Black Swan Rising (21 page)

“How very gallant of you,” Kiernan remarked. “And how very convenient for you, Ms. James, to have such an impeccable alibi. It was lucky you went to see Mr. Hughes last night, wasn’t it?”

I could see Becky open her mouth—no doubt to tell the detective off—but Will beat her to it. “She came to me because she found my name—or rather my ancestor’s name—inside a box she was hired to open. She thought I could help lead her to the man who she believed was behind the burglary and who has set up her father to assume the guilt. And she was right. I knew right away that the man she described meeting yesterday was John Dee—an internationally known art thief.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Kiernan growled.

“He goes by many aliases,” Hughes replied. “You are perhaps familiar with the Nîmes burglary several years ago?”

Detective Kiernan blanched. Everyone in the art world knew about the Nîmes burglary. A half dozen paintings—a Rubens and a Boucher among them—and some priceless antiquities had been stolen from the Nîmes Musée des Beaux-Arts and never recovered.

“Yes, of course, but I’ve never heard that a man named Dee was connected to it.”

Will shrugged. “You might want to check with your superiors on that. In the meantime, perhaps you’ll be interested in searching Dee’s last known place of business just in case there are any clues about the burglary of the James Gallery.” Will Hughes withdrew a card from his pocket and handed it to Detective Kiernan, who held it out in front of me so I could see it. Engraved on heavy cream-colored stock were the words
John Dee, Watch Repair & Alchemist. 121½ Cordelia Street, New York, New York, 10014.
Beneath the address was a triangle with an eye in it.

Kiernan snickered. “Alchemist? What kind of crackpot is this guy?”

“An eccentric,” Will replied. “But don’t let that make you underestimate him.”

“Is this the address of the shop you visited the day of the burglary?” Kiernan asked me.

“Yes, I think it is,” I answered.

“Okay,” he said briskly. “That’s good enough for me. Let’s go see it.”

“Now?” I asked, remembering that Dee’s store was covered in cobwebs and dust.

“No time like the present. If Mr. Hughes here thinks there
might be evidence that will exonerate your father, then I won’t waste a minute . . . unless you have a more pressing engagement.”

With my bed,
I wanted to say, but didn’t. For one thing I no longer felt so tired. Maybe it was the electricity coursing between Will Hughes and me. “Okay, but I need to go change. I’ve been in the same clothes for twenty-four hours.”

“By all means,” Kiernan said, opening wide his arms. “Take your time. I’ve got all night. How ’bout you, Mr. Hughes?”

Will Hughes smiled at the detective, but I had a feeling he was talking to me. “Oh, yes. I definitely have
all
night.”

As well as a much needed change of clothes, including a turtleneck so I didn’t have to keep my scarf on, I was hoping for a few moments of privacy, but Becky followed me upstairs and into my studio. When I tried to get past her into the bathroom, she planted herself in front of the door, arms crossed, all four feet eleven and a half inches of her bristling with barely controlled energy.

“All right, Margaret Eleanor James, I’m not budging until you tell me the truth.”

“The truth?” I asked, trying to look innocent.

Becky punched me in the arm. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that you spent the entire night with that stunning man
sleeping
?”

“Oh,” I said, relieved that Becky suspected me of first-date sex, not collusion with vampires and fairies. “Well, not
exactly
sleeping.”

“I knew it! There’s so much chemistry between you two I thought someone’s head was going to go up in flames!”

“We spent the night
talking,
Rebecca Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jones.” Two could play at the middle-name game—especially when one of us had a mother who had
really
wanted her daughter to grow up to be lawyer. I ducked before Becky could hit me again—she hated her middle names even more than I hated mine—but instead of hitting me she grinned.

“I knew you didn’t spend the night sleeping. What did you talk about? He’s not married, is he? Does he have a rich hedge-fund-manager friend? Has he ever thought of investing in a promising indie rock band—”

“Damn, Becky, I completely forgot about that producer who was coming to your show last night. What happened?”

Only one thing could distract Becky when she was on the scent of a potential romantic interest, and that was the band’s future. “He was definitely interested, only he thought we needed to be a little less hard-core. Tone down the shoegaze vibe a bit. Fiona and I both agree that’s no problem, but Jay’s going to take some convincing . . .” Becky happily chattered on about the band’s prospects while I squeezed past her into the bathroom, washed up, and changed into jeans and a turtleneck sweater. I was careful not to let her see my neck, but when I surreptitiously checked out the marks in the mirror, I saw they had almost faded. When I touched them, I felt a strange thrill course through my body—as if my carotid artery had become an erogenous zone directly connected to my . . . well, to my
other
erogenous zones.

As I came out, Becky was still nattering on about the details of the record contract. “I’m really happy for you, Jay, and Fiona,” I told her, giving her a quick hug. “It sounds like the band’s taking off.”

As we walked down the stairs—Becky bouncing in front of
me—I thought to myself that here was one thing that had not been touched by the demons of Despair and Discord. Will Hughes showing up to give me an alibi for last night was another stroke of good luck. Maybe Oberon wasn’t right about everything going bad—and if he wasn’t right about that, maybe he wasn’t right about Will Hughes.

Hughes and Kiernan were standing in the hallway when we came down, locked in a stony silence that dampened even Becky’s spirits for a moment. She quickly recovered herself though. “Where’s Jay? Jay!” she shouted into the kitchen.

“Your friend said he was going upstairs to practice,” Kiernan said. “He said to remind you that you have an appearance later tonight at the Music Hall in Williamsburg.”

“That’s not until after midnight. I’m not going to miss seeing the lair of the infamous John Dee—hey! Did you know that’s the name of a famous Elizabethan magician . . .” Becky happily chatted with Detective Kiernan while wrapping a scarf longer than her body several times around her neck. She winked at me as she shepherded him out the door.

“I think your friend is giving us some privacy,” Will said as he held the door open for me.

“I’m not sure Becky knows the meaning of the word.” I set the alarm code and locked the door behind me. “But she will probably talk Detective Kiernan’s ear off by the time we get there.”

I realized when I saw the detective’s car parked in front of the house, though, that we weren’t likely to get much privacy jammed into it. Will apparently thought the same.

“Why don’t you follow us,” he said to Kiernan as he held his hand up in the air. The Silver Cloud instantly appeared. I saw
Becky’s eyes go wide and knew she’d be dying to ride in the Rolls, but she beamed at Detective Kiernan instead. “Is
this
an unmarked police car? Does it have a police radio? Can I see how it works? Can we put the siren on?”

Will opened the door of the Rolls for me while Becky got into the detective’s car. The minute I slid into the plush gray interior, though, I wondered if I was making a mistake. There was a smoked-glass barrier between the driver and the backseat that hadn’t been up when I was driven uptown yesterday. The door closed with a heavy hermetic
clunk
that sounded as final as the lid of a sarcophagus coming down, and the car glided down Jane Street silently. Hughes was a good two feet away from me and he made no move to touch me, but I felt
engulfed
by his presence. The world outside retreated.

“So,” he broke the silence after a moment, “how was your day?”

It was such an ordinary, mundane question that I laughed—and worse, the kind of laugh I have when I’m surprised, which comes out like a snort. “Eventful,” I finally managed to say. “I met Oberon, who doesn’t appear to like you very much.”

Will shook his head and looked out the window. I could see from his reflection in the opaque glass that he was frowning. “No, he blamed me for Marguerite’s decision to become human.”

“But Fen doesn’t dislike you. She said Marguerite asked her to watch over you.”

“Did she?” he asked, turning his head in my direction. His eyes flashed silver in the dark of the car. He leaned toward me and I felt the tug of that silver thread that connected us pulling me toward him. Without any visible motion on his part
he was suddenly next to me, his hand in my hair, his body pressed against mine. I felt his lips graze my cheek and drift to my ear. His breath was warm against my neck.

“Did Oberon tell you not to see me?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But Fen said I
would
see you. She said I didn’t have any choice about it.”

I felt Will’s hand freeze on the collar of my sweater. He pulled back and looked at me, his silver eyes glowing red now. I was so startled by the transformation that I pulled back too.

“And is that how you feel?” he asked. “That you have no choice?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, but then I didn’t have to. The car had come to a stop. Someone knocked on the window. Hughes powered it down and Detective Kiernan stuck his head in.

“We’re here,” he said, scanning the interior of the Rolls as if looking for contraband drugs or dead bodies. “I think you’ll want to see this, Ms. James.”

I’d been so under Will Hughes’s spell that I hadn’t even thought to ask what he hoped to gain by bringing Detective Kiernan to Dee’s shop. Once he saw that it was covered in the dust of years, he’d dismiss my claim that I’d visited a functioning antiques store just days ago.

“This place looks abandoned,” Kiernan said as I got out of the car. “Are you sure this is where you were the day of the burglary?”

I walked up the steps to the glass door. The gilt letters glinted in the light from the streetlamp, the words
despair
and
discord
seeming to wink at me. “Yes, this is it,” I said, sighing.
“I know it doesn’t look like it was open three days ago—” I shut up when my eyes adjusted to the dark and the interior of the shop became visible. Yes, the shelves and counter were empty, but they were no longer covered with dust, nor was the counter broken. The brocade drapes, which had been torn and shredded yesterday, hung clean and whole.

Becky pushed me aside so she could see in. “Yeah, he must have cleared out after the burglary, but hey, what’s that on the floor? It looks like a scrap of torn canvas. Look, Detective Kiernan, don’t you think that looks like a scrap of canvas?”

“It could be a scrap of old newspaper,” he said. “It’s not exactly a cause for a search warrant.”

“No need,” Will Hughes said. “I’ve put in a call to the landlord . . . ah, here he is now.”

We all turned to find a stooped, balding man hurrying up the block from the direction of Hudson Street, a cell phone clamped to his left ear, a ring of keys jangling from his right hand.

“I would have rather contacted the landlord myself,” Kiernan muttered.

“My apologies, Detective. I was just trying to help out. I’ll let you take it from here.” Will moved aside as the landlord, who introduced himself gruffly as Lochan Singh, unlocked the door and switched on the light. I looked in vain for any sign of the dust I’d seen two days ago; the shelves were polished clean. The only sign of what had been on them were pale circular shadows on the red velvet where watches and brooches had been. I startled when I found an eye looking back at me. One of the lover’s eye brooches still lay on the cloth, its painted eye gazing implacably into my own. I took a step closer to it, bent down . . . and reared back when its long-lashed lid blinked.
I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had noticed my reaction, but everyone was watching Kiernan, who was kneeling on the floor examining the scrap of canvas. I turned back to the brooch and stepped to my right.

The eye followed my movement.

A trick left by Dee, no doubt. Okay then, I thought, maybe it was a trick that could be turned against him. I checked to make sure that no one was watching, then I backed up to the shelf and palmed the brooch into my jeans pocket. I had a second’s queasy image of the eye squelching, but banished it. Then I turned back to the group around Kiernan. He was just lifting the scrap of canvas off the floor with the end of a pen. He laid it on the counter.

It was the corner of a painted canvas, not part of the painting, but an edge where the artist had tested out his palette. I recognized those lilacs, mauves, and honey yellows right away. They were the colors of Pissarro’s snowy field in France.

“This came from one of our paintings,” I said. “I’m sure of it. If you check the canvases you have you’ll see where it’s been torn off.”

Kiernan slipped the piece of canvas into a plastic bag, then began questioning the landlord about his tenant. The store had been leased under the name John Black just three weeks earlier. The rent was paid up until the end of the year. The only other address he had for John Black was a post office box in Astoria. I listened for a few minutes until I noticed that Will Hughes was gone.