“This baby is mine,” he growls.
“I know, Tom,” I say, raising my hands. “But we need to get her to a doctor if we want the baby to be okay.”
Tom seems to think about it.
“No,” he says abruptly, a pouting child. He spits the word out again. “No.”
“Tom,” I say. I wish this wasn’t on me. I wish that hostage negotiator was here. He’d know what to do. I’m impotent in the situation, as useless as I possibly can be. Tom has already decided I have no value, as evidenced by what played out in the study. I rack my mind, rolling through memories as though through a Rolodex, trying to find something—anything—that might flip the odds in our favor.
I repeat his name. He looks at me again. His eyes are feral. The knife shines in the moonlight pouring in through the windows on the wall of the studio. I wonder if they provided good light for whoever painted here. I imagine her—the person, the artist—in the early morning, using that best light of the day. I shake the image from my mind and return to the present. I note the length of the blade. It’s easily long enough to penetrate Birdie’s womb and sink deep into the marrow of her spine. The thought rolls my stomach.
“Did you love me?” I ask him. It’s the first thing that comes to mind.
The question catches him off guard. He cocks his head like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle. His eyes narrow, incredulous. He can’t believe that I would ask him this. Not now. It’s the reaction I want.
“Did you?” I prod him.
“Ione—” he begins. I cut him off.
“Did. You. Love. Me?” I punctuate each word with a pause, taking command of the conversation. “It’s an easy question, Tom. It’s a yes or no answer. You’re not going to pass or fail. It’s not like your future hangs in the balance.” My voice holds an edge, an old pain coming to the forefront of my mind.
“Of course,” he says. His voice becomes sad, the timbre lower, barely vibrating enough against the stacks of paintings and the concrete floors to be heard. He chokes on the assertion. It’s enough to make me doubt him. It’s enough to push me on.
“No, you didn’t,” I say.
“Yes, I did,” he repeats the assertion, ready to die on this hill.
“If you had loved me, you’d never have gotten involved with me,” I say. “I was your student. I was vulnerable. You were in a position of power. It never could have ended well, no matter what you say.”
I have him here. And he realizes it. I can see it in the way his face falls for the briefest of moments. But instead of acquiescing, Tom has to be right. So, he argues. But this is what I want. I need to stall for time.
“I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone,” he says. His words are thick with emotion, or the mirror of it. What he’s learned over the years to mimic to make himself more human and less vampire, feeding not off of blood but energy and emotion provoked in others.
“Which isn’t saying much,” I say. I let the statement hang in the air, bold and unencumbered by gestures indicating weakness. I don’t avert my eyes; I don’t fold my arms over my chest. I stand, tall and still, and I look into the eyes of a monster.
“You don’t know what love is, Tom.”
The statement does something to him. He stands, paces. He brings his hands to his face again, rubbing it as though he can peel away the mask he’s worn for years and maybe reveal something of who he really is. But I have my doubts. That part of him is buried so deeply that it would take an archeological team to scratch the surface of his reality.
“Shut up! Shut up!” He points the knife at me and reaches again for his waistband. He draws the revolver and gesticulates with it. “You think I didn’t love you?” he spits the statement out, like something foul in his mouth. “I worshipped you.”
“No, you didn’t, Tom,” I say, my words smooth as a stone. “I worshipped you. I sacrificed for you. I put my life on hold for a year after you. What did you do? You punished me. You punished me for not giving anything more at your altar. Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” I raise my hands and look around. “This place. You want to be worshipped. You need to be a messiah. But people don’t need you to save them. You can’t save them.”
“This baby is chosen,” Tom says, trying to regain some ground.
“Chosen by who? You?”
“God,” Tom speaks the word like gospel. Like it was ordained by Christ himself.
I laugh. “Chosen for what?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he says.
“That’s the problem though, isn’t it? No one understands,” I say. “You brought these people here and promised them streets of gold, but all they got was a studio full of rotting art.”
“Shut up!” he says again. This time he points the gun at me. I don’t flinch now. I inhale deeply, recognizing that he’s a moment away—one wrong word away—from pulling the trigger.
“Let her go, Tom,” I say.
He brings both hands—both weapons—to his skull in an attempt to drown me out.
“No!” he roars and points the gun at me again.
It’s then that the door creaks open one more time.
VANESSA
“Birdie?” Vanessa calls into the gloom.
She takes a step toward the sound of shuffling feet and the fallen paintings. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust, and then she makes out Tom’s silhouette. The barrel of the revolver in his hand glints in the moonlight. He points it at Ione, whose blonde ponytail glows in the moonlight.
She spots a leg sticking out from behind a stack of paintings and recognizes the shoe. A tattered slip on not suitable for life on
