The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(85)
After checking the official records, he’d discovered Elena’s father had originally worked the vineyard atop the butte before the vines died off from the phylloxera. In the same place where people now dumped their broken crockery, animal carcasses, and rotten vegetable peels. Then Raul met Esmé, bought a wagon, and devoted his time to her art when the vine no longer called.
Elena had never known any details about her parents other than the scattered memories that rose up through her consciousness when she caught the scent of ground-up foxglove or heard the distinct music of tincture bottles clinking together. That, and the revelation they’d been poisoners. Murderers hanged for their crime. Yet only one had been a true venefica, which made swallowing Jean-Paul’s solution bittersweet. Like accepting unripened fruit on the tongue, only to have the mouth pucker in regret.
Durant bristled at being contradicted. “But there hasn’t been a renouncement of a bloodline since the Revolution. Certainly, some leaned on the loophole to get out of military service—witches were sometimes conscripted for their healing abilities or their proficiency with fire—but LeBlanc and Gaultier were branded cowards and banished from society for denying their blood.” He shook his head in that bureaucratic way meant to signal the matter was closed. “I understand how you must feel, Mademoiselle Boureanu, but it’s out of the question. Your blood is your tether to your magic. Your legitimacy. Without that—”
“Without my mother’s blood I am a vine witch, and nothing else.”
Durant narrowed his eyes and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Yet your father was a known potions witch as well, so I’m afraid—”
Jean-Paul placed a yellowed deed of registration that was dated fifty-one years earlier on the desk in front of the minister. “In fact, Raul Boureanu was registered at birth as a vine witch and remained one until the day he died.”
Durant studied the legal document, his lips tightening with each witchmark of authenticity noted in the margin. He shoved the registration back at Jean-Paul. “It would appear your application for exception has merit. If you truly wish to renounce your mother’s bloodline forever.”
“I do,” Elena said. And while she understood severing the tie to her mother would dampen her instincts concerning poisons, it was the only way to regain the life she’d created for herself in the vineyard. She would always guard the shards of memory she had of her mother and father. The people who cradled her in the back of the wagon as a small child, who gave her warm milk and honey and crushed lavender sprigs to put under her pillow when she couldn’t sleep. And she would remember, too, the single miracle grapevine left leaning against the wall in the place where her father had once respected the art of winemaking.
But she was a vine witch, and no one was going to deny her who she was meant to be.
The next morning, having already packed, Jean-Paul answered an expected knock at the door of his mother’s apartment. Pedro entered, carrying a canvas wrapped in an old bed linen under his arm.
Marion instructed the artist to set the canvas atop the sideboard in the main salon, where the light was favorable. “I’m so eager to see what you’ve come up with,” she said, clasping her hands beneath her chin. “Elena, aren’t you absolutely aquiver with excitement?”
Elena certainly was curious to see if the vision-altering spell she’d used on the poor artist would show up in the portrait. That he was talented was without question, but how his perception had been affected by the magic remained to be seen.
“Your portrait, mademoiselle.” Pedro bowed, then removed the cover, beaming with pride.
Revealed beneath the cloth, painted in hues of blue and black, tan and white, and a hint of pink and red, was a rendition of a most unusual face. All three leaned their head to the side. The usual features were all present and recognizable, but their placement was at odds with what most accepted as normal human anatomy, with one eye low, one eye high, the nose in profile on the right where the ear should be, while the lips were perched on the left. It was as if the artist had painted Elena from three different angles, only to smoosh all the perspectives into one abstract replica of a face. And yet the image was Elena without a doubt.
“What do you think?”
Jean-Paul scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I’m . . . not sure I know how to put it into words.”
His mother took a step closer, tilting her head from one side to the next. “Well, I love it,” she said. “It’s brave. Bold. Just like my new daughter-in-law. The way you threw convention out the window to follow your vision, Pedro, is why art exists. Don’t you agree, Elena?”
She supposed there had always been a danger of the spell colliding with the unique magic of the artistic mind. The collision seemed to have created a hybrid optical illusion. Or perhaps it was the result of the artist having to coalesce her physical self, the photographic representation, and her supernatural being into one portrait. Not an easy task, that. Yes, in that respect she did rather like the painting. The perfect mix of magic and mortal genius, reminding her of the complex tension between the born self and the created self and the trick of finding one’s balance.
Satisfied, she hooked her arm through Jean-Paul’s and stared again at the portrait. As they contemplated the artist’s future—and how best to get the canvas home—a fairy-light touch brushed against her cheek, warm as sunshine. She looked, but there was nothing there but the glint of silver light reflecting off the decorative pin in Marion’s hair.