be serious,” she said.
“I am most deadly serious.”
But Izzy was shaking her head. “Absolutely not,” she said. “No way. I will not destroy my work because of some crazy story.”
She was so upset that she didn’t care if Rushkin’s own temper flared or not, but her mentor only nodded, accepting her reaction with a calmness that Izzy found a little eerie.
“The choice is yours,” he said. “There is nothing I or anyone else can do. Only you can make the decision and only you can send the spirit back.”
“Well, I’m glad we’re agreeing on that much, because if you think for one moment I’d—”
“But the time will come when you will remember this conversation—just as I did when my own mentor explained it to me—and you will do what is necessary.”
“This is not the kind of conversation I’m liable to forget,” Izzy told him.
“Good. Now, I think we should perhaps forgo work for the remainder of this morning. It might do you good to be away from the studio to think upon what was said here today.”
Izzy got up from the windowseat and regarded Rushkin cautiously. “I ... I’m taking my painting with me,” she said.
“That is your decision,” Rushkin replied, his voice still mild. “I won’t stop you. You forget that I have been through all of this before: the joy of the creation, the covenant with a spirit from beyond, the disbelief in the true existence of that same spirit; and then finally understanding the danger some of these creatures represent to myself; and to this world which I love so dearly. I have had to destroy certain pieces of my work, so that the monsters they called up would be sent back. Each time, it broke my heart.
The first time, I was almost too late and it was only by luck that the monster didn’t kill me before I cast it back into the beyond. I pray you will come to the proper realization before such a situation arises for you.”
“Sure,” Izzy said. “Whatever.”
“Please understand,” Rushkin said. “You are not at fault. No one can blame you for what your art brought across. It can happen to any of us, at any time. We have no control over the process. But we do have the ability, and the responsibility, to send these creatures back when we do inadvertently bring them over.”
Izzy nodded—not in agreement, just to let him know that she’d heard him. She collected her coat and knapsack and put them both on.
“Tomorrow will be business as usual,” Rushkin told her. “We won’t speak of these matters again until you are the one to bring them up.”
Izzy only nodded again. The way she was feeling at the moment, she wasn’t so sure she’d ever be back—at least not without a couple of big guys to help her collect her canvases and, while they were at it, protect her from the seriously crazy man that she was beginning to suspect Rushkin really was.
“Fine,” she said.
Rushkin gave her a sad smile as she opened the studio door to leave. “Be careful, Isabelle,” he said.
An eerie shiver went up Izzy’s spine as Rushkin’s words, echoing John’s earlier caution, went spinning through her mind. She looked at the small figure her mentor cut, still sitting there in the windowseat, and then down at the image she’d captured in the painting she held. Who to believe? Who did she need to be careful around? Well, John was mysterious, but he didn’t seem crazy. And Rushkin was the one who had beaten her.
“I ... I will,” she told him, then closed the door behind her and made her way down the stairs, trying not to bump the still-wet oil painting on anything as she made her retreat.
Izzy thought that John had stood her up when she first arrived at Perry’s Diner that evening. A pang of disappointment shot through her until she spotted him sitting in a booth at the back. When he raised a hand and gave her a lazy wave, she made her way down to where he was sitting. He was wearing a well-worn, flannel-lined jean jacket that she wasn’t sure would do him all that much good when it got colder, but it was better than the short sleeves he’d been wearing to date. And he certainly did look good in it.
“For a moment there, I didn’t think you’d come,” she said as she sat down across from him.
“I always keep my promises,” he told her. “My word’s the only currency I’ve got that’s of any real worth. I don’t spend it lightly.”
Izzy smiled. “Highly commendable, sir.”
“It’s just the truth,” he said, but he returned her smile.
Izzy slipped off her own jacket and bunched it up into a corner of the booth. When she turned back, John slid a ten-dollar bill across the table to her. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Your money. I ran into a bit of work after I left you this morning and made enough to buy the jacket without having to use what you’d lent me.”
“Good for you. Did you get a good deal on it?”
“Is eight dollars a good deal?”
“You’re kidding.”
John shook his head. “I went to that store on Lee Street you told me about.”
“I’d say it was a real bargain.”
When John shrugged, she wasn’t sure if he really didn’t care about money, or if he just didn’t want to talk about it. Probably a bit of both, she decided. “So what’ll we have?” she asked, opening her menu.
“Just black coffee for me,” John told her.
She eyed him over her lowered menu. “Look, if you haven’t got enough left over, I really don’t mind—”
“No, I’ve got the money. I had a late lunch, that’s all. I couldn’t eat if I wanted to.”
“Well, if you’re sure ...”
Izzy settled on the soup of the day—cream of cauliflower—and a side order of French fries. She also ordered a coffee, but she took hers with cream and sugar, adding John’s creamer along with her own to her mug since he
