Art is the Lie (A Vanderbie Novel) (22 page)

It was quiet, eerily quiet, raising the hair on the back of my neck as shadows stretched long and dark along the wooden path. I looked up. Above, people walked over the grid of glass, unaware that I was trapped below them with no clue of how I got here, or how I was going to get out. I had no phone, no nothing, as I had left my bag in Quentin’s car. I lifted his coat and flexed my knee back and forth. Slowly, I slid my body forward until I found a sturdy place on the pile of bricks to plant my feet and test my knee.

I would not be left down here to rot.

I adjusted my weight, leaned forward, and pushed my hands on the brick. The roar of a bus rumbled down the street above, violently shaking the walls around me. I dropped back down and held completely still, waiting to see if I would become a casualty twelve feet below.

My energy was being zapped by my overly strained nerves. I needed to move. I needed adrenaline on my side. I stood gingerly, holding onto the wall for support.
Where was he?
I took a couple of tentative steps as tears of pain escaped my eyes.
How could he just leave me down here?
Tears of frustration rolled down my cheek.
He left me.
Tears of loss landed on the floor at my feet.

I followed the line of shadows Quentin had vanished into. The light from the grid of glass began to fade behind me, leaving only darkness ahead of me. Instinctively, I reached out, my fingers walking over the rough lines of the wall, feeling my way through the dark. Bit by bit, my fear morphed and turned into outrage.
How dare he leave me! Alone! In the dark!
My heart was hammering a marathon, but I was determined to find my way out.

Something skittered across the floor in front of me. I
froze and sucked down a ragged breath, thankful I couldn’t see what it was. Or how big. My baby steps were agonizingly slow along the rough path as my hands continued their brail walk along the bricks until I felt a ninety-degree bend in the wall. I reached for the other side. A door. Which way?

I lifted my foot and kicked
around to be sure there wasn’t another ledge for me to trip on. My foot hung in the air, about to step, when an arm snaked around my middle and pulled me backward, upsetting my balance. A blood-curdling scream fell from my lips before they were stifled by a second hand that clamped over my mouth.

I sunk my teeth down hard into the flesh. “Ow! CeeCee, it’s just me.”

I whipped around and pummeled Quentin’s chest. “You left me!” Tears of frustration poured down my cheeks. Low “umphs” whooshed from Quentin’s mouth as I continued my assault, his body flinching with each of my blows.

His fingers
clamped tightly on my wrists and he said, “We need to go.”

“What happened? Where did you go?” I demanded.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled me back in the direction I’d just come from.

Like a petulant child, I stopped under the grid of glass and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not budging from this spot until you tell me what’s going on.”

He spun around and walked back to me. “We need to get you cleaned up and back home. That is the only thing that matters right now. I have to get you home safe.” It was then I noticed a diagonal cut through a puffy, dark shadow under his eye. I touched the misshapen patch of skin with the tips of my fingers. He winced.

Lowering my hand, I said even more adamantly, “I’m not budging.”

He stared at me long and hard with a look meant to scare me. But I was more afraid of what was above ground than I was of Quentin’s anger. “I went back up to First Avenue and circled around, looking for the guy following us.”

“You went looking for him?” I interrupted, my eyes wide in disbelief. “No one goes looking
for . . .”

He held his hand up to silence me. “I found him. Tried to pin him to the wall to find out what he wanted, but the other guy he was with came at me from behind.”

I don’t know why I did it, but I reached for his hands and held them up, his coat slipping to the floor. Both sets of knuckles were scraped and bloodied. “Your hands . . .” He quickly pulled them from my view.

“They’re fine.”

“Who were they?” my voice demanded. “What did they want?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know who they were. I don’t know what they wanted.”

“You have to have some idea.” My irritation was mounting by the lack of information.

He stared at me, his face set like stone, except for the muscles that rippled his scar in and out of place.
After a heavy sigh, he said, “I never should have approached you that night of the SAM. I should have kept to myself and walked out of the room. But you just stood there, staring at those running women, your pain as obvious as the colors in the painting.” His voice faded off as he bent down and grabbed his coat. Angrily, he shoved his arms into the armholes. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be involved in this. You should be home . . . painting. Or hanging out with your friends. I have no idea who those men were. My best guess is that it has to do with my brother and the man who barged in on dinner.”

“Why would
they follow you?”

“To get to my brother.”

We stood perfectly still, staring at each other. Somewhere in the distance, the faint cawing of seagulls took me back to the lighthouse. To the picture of peace Quentin snapped of me. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” I finally said.

“What wouldn’t have mattered?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d walked away the night of the Picasso show.” I took a step closer to him.

“Why not?”

“Because if it wasn’t the SAM, it would have been another place. And if it wasn’t there, then it would have been someplace else,” I said, my body inches from his. “Eventually, you wouldn’t have been able to walk away.” I rested my head against him, my arms looping around his chest.

A hiss of air escaped his lips. “Cee, you have to let me go.”

My arms dropped limply to my side. I couldn’t look at him. My heart ached as I registered his words. Words that lanced deep in the pit of my stomach and turned it cold.

“Cee, I meant you literally needed to let go of me. I think I broke a rib.” He cupped my face, his thumbs pressing lightly on my cheekbones. “I said I ‘should have’ walked away, not that I could have.”

It was a soft kiss he brushed across my lips. Enough to get me home. “Let’s get you cleaned up and home before anything else can happen.”

“Won’t they be waiting?”

“Maybe, but they won’t find us.”

How does he know this? Why is he always so confident? “You will explain, right? Someday. Soon. Right?”

“Yes.”

The “yes” was enough for me to follow him out of the Underground and return to street level. Quentin carefully closed the door, setting the lock back in place. Cautiously, he scanned the alley before guiding us across the cobblestones and back onto public streets. My knee ached with every step, but was functional.

We zig-zagged our way to a four-way intersection. Across the street was the iron pergola, its shimmering glass canopy a beacon. A sign that the ferry was near. Home just beyond that.

Quentin reached for my hand and pulled me toward the street, the walk signal flashing an obvious red across the street. And they hit.
Tingles. Like a freight train without warning, knocking me to the ground. The fire. The shadow. The shower of painful rain.

A ring of fire.

A shadow reaching and drawing back. Reaching and drawing back.

Rain. Piercing. Painful.

I was tired. I wanted it to be done.

“Show me,” I yelled. “Show me your face.”

And what had been abstract moments before, turned real. Too real. Revealing Quentin’s face, his arm, reaching in and out of the singing fire. Reaching for me. Trying to pull me out.

I screamed.

“CeeCee!”

I couldn’t stop screaming. In my head. Outside of my head.

“CeeCee! Open your eyes!” He had scooped me up. I knew we were moving. Crossing the street to the pergola on the other side.

The fire turned dark, fading Quentin’s attempt at liberating me from the flames. I clung to his neck, scared of what I saw. I couldn’t let go, scared of what it meant.

My body bounced in his arms, my screams subsided. I knew the consequence of asking to see the vision. I knew if I opened my eyes I would see nothing. Nothing until Quentin released me from the darkness.

A cool line slithered slowly across the back of my neck, sending a river of chills down my spine. I reached up, but all I felt was the ice of my own fingers touching my skin.

“CeeCee, open your eyes and look at me!”

We stopped. He set me down. T
he cold cement immediately seeped through my coat. “Quentin! The fire, it was you reaching into the fire.”

“I don’t care. Open your eyes and look at me!”

“I can’t. I can’t see.”

“Open your eyes and look at me!” he commanded. Expecting. Waiting.

Nothing. I opened my eyes and nothing.

Close. Open. Nothing.

It didn’t work.

Only darkness remained. A strange calm whispered from my mouth. “It didn’t work. I can’t see.”

“It has to work. They said it would work. Open your eyes and look at me! Open your eyes and look at me! Open your eyes and look at me!” he urgently repeated in quick succession.

“It’s not working.”

“Damn it! Open your eyes! Look at me!”

“Quentin . . .”

“OPEN. YOUR. EYES!” I could hear the exhaustion, the panic, the loss of control welling up in his voice. “LOOK AT . . . me.”

I wished, in that moment, for the strength of my mother to come back. I slipped my hand in my coat to touch her pearls, her wisdom. My hand rubbed my chest. Up. Down. Nothing. To my sides. Again, nothing. They were gone. The slithering across my neck now making sense.

I tried to sit up, move my feet underneath me. “Quentin. My mother’s pearls. They fell off. They can’t be far. I can’t lose them. Her.”

“What are you doing? You can’t see!”

“Her pearls. The slipped off. Not far. Across the road. Pleeeease,” I pleaded. “I can’t lose another part of her.”

“
FUCK!” he roared in frustration. “Don’t move!”

I sat. Blind to everything. My hands planted firmly on the cold ground, sending wave after wave of chills through me. The sounds I thought were nothing began to grow all around me. My heightened sense sharpening the small pieces of noise tunneling into my ears. Somewhere ahead of me, I heard the revvi
ng of a diesel engine sputter to life up the hill. It groaned. The squeal of metal stretching in forward movement.

And then a SNAP! So loud and foreign, it raised every hair on my body to attention.

A symphony of uproar kicked in, overwhelming my ears. Cars were honking. Breaks were squealing. The few people still milling around began to scream. I sat helpless, with no idea where danger lurked.

“Quentin!” my voice screeched out.

I tried to place the noise — the spinning whine of an engine set in motion but not started. The screams grew, gears grinding against themselves. “Get her out of there!”

Get who out of where? “QUENTIN!”

“CEECEE!” I heard him. Faintly. Above the chaos. The only picture in my head was of him reaching into the flames. Trying to get to me.

But it all came to a screeching halt.

Silence.

Nothing. But. Silence.

For one.

Single.

Breath.

Until metal ground against the iron pergola, consuming me in an ear-splitting explosion. I was thrown back and the crackling of fire heated my once cold skin. And soon it began to rain. Shards of tiny glass rained down, piercing my bare legs.

I curled up.

I focused on my mom’s face.

And I waited.

I was not afraid to die.

I hovered in darkness, circling with Quentin in a pool of silver light. There was no noise. No nothing. Just us. Together. Dancing our silent dance. On and on we spun, Quentin’s shadow reaching out, and pounding back the threatening danger.

It was peaceful.

Beautiful.

The moment deliriously euphoric.

Pools of deep emeralds twinkled down at me.

Here I was happy to remain.

Forever.

With him.

“Cee,” he whispered in my ear. “Please.”

It was his “please” that caused my foot to falter. It was sad. Inconsolable. I touched his cheek, reassuring him.

“Please. Look at me,” he said again, his eyes of pleasure not matching the sorrow in his voice. “You have to open your eyes.”

But they were open, I wanted to say. Forever open. Drinking in the brightness.

“Please, CeeCee.” Rawness rattled from his throat, pulling his shadow tight around us. “Open your eyes.”

The encroaching darkness was persistent. Pushing in. Battling against our small pool of light. Quentin’s shadow was no match for the eternity of darkness that waited patiently for us to step into.

He mumbled something I couldn’t hear. I leaned closer. A whooshing pulse rattled loud in my ear.

He spoke again.

I watched as his lips moved, but the sound was muddled, unformed.

Another voice joined in, projecting through the darkness. And another. And another. I could no longer distinguish Quentin’s from the rest. They morphed, they blended, bending time and space.

My arms tightened around him. Squeezing.

Refusing to let go.

Clinging tight to nothing.

Nothing but a shadow.