Paint by Magic (21 page)

Showdown time.

But back inside the studio again, I saw something that sent a jolt right up my spine and erased every bit of braveness: The big easel with the painting of Mom was right in front of me. And there was Fitzgerald Cotton, holding the ancient paint box, shaking powdered pigment from a pouch into his mixing bowl. The painting showed Mom's anguished face, her frozen eyes—same as before. But her mouth, open in a scream, seemed wider than it had been when I last looked at it. The white teeth glistened. I could almost feel Mom trembling with trying to move out of her frozen pose—and suddenly I could hear her thoughts, really
hear
them in my head:
Connor, quickly—he's killing me!

"Stop!" I shouted. And Fitzgerald Cotton spun around.

"You owe me thanks for the rescue, an apology for the intrusion, and an explanation of your abominable behavior, boy," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Not more histrionics."

I didn't know what histrionics were, and I didn't care. "Just stop painting my mother!" I ordered in a voice that came out rough and hard. "Stop it right now."

"Your mother?" demanded Fitzgerald Cotton. His face turned red. But he did set the paint box down on the table. "Did I hear you say your
mother?
"

"He means Pammie," said Homer.

"Connor's told us everything," Betty said to her uncle. "I
knew
that he knew Pammie."

I felt relieved to have Betty and Homer with me, facing down Fitzgerald Cotton in his studio—the beast in his lair—as if their presence would ward off whatever evil lurked here.

"My beautiful muse?" whispered Fitzgerald Cotton.

"Yes, your
muse
." I was keeping my eye on the paint box while I talked, edging closer and closer to the table. Little baby steps, like maybe if I was real slow and stealthy, Fitzy wouldn't notice.

Fitzgerald Cotton's heavy hand descended on my shoulder. "Sit down. Tell me everything. Everything, boy! How can my beloved muse be your mother when you're an orphan? Or—do you mean to say that Pamela is
dead
?" His red cheeks paled. His eyes were wild but not in a crazy way—just scared. Scared for my mom. And suddenly I realized that deep inside he didn't mean to hurt her. Maybe he didn't even know he
was
hurting her!

"She's not dead," I told him. "But she will be soon if you don't stop painting her."

"If I don't stop painting—" He shook his shaggy head.

"If you really don't know what I'm talking about," I began, "then you probably don't know how much you're hurting her, and you're not as horrible as I've been thinking you are. As horrible as
she
thinks you are."

A spasm of pain crossed his face. "She doesn't think I'm horrible! She loves me—"

"Look at that portrait and say she looks like someone in love!" I shouted, pointing to the easel. "She's terrified of you because you keep painting her—with these." I reached over and snatched up the old wooden box of paints. The box was surprisingly heavy. It was as if the paint pouches inside were weighted with all their years. Or with their magic.

"Don't touch those, boy!" Fitzgerald Cotton barked at me. "I told you they're precious!"

I hung on tightly and turned away from him. "Yes, you did. You told me yourself the legend of how powerful these paints are, how they belonged to the old masters and are supposed to have special—maybe magical—properties. Well it's true! They do! They really do! In fact, they're Lorenzo da Padova's own paints, and their magic is so powerful, it is reaching right through time."

"I confess to being completely baffled." Fitzgerald rubbed his hands over his face and looked beseechingly at his nephew and niece. "Homer? Betty? Do you two know what all this madness is about?" He was either the best actor ever, or else he really was innocent. I just couldn't tell which it was.

"Sort of." Homer's eyes were shining with excitement.

"We have a theory," Betty admitted. "But you're not going to like it, Uncle Fitz."

"Our theory is that there's something wrong with your old paints," Homer burst out.

"They have to be destroyed," I said, hanging on to the paint box.

"'Destroyed,' you say?" repeated Fitzgerald Cotton in a casual voice. Then he suddenly grabbed for the box, spinning me around so that I collapsed onto the couch in a slump. So he wasn't innocent! I clutched the paint box, holding on for dear life.

The portrait of Mom stared down at me. I turned my face away. "They're evil!" I shouted up at Fitzgerald Cotton. I heard tears behind my voice and I hated that—but I couldn't help it. "Either they are ... or
you
are."

That stopped him. "Evil?" he hissed. Homer and Betty were standing behind their uncle—Homer's eyes wide and scared, Betty's narrowed.

"
Evil,
" I confirmed. "Because whenever you paint my mom with these paints, you have power over her. The paints let you reach through time and capture her. She's like a zombie—frozen. Scared out of her mind, and she can't move. She gets like a statue. She goes into a trance."

"Did you say 'through time'?" Fitzgerald Cotton looked stunned for a moment. Then his expression changed, as if someone had drawn a brush over it and painted in something new. He looked crafty; he looked cunning. He reached again for the box.

I wrapped my arms around it.
Oh no, you don't.

"You're killing her," I whispered. Tears pricked my eyelids, but no way was I going to let him see me cry.

Fitzgerald Cotton lunged again for the paint box, but Betty grabbed him from behind. "No," she said. "Wait." Then she pulled him down to sit next to me on the couch. "Maybe we should tell him the story. The facts of the matter."

"Oh yes, indeed," he said. "I love a good tale." He glanced over at me and his smile was cold—and dreadfully familiar.

I shivered. "I don't think I need to tell him anything," I said to Betty. "I think he knows. In fact, maybe..."

"Maybe what, lad?" pressed Fitzgerald Cotton, and it seemed to me even the air in the room was changing. Something had
shifted.
There was a little hissing sound in the air, and I felt the same presence I'd sensed downstairs in the living room. The same presence from the wardrobe. The cold little smile I hated was playing about Fitzgerald Cotton's lips.

I took a deep breath. "Maybe you
knew,
" I said. "I think you've known all along that the old paints have a special magic. And you know they're holding my mom hostage. But maybe you even knew back when you first bought these old paints that they belonged to Lorenzo da Padova! Maybe bad things happened to people who used da Padova's paints, and other artists knew the paints were dangerous, or sour, or bad, and so that's why they were never used up in all those years. The paints survived so many centuries because no one
dared
to use them!"

"Until me," said Fitzgerald Cotton softly, and the smile grew wider.

"Until you." I took a deep breath because I had to say it: "He's got you in his power."

"Nonsense." The smile disappeared. "Look here, boy. I admit I did learn that the paints belonged to da Padova before I bought them—but so what? Why shouldn't I purchase old paints if I want them? They're the paints of a master painter, my own ancestor. I am honored to own them, and I only wish I could paint as brilliantly as da Padova did!" Fitzgerald Cotton bowed his head like he was praying or something.

"The man was evil," I snapped.

"Or totally mad," Betty added, pointing to a page in the art book. "At least, people thought he was."

Fitzgerald lifted his head. "The man has been dead for centuries. You're delusional, you kids. As mad as da Padova was said to be. And so what if the man was crazy? He was an artist! He was a marvel! People feared and revered him—they recognized his genius. He was known by his code name in the Magi School, II Sorridente. The Smiler." Fitzgerald Cotton's voice became distant, dreamy. "His smile was something awful to see, I've read—frightening. Vengeful. He liked to sign his paintings with that smile. You'd have to search carefully through a crowd scene or a host of angels or whatever it was that he'd painted, and you'd find a face with da Padova's own vicious smile."

"Like this," murmured Betty, her finger tapping the picture of Francesca Rigoletti's portrait in the art book.

It was the artist's little joke, I thought. Sort of like how Alfred Hitchcock found it fun to appear in his own movies. But Hitchcock only made scary movies; he himself wasn't scary in real life. Lorenzo da Padova
was
scary in real life. And I had the feeling he was still alive—somehow—and right here with us in the room.

"I don't want to be related to him, Uncle Fitz," Homer piped up.

"It doesn't matter," I said quickly to Homer. "You've got the genes of loads of other ancestors in you that cancel him out."

"'Genes'?" asked Homer, perplexed.

"Never mind," I said hurriedly. "What really matters, is the paints. Your uncle's got da Padova's paints—and that's why da Padova's got your uncle." I slapped my open palms down hard on the wooden paint box and turned to look Fitzgerald Cotton full in the face. "And that's why
you've
got my mom!"

"What Connor's saying," breathed Betty at my side, "is that you're
possessed,
Uncle Fitz." I felt her arm tremble against mine.

"Nonsense!" barked Fitzgerald Cotton, his eyes glittering.

I pointed a shaking finger at the shocking portrait of Mom. "What's that, then? Whose signature is
that
?"

It was hard to see, at first, but it was there—hidden down in the shadows of the right-hand corner of Fitzgerald Cotton's largest canvas, painted with Fitzgerald Cotton's own hand: the sly, smiling face of a little man.

For those whom thou think's thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

—J
OHN
D
ONNE,
Holy Sonnets

Padua, Italy. September 1479

The funeral was over, and three painters of the Magi School gathered back at Lorenzo da Padova's studio. They were the ones who lived in closest proximity to his villa, so they were the ones who had to come empty the artist's chamber of all the man's possessions.

The sumptuous villa in Padua now belonged to the young wife, whom da Padova had abandoned many years earlier. She and her fatherless children would soon move in. But the widow wanted nothing to do with the art studio.

In fact, the young widow had sent word via messenger that the artwork could be burned for all she cared. God forbid she would ever hang any of da Padova's paintings in her home!
Dio mia!

Burn
the paintings? The Magi Painters were aghast. Never! They had not liked the painter—indeed, many in their group had feared him—but no one could discount his genius. The Magi Painters knew the paintings would fetch the widow a fine price. High-placed ministers of government were interested in the collection of landscapes, and the prince who had already commissioned several portraits would most happily purchase any others for his private gallery. The Magi Painters arranged for the sales. Now these three surveyed the nearly empty studio.

There were the props da Padova had used to set the stage for his paintings: the lengths of velvet, the bowls for fruit, the etched wine goblets. "I will take all these," said Guiseppe Sebastiani. "II Sorridente would want me to have them, I feel sure."

"Well, I can use his blank canvases," Marcello d'Augustino piped up. "And these carved wooden easels to put them on. I know he would be most pleased for me to have them."

"Then I shall take the model's chair," pronounced Julio Luciano, indicating the brocade bench where Lorenzo da Padova had posed his subjects. "And this little table. His soul will rest easier, knowing I am putting them to daily use."

The men carried their new possessions to the door, then turned back to regard the room uneasily. Something did not feel quite right.

Nothing was left now but da Padova's jars of supple brushes, his palette, and a carved wooden box full of pigments. Yet no one had rushed to claim these things. No one seemed to want to touch them at all.

The artists coughed nervously. Julio Luciano reached for the door handle, but the door would not open. The men had left it unlocked when they entered, all three were quite certain of this. But now it was stuck firmly, as if bolted from the outside.

The three men pulled hard on the handle, twisting it to the right and to the left. A faint, foul-smelling breeze wafted through the room, though the window was tightly closed. The men banged the door with their fists to alert the servants. But still no one came, and the men felt their growing unease turn to dread. Then—

"Hark!" gasped Marcello d'Augustino, holding up one finger so the others would stop banging and listen.

"What is it that I hear?" stammered Julio Luciano. The three men held their breath, waiting, listening. From the far side of the room there came a faint hissing noise. And then the scraping sound of something sliding...

The wooden paint box on the table was sliding slowly toward the edge, pushed by some unseen force. The three men drew back in terror when the box reached the table's edge yet did not fall. They backed against the door as the paint box floated toward them, drifting like a feather in the air. Marcello d'Augustino bravely reached out his two hands and took hold of the box as it neared him.

"I think," he said weakly, "I shall take this paint box. II Sorridente would want me to."

The three men stared at one another, breathing heavily.

"Yes, indeed," whispered Julio Luciano.

"His memory will never die," Guiseppe Sebastiani spoke up brightly, his voice loud in the small room.

"Indeed not," agreed Marcello d'Augustino quickly. "And these paints will always enjoy a place of honor on my shelf. Even when I am dead and buried, these paints will remain! I have heard tell that the pigments of famous artists fetch very high prices at auction. I have no doubt the paints in this box will someday be bought by someone who will appreciate their history and the brilliance of their original owner."