Immortal Muse (31 page)

“I didn't have an appointment. I'm an old acquaintance of Dr. Pierce's, and I was hoping to get a chance to talk to him for a few minutes.”

The receptionist sniffed at that, and Camille saw a flash of irritation narrow the woman's eyes. “I'm afraid not. I don't know when he'll be in.”

“Do you have his cell number? I could call . . .”

“You'll just be leaving messages like me,” the receptionist said, then shook her head. “I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said that. It's been a lousy day.”

“I'm so sorry to hear that,” Camille said, with as much false sympathy as she could muster. Suspicion hardened in her chest. “It's Timothy's fault, isn't it?” she said. “He can be like that.”

The receptionist gave a shrug accompanied by the faintest of nods. Lacquered fingernails tapped the keys. “I can't give you his cell number. He wouldn't like that.”

“He didn't show up today, I take it?” Camille asked. The tightening of the receptionist's glossy orange lips answered her.
He knows. He knows I'm coming after him.
Camille gave the receptionist what she hoped was a sympathetic sigh. “That's so like him. He didn't give you any idea when he'll be back?”

“I'm afraid he didn't. And I have this afternoon's schedule of appointments to call and cancel yet, so . . .” She evidently thought that was too abrupt, for she smiled awkwardly at Camille and reached for a pen. “I'll tell him you stopped by. What's your name?”

“Don't bother,” Camille told her. “I'll see him later. I hope the rest of your calls go easy.”

“They won't,” the woman said, “but I appreciate the thought.”

Camille smiled at the woman. She left the hospital and went back to her own apartment.

 * * * 

“Where have you been?” David asked her. “You look worried.”

She tossed her dojo bag and the katana bag into the corner next to the door and hugged him, harder than she intended. “It's nothing,” she said. “I'm just feeling a little down.” She stood on her toes to kiss him.

She could tell David that Pierce was her stalker, but then David really
would
insist that they go to the authorities, and once the police were involved, her fabric of lies would unravel: she would lose David as a result, and possibly have to leave her identity behind once again.

She could tell David the full truth, but he wouldn't believe her and there was very little in the way of evidence she could present. She hardly believed it herself.

So she could do nothing except to continue her search for Nicolas. At least she knew the name Nicolas was using now, even if she suspected he'd never return to Helen's apartment or his office at Beth Israel—if he didn't decide to entirely change his identity now that they'd found each other. All that was in her favor.

Still, Helen might call David and complain about her warning, and she had no good explanation to give him. Or Nicolas might do something on his own. The dread sat inside her, a dark, festering worry. She jumped at every unknown sound.

She made love to David that evening, trying to find some solace in his closeness and the intimate wrapping of his soul-heart around her. For two more days, despite her trepidation, nothing at all happened.

David's cell phone rang while she and David were in the studio: he was setting up a product shot for a commercial client while she was painting, with Verdette curled up at her ankles. David answered, and when he sat abruptly on a stool, she knew there was something terribly wrong. All the color drained from his face. Verdette mewled in irritation as Camille sat up. “You're certain?” David asked, twice, and each time his shoulders slumped further with the answer. “Oh, my God,” he said several times. He was looking at Camille, his eyes stricken. “I can't . . . can't believe this. No, no; I'm okay. Just stunned. Do they know who did this? No? Let me know about arrangements, would you? Give your mom my sympathy, would you, and take care of yourself.”

David closed the phone and stood there holding it in his hand, staring at nothing. She could see his eyes glittering in the light. Twin tears tracked the lines of his cheeks. Camille set down her brush. She knew, before he told her. “David?”

“That was Helen's sister Sally. It's Helen,” he said. He blinked and another single tear rolled down. “Helen's been murdered.”

“Oh, David . . .” Camille breathed. Her head was crowded with a thousand speculations. “How? When?”

“A day or more ago. Evidently Timothy called the cops when Helen wouldn't answer her phone; she'd been dead for at least a day when they broke in. She'd been tied to her bed, tortured, and beaten, maybe raped; they aren't sure yet. There were at least two people involved, according to the police. But it was really brutal. They had to identify her body by the teeth. The apartment was trashed; whoever it was that did this took everything valuable they could carry. The cops are thinking that it was probably a robbery gone bad, that maybe she surprised these people in the middle of things, that she tried to interfere and so they . . .” David took a shuddering breath. “I feel sick. I can't believe this.”

Camille could. Camille was already certain of one fact: Nicolas had killed her—this had his stink all over it. He may not have done it himself, but he had been there or close by when it happened, relishing all the pain and torment. He'd taken everything he really wanted from Helen already, and now he was done with her.

“The visitation's on Wednesday,” David was saying. “You'll come with me?”

She was shaking her head.
He
might be there, too, and she didn't want to see him again. “It wouldn't look right,” she said.

“No one would be thinking that, or if they do, fuck 'em. Camille, I'd really appreciate it. I don't . . . I don't want to go there alone.”

Which is probably exactly what Nicolas wants.
She sighed. She stood up went to David and hugged him, cradling his head against her shoulder. “I'm so sorry for you,” she whispered into his ear. “Of course I'll go.”

 * * * 

She wondered, for a day, whether she had told David a lie. As she saw it, she had two choices: accept the gauntlet that Nicolas had cast down and kill him before he came after her or, worse, David. Or . . .

She could abandon “Camille Kenny” entirely and leave New York. She could go elsewhere and start her search all over again—sometime in the future when Nicolas had taken on, like her, yet another identity.

Yet . . . she knew that if she did that, Nicolas might just kill David as he had Helen, if only because he would know the guilt that would rack her for that. He would feed on David's pain and anguish as she fed on his creativity, and that was a thought she couldn't bear.

No. This was war, and she could not afford to lose another battle. And, she had to admit, she didn't
want
to tear herself away from David's soul-heart and the nourishment it gave her.

She stayed.

The visitation room at the funeral home was crowded and too hot. The oversweet smell of flowers was cloying, and there was a scent of disinfectant lingering underneath. A rumble of hushed conversation surrounded them as they entered, with an occasional sob or sniff. Shorter than most, Camille couldn't see far into the room. She held onto David's hand, a tight-lipped and hopefully sympathetic half-smile on her face.

She hated visitations and funerals. They were symbols of death, which she had abandoned and which she feared.

“David!” A woman who looked like an older version of Helen came up to them. David released Camille's hand and hugged her. The woman's eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, her mascara smeared. She held David tightly, possessively, releasing him only after a long moment. “I'm so sorry,” she heard David say to her, then he inclined his head toward Camille. “Sally,” he said, “this is my friend Camille. Camille, this is Helen's sister.”

Sally's lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. Then she nodded. “I've heard of you,” she said.

Camille kept her face carefully neutral. “I'm terribly sorry for your loss,” she said. “I can't imagine how devastated you must feel.”

“Thank you,” Sally answered, though the words were only a polite emptiness. “That means so much.” She put her arm around David's. “Come with me,” she said. “Mom's been just a wreck, and she always liked you so much . . .”

David glanced at Camille, who smiled at him. “Go on,” she said, but Sally was already tugging him into the crowd, obviously not intending for her to follow.

She wandered the edges of the mourners, listening to some of the conversations.

“. . . tragic, just tragic. Someone so young . . .”

“. . . she seemed to be so happy recently . . .”

“. . . God works in mysterious ways . . .”

“Camille,” she heard someone call softly, and saw a man in a dark, expensive-looking suit detach himself from a group near the door: Jacob Prudhomme. They embraced quickly. “David's here?”

“Yes,” she told him. “Helen's sister took him to see their mother. I decided to stay back here.”

“Ah.” Jacob nodded. “Probably wise of you. This was startling news for all of us. From what I've heard, she was dead for some time before she was discovered. Timothy Pierce evidently called her workplace when she wasn't answering her cell; they hadn't seen her and she hadn't called them. He went to her apartment and knocked on her door trying to rouse her, and finally called the cops and the landlord. It's all so horrible.” He shivered.

Yes,
she wanted to say.
Nicolas was making certain that his alibi was sound and playing the distraught boyfriend perfectly.
“Horrible,” she agreed. “I'm sorry, Jacob; will you excuse me? The smell of the flowers is getting to me, I'm afraid.”

“Certainly,” he told her. “I should go see Helen's mother myself. David could use the support.” He hugged her again and moved away into the crowd. Camille stepped out into the hallway toward a lounge area with coffee and a water fountain. She thought she was alone at first, then noticed someone stirring sugar into a Styrofoam cup of coffee. She stopped, startled, as he turned. The Ladysmith sat like an accusation in her purse; it would take several seconds to reach it, to turn off the safety, to use it. She turned over the spells in her mind, wondering if she should cast them now, before he was ready, even though they would be weaker than any he could cast himself, and he would be faster.

Her hesitation had already been too long.

“Bonjour, Perenelle,”
he said.
“Est-ce que tout va bien?”

“I'm not Perenelle,” she said to him, also in the same archaic French, “anymore than you're still Nicolas. And I've not been very well—not with you alive. Why did you do it? There was no reason to kill Helen. There was no reason to kill Walters, either.”

“No?” he asked with a smile. He stirred the coffee with the red plastic stick. He took the stirrer from the cup and held it up to her. “I suppose I could keep this, too. But now that it's served its only purpose in life . . .” Lifting his hand dramatically, he let the stick fall into the trash can alongside the table.

“People aren't disposable.”

“Oh, I don't think either one of us really believes that. They all die anyway, so what's the harm in accelerating the process a little? Besides, with Helen
I
didn't do the killing; I just . . . watched. There are a few people I know who believe that they're now immortal, and in gratitude, they do whatever I ask them to do.”

The sick feeling in Camille's stomach increased. “Again, Nicolas?”

“Why not?” he answered. “Their gratitude is so amusing and so useful, and their deaths are always so anguished and tasty. You're no different, for all your posturing. How many lovers have you had and left, discarded? You just don't want to admit that we're both the same. Both the same, Perenelle—as we always were.”

“I was
never
the same as you. I've never been vicious or cruel. I never beat you the way you beat me when we were married. I don't kill those I've loved. Nicolas, we need to end this insanity. Let's go outside, right now, just the two of us, and do that.”

“End it? In public?” He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “Isn't that a bit overdramatic, not to mention stupid? Mind you, I do intend to finally and completely end this.” He smiled at her again. “But not tonight. Eventually. In my own time. When you don't expect it, when it's safe for me. But soon. I've told you this before, Perenelle:
you're
my passion. Besides, you still have something I want—and I
will
have it from you first.”

She started to retort, to plead with him again, but a woman entered the lounge, going to the coffee machine and taking two Styrofoam cups from the stack alongside. Nicolas took a sip of his coffee. “You'll excuse me,” he said, abandoning French for English. “I should get back to the family. Such a shameful, needless tragedy. Thanks for coming, Camille. I'm sure Helen would have appreciated the gesture, especially after your last conversation with her. Give my best to David, would you? He's such a talent.” He nodded to her, then to the other person. He left, leaving Camille shaking and anxious.

The new entrant was looking at her, putting sugar in one of the two coffees in front of her on the table, and Camille realized that she felt the touch of a soul-heart within the woman, and that her features were familiar: Gina Palento, the detective she'd met at Walters' office, her short hair brushed, dressed as neatly as she had been there. She was staring at Camille as she put lids on the cups. “Ms. Kenny,” she said. “I didn't expect to see you here.” She cocked her head. “You knew the deceased?”