The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(19)
The man introduced himself as Pedro, a painter of portraits, though after taking a peek at the canvases lining the walls, he was unlike any artist Elena had encountered before. Many of his subjects were women, prostitutes with kohl-rimmed eyes and smudges of rouge to highlight their cheekbones. Their faces defiant. Proud. Rendered in a palette of reds, blues, and yellows that spoke of pluck and nerve on the part of the models. Pedro showed not only talent but ingenuity. A willingness to try new things. Art was one of the disciplines her kind was drawn to as a vocation too. She’d read some witch artists ground up sacred herbs and bits of bone or rock into their pigments to enhance their paints and infuse a scene with an element of enchantment. She could see the allure, though she’d never shown even a mortal’s gift for the arts.
“What do you think of my surprise?” asked Marion, gesturing with open arms at the loft full of canvases.
“I’m still not sure what it is.” Jean-Paul turned around, eyeing the jumble of tins full of brushes, the pots of pigments, the loose rags splotched with a rainbow of colors, and the bottles of sinus-burning solvents lined up along the floor. His gaze stopped on the unmade bed against the wall and he swallowed, as if bracing himself for the worst. “Is there something more you need to tell me?”
“Yes,” his mother answered, unaware of his innuendo. “I’ve commissioned a portrait. Isn’t it wonderful? Pedro is going to paint Elena. It’s my wedding present to you both. He’s quite inventive, this one. You’ll see. He’s already had a showing with that dealer, what’s his name, Vieillard. Very up and coming. I admit he doesn’t speak the language that well yet, but no matter. There’s no cultural barrier when it comes to art. I’m sure you’ll get along swimmingly.”
“Oh.” Elena wasn’t expecting that. And yet as surprised as she was, the announcement wasn’t the sort to arouse her instinct, not to the level of panic she’d felt since they hopped on the omnibus and headed for the butte.
“This is the one?” Pedro asked, arms folded as he squinted at Elena. He had her stand in the light of the window as he took in the angles of her face and shoulders.
Marion waved Jean-Paul over, his mouth still agape, to see some of the artist’s other finished works. “Come, tell me what you think of this one for the entryway.”
Pedro rotated Elena’s head to view her from cheek to cheek, then nodded, his lower lip protruding in approval before obliging his patroness by turning out more of his canvases. Some he propped on the furniture, two rested on easels, a few sat along the floorboards leaning against the wall. To Elena’s surprise, Jean-Paul did, in fact, take an interest once his eye seemingly caught some spark of undiscovered genius in the paint strokes before him. He turned once to smile at Elena but otherwise embarked on a scavenger hunt through the stacks.
Based on the sphere of small lights hovering around his aura, Pedro was favored by the All Knowing, but he was definitely a mortal. And possibly a bit lascivious in his nature, judging by the leering looks he shot her way while the others dug through his work. Elena resigned herself to enduring the rest of the morning’s visit as best as she could, but then she was going to have to politely decline her soon-to-be mother-in-law’s “surprise.”
After circling behind the others to be closer to the exit, Elena wondered if it would be better to use a wishing string or merely a suggestive tea on Marion to get her off this idea of having a portrait done. Lost in contemplation, she almost didn’t register the first whisper-soft brush of fur against her ankles. But when it happened again, she looked down to find an ebony cat had sidled up against her. Having got her attention, he purred loudly and insistently, winding back and forth against her legs.
Unlike Marion’s announcement, the sight of the cat immediately set her intuition on alert. Just when her heartbeat sped up in recognition of the animal’s significance, the feline waved his tail and ran out of the room. Obeying her instinct, Elena followed. While the artist answered Jean-Paul’s question about the mood he’d intended to depict by painting an old man with azure skin, she slipped back down the hall and out the door to the courtyard. The cat looked over his shoulder once, as if making sure she’d followed, before trotting up the cobblestone lane.
Chasing after the cat as he crept up one alley and then the next seemed to unspool the thread of tension that had been building inside Elena since she awoke that morning. She had no idea what the cat was playing at, only that she must follow. As she chased behind, Elena tried to discern if he was a spirit creature, some cursed human, or perhaps a psychic guide. It was also possible he was merely a hungry cat looking for food, but she banished that thought as soon as he pranced past a café full of afternoon diners enjoying bowls of soup and bread at their outside tables.
The cat veered left after the café, his nimble feet more urgent in stride. Elena turned the corner. The cat stopped and sat in the middle of the lane as a man and woman argued ten feet beyond. Was that a nudge of the cat’s chin, as if to say get on with it? The man shoved the woman hard against the wall and slapped her face. He pulled his arm back to hit her again, and Elena darted back to the café tables.
“I’ll take a sprinkle,” she said and held her hand below a pepper mill as a waiter hovered it over a customer’s plate.
The waiter gave the mill a twist, and she ran back to the crooked lane with the pepper cupped in her palm. The man stood over the woman, who cowered on the ground with her hands held over her blonde head, demanding a key.