She wished they could stay here in this little village and never go back, that she could forget the Netherworld, that they could forget everything but each other and she could forget the feline part of herself.
Deliberately she made herself think about the gallery opening. She was terrified of the evening to come, terrified someone would see the cat images in Braden’s paintings.
And at the opening she would have to face Morian: a woman who knew everything about her, who had told her clearly that she knew. She wanted to run away now, but he wanted her at the opening. She would hurt him if she went away now. He said the paintings were hers, that without her they would not have happened, that without her there would be no opening and he would still be sunk in gloom.
She knew she must go, and that she must smile and meet strangers and be nice to them. She would disappear afterward. She would go back to the portal alone, and down, and would never see him again.
She rose and dressed and packed her few things. Braden returned and they went downstairs to Mrs. Trask’s office to say good-bye. The office was as bright and cheerful as the rest of the inn, white wicker furniture and potted plants, and a collection of prints that covered three walls. Some were Alice’s: an etching of winging gulls, a lithograph of swimming seals, and one of horses wheeling at the edge of the sea. Behind the desk hung an etching of a cat sculpture, the cat leaping after a bird. Her pulse quickened. She recognized it from the Cat Museum. And Braden said, “Timorell commissioned the sculpture shortly before she was killed in the earthquake. Alice thought it had some special meaning for her, that was why she did the etching, several years after Timorell’s death.”
Now her heart was thundering.
In the museum, she had examined that cat sculpture. She had found no clue that it might contain the Amulet. Now, she burned to go back and look at it again. She moved behind the desk, to study it.
The bronze cat’s fur was roughly done. One could see the globs of clay from which the casting had been made. And within the rough clay patterns, across the cat’s flank, was an oval shape unlike the other texture. A little teardrop shape so subtly different one could easily overlook it, but a shape a bit too perfect. A teardrop the same shape as the Amulet. Excited, she turned away when Braden took her hand. She said good-bye to Mrs. Trask and hugged her. The old woman felt like a rock, draped in her black mourning, but her smile was full of joy.
Chapter 60
Twenty paintings hung on the white gallery walls, each with space around it, each well lighted from spotlights recessed into the ceiling. Hung all together, the rich, abstracted studies had such power they jolted Melissa.
She stood alone in the center of the gallery turning in a slow circle, drinking in the colors and shadows, the reflections, so overwhelmed she felt tears come. Glowing with Braden’s passionate vision, each painting seemed to her beyond what any human could bring forth. She had no experience, from the Netherworld, of the passion or skill that could create such beauty. Braden had brought this power out of himself, out of what he was; she stood alone in the gallery wiping away tears stirred by beauty, by his power; and tears of pain because they would soon be parted.
And she tried not to see the cat images shadowed within the canvases. She prayed no one would see them. Yet each painting whispered with the faint spirit of the cat, lithe and dreamlike, nearly hidden.
She had left Braden and Rye in the gallery office unloading and framing the six paintings from Carmel. The two office desks had been laid with white cloths and stacked with ice containers and liquor bottles, silver trays and boxes of canapes. A long table in the gallery itself held cocktail napkins, stacks of glasses, little plates, a cut glass punch bowl, enough for a huge crowd. And the thought of a crowd terrified her.
