Now You See Her (2 page)

Yeah, the city was better. Warmer, too. About the time she began seeing the ghosts, her internal heat regulator seemed to go on the fritz, too. She always felt chilled these days, had for the past year. Maybe the cold had started even before she saw little Sam Beresford; she couldn't remember, because who paid attention to things like that? It wasn't exactly something anyone would mark on their calendars:
August 29: Felt cold.
Yeah, sure.

Sweeney didn't know what had brought the ghosts to mind this bright September morning, but they were the first things she thought of when she woke. That, and the cold, which seemed worse. She got out of bed, hurriedly changed her pajamas for sweats, and went into the kitchen to get that first cup of coffee, thanking God for automatic timers as she went. It was so nice to have the coffee waiting for her when she got up, because she thought she'd probably freeze to death if she had to wait for it to brew.

The first sip warmed her insides on the way down, and she sighed with relief. She actually tasted the second sip, and was going back for the third when the phone rang.

Phones were a necessary nuisance, but a nuisance still. Who the hell would be calling her at—she checked the clock—seven-forty-three in the morning? Irritably, she set her cup down and walked over to snag the receiver off the wall.

“Candra here,” a warm voice replied to her cautious greeting. “I'm sorry to call you so early, but I don't know your schedule and wanted to be certain I caught you.”

“You got me on the first cast,” Sweeney replied, her irritation fading. Candra Worth owned the gallery where Sweeney sold her work.

“Beg pardon?”

“Never mind. It's a fishing term. I don't suppose you've ever been fishing?”

“God, no.” Like her voice, Candra's laugh was warm and intimate. “The reason I called was to ask if you could be here at about one to meet some potential clients. We were talking at a party last night and they mentioned they're thinking of having their portraits done. I immediately thought of you, of course. Mrs. McMillan wanted to come by the gallery to look at a particular piece I've just gotten in, so I thought it would be convenient for them to meet you while they're here.”

“I'll be there,” Sweeney promised, though she had looked forward to a day of uninterrupted work.

“Good. See you then.”

Sweeney shivered as she hung up and hurried back to her coffee. She didn't like meeting prospective clients, but she did like doing portraits—and she needed the work. About the time she had started seeing ghosts, her work had gone to hell in a handbasket. The trademark delicacy of her landscapes and still-life studies had given way to an uncharacteristic boisterousness, and she didn't like it. Her colors had always been transparent, as if they
were watercolors instead of oils, but now, no matter how hard she tried, she found herself gravitating toward deep, passionate, unrealistic shades. She hadn't carried anything to Candra's gallery in months, and though her old pieces were still selling, there couldn't be many left.

She owed it to Candra to take the job, if the couple liked her work. Sweeney was aware that she was not now and probably would never be a hot commodity, because her art was considered too traditional, but nevertheless Candra had always steered her way those customers who preferred the traditional approach, thereby providing Sweeney with a fairly steady, moderately lucrative income. Above that, last year when Sweeney had announced her intention of leaving Clayton, it was Candra who had scouted out this apartment for her.

Not that New York City would have been Sweeney's first choice; she had been thinking of someplace warmer. Of course, New York was warmer than Clayton, which sat on the St. Lawrence River, just east of Lake Ontario, and every winter was the recipient of lake-effect snows. New York City was coastal; it snowed during the winter, but not as often and not as much, and the temperatures were more moderate. Not moderate enough; Sweeney had been thinking more along the lines of Miami, but Candra had talked her into coming to the city and Sweeney didn't regret it. There was always something going on, which provided her with plenty of distraction whenever she thought she was going to scream from frustration.

Above all, New York was big enough that she didn't know any of the dead people, didn't feel compelled by good manners to acknowledge them. The city also provided a steady supply of faces—live ones. She loved faces, loved studying them, which was why her portrait work was steadily increasing—thank God, because otherwise her bank account would have been in serious trouble, instead of just in trouble.

The city suited her, for now, and by New York standards the rent was reasonable. Candra had known about the apartment because her husband, Richard Worth, owned the building. He was some sort of Wall Street whiz, a self-made market millionaire; Sweeney had met him a couple of times, and tried to stay as far away from him as possible. He had an interesting but intimidating face, and she thought he must be the type of man who steamrollered over everyone in his path. She made it a point not to be in his way.

The neighborhood wasn't the best, nor was the building, but the apartment was a corner one, with huge windows. She could happily have lived in a barn, if it had as good a light—and central heat.

The coffee had stopped her shivering. She always felt a little chilled now, but mornings were the worst. She would have gone to a doctor, but whenever she imagined talking to someone about what was going on, her common sense stopped her.
“About a year ago
I started seeing ghosts, Doctor, and that's when I got cold. Oh, by the way, traffic signals turn green whenever I approach, too. And my plants bloom out of season. So
what's wrong with me?”
Sure. Not in this lifetime. She'd been pointed at enough when she was a kid. Being an artist was uncommon enough; she wasn't about to let herself be labeled as wacko, too.

The past year had been trying for more reasons than just seeing ghosts. Sweeney resisted change with a stubborn determination that was no less unyielding for its lack of ferocity. She wasn't ferocious about anything but painting. Still, over the years those who knew her well had learned how tenacious she was. She liked routine, liked her life to have an even tenor. She could get along just fine without drama, despair, and excitement, having had a surfeit of it in her childhood. For her, sameness and normality equaled security. But how could she feel secure when
she
had changed, when
she
knew she was no longer normal, even if she had managed to hide it from the rest of the world? And now she seemed to have lost her direction, if not her talent; but what good was talent if she didn't know what she was doing with it?

She turned on the television to keep her company while she rustled up breakfast, though cereal didn't require much rustling. She ate the corn flakes dry, without milk, because the milk was cold and she had just gotten rid of the chill, so she wasn't eager to reacquire it. As she ate, the sexy Diet Coke commercial came on, and she paused, spoon halfway to her mouth, eyes widening as her lips formed a silent “wow.”

By the time the commercial ended, she felt almost sweaty. Maybe watching more television ads was the key to feeling warm.

*   *   *

After putting in several hours of work in the studio, Sweeney realized it was almost one o'clock and she had to get ready to go over to the gallery She hated dressing up, but she found herself reaching for a skirt and top instead of her usual jeans and sweatshirt. A flash of scarlet caught her eye, and she slid clothes hangers to the side to extract a red sweater she had never worn that someone had given her for Christmas several years before. The tags were still on it. Studying the bright, rich color, she decided that was just what she wanted today.

She supposed she should take some pains with her hair, too. Standing in front of the mirror, she frowned. She had been blessed, or cursed, with very curly, very unruly hair, and she kept it longer than shoulder length because the weight helped hold it down. Her options were limited; she could pull it back and look like a schoolgirl, try to pin it up and hope she didn't end up with stray curls sticking out like corkscrews, or leave it loose. She opted for loose; the possibility of humiliation was less.

She took a comb and tidied the more unruly parts. When she was little, she had hated her hair. She had inherited the wild curls from her mother, only her mother had gloried in having an untamable mane of hair, bringing even more attention to it by coloring it every shade of red imaginable. She had wanted to color Sweeney's hair, too, but even as a child Sweeney had clung to the small bits of normalcy in her life. Her hair was brown, and she was going to keep it brown. Not red, not black, not platinum.
Brown. The color was ordinary, even if the curls were a bit flamboyant.

Putting down the comb, she critically surveyed herself. There. Except for the hair, there was nothing about her that would draw attention. Trim, medium height—well, almost. She would have liked another inch or two. Blue eyes, curly brown hair. Good skin. She was thirty-one, and still no wrinkles had appeared. The black skirt stopped right above her knees, her shoes were sensible enough to walk to the gallery in but didn't look seriously grandmotherly, and the scarlet sweater was . . . great. She almost took it off, but was too beguiled by the color.

Some makeup seemed called for. She was never certain she knew what she was doing with the stuff, so she limited herself to the most basic: mascara and lipstick. This was her insurance against looking like a clown.
Or Mom,
her almost-subconscious jibed. Sweeney always made a real effort to avoid looking or acting like her mother. Being an artist was already enough of a family resemblance.

Because she was fairly certain that all Candra had left of her paintings at the gallery were a couple of landscapes, she sorted through the stack of sketches she'd made of people, selecting the ones that were closest to being finished, and put them in a portfolio to show to the McMillans. She didn't have any finished portraits to show, because they were all commissioned and went to the subject as soon as they were completed.

Portfolio tucked under her arm, she left the apartment for the walk to the gallery. The warm September
sun beamed down on her as soon as she stepped onto the sidewalk, and she drew a deep sigh of pleasure at the heat. Most of the people she passed, except for the business types who probably wore suits and ties to bed, were in short sleeves. A sign alternating with the time and temperature announced that the temperature was eighty-four degrees.

It was a nice day, the kind of day when walking was a joy.

She came to the corner where her favorite hot dog vendor worked his stand and stopped.

The old man had one of the sweetest faces she had ever seen. He was always smiling, his teeth bright and even in his dark-skinned face. Dentures, probably; people his age seldom had their own teeth. He was sixty-eight, he'd once told her; time to retire. Old folks like him needed to get out of the way and let some youngster make a living. He'd laughed when he said that, and Sweeney knew he had no intention of retiring. He kept selling his hot dogs and smiling his sweet smile at his customers. She had noticed him the first week she'd been in New York and made it a point to pass by his stand as often as possible so she could study his face.

His expression fascinated her. She had sketched it a few times, the work quick and rudimentary because she didn't want him to notice what she was doing and become self-conscious. She hadn't quite gotten it right yet, the look of a man who had no quarrel with the world. He simply enjoyed life. It was that, the total lack of cynicism in his eyes, like a
child's, that made her fingers itch to capture him on paper and canvas.

“Here ya go, Sweeney.” He swapped the hot dog for the money in her hand, and she tucked the portfolio safely between her calves while she slathered a ton of mustard on the dog. “You look all spiffy today. Hot date?”

Yeah, sure. She hadn't had a date in ... in so long she couldn't remember exactly how long it
had
been. At least a couple of years. Probably several. She hadn't missed it. “Business,” she said, and took a bite of the dog.

“That's a shame, lookin' as hot as you do today.” He winked at her and Sweeney winked back, though she was a bit startled by the compliment. Hot? Her? She was the least hot person she knew, in any sense of the word. She would rather work any day, lose herself in color and form, light and texture, than waste time worrying what some man thought about her hair or if he was dating others, too.

During college she had gone through the motions because it had seemed to be expected of her, but aside from a couple of rare crushes in high school she had never cared much about any guy. She hadn't felt even a frisson of lasciviousness since . . . well, since that morning, come to think of it. She was more than a little surprised at herself, letting the Diet Coke commercial get to her like that. This late-blooming lust took her aback. She had thought herself safe from the insane hormonal urges that wrecked the creative careers of so many women, or at least diluted them.

“You'll knock 'em dead in that outfit,” the vendor said, winking at her again.

Funny, she hadn't thought the simple skirt and sweater that fetching. It had to be the color, she thought. New Yorkers always wore black; sometimes she thought no one in the city owned a single bright-colored garment. She must look like a cardinal among crows, decked out in her scarlet sweater. And combing her hair had been a definite plus. Hell, she was even wearing earrings.

She retrieved the portfolio from between her legs and continued down the sidewalk, hot dog in hand. The gallery was four more blocks, plenty of time to finish the dog and wipe the mustard from her mouth. Greeting the McMillans with goo smeared on her face wouldn't leave a good impression.