The Eternal Ones (27 page)

“How fascinating.”

“Not fascinating enough.”

“What do you mean?” Haven asked.

“Nothing. It’s just that this was my last chance, and I screwed it up. But I have to paint whatever is in my head, you know. These were the visions that were sent to me. They wouldn’t go away until I put them on canvas. It’s a shame they’re so hard for other people to look at.”

“You have visions?” Haven asked, her heart pounding. Was this was the girl Leah had mentioned? The one who could show her “the truth”?

“That’s where I get my ideas. When I first started painting, they were beautiful. But they’ve been getting darker for the past few years. They keep me awake at night now. It all started when I joined.”

“Joined what?”

Marta took a long drag on her cigarette. “Forget it. You seem like a nice little Southern girl. Believe it or not, a couple of years ago, I was a nice girl from Nebraska. Now my boyfriend’s dead and everything’s gone to hell. New York’s a dangerous place. You don’t want to start messing around with the wrong types. Look what happened to me.” She held both arms in the air, and the sleeves of her dress plunged to her shoulders. When seen in the light, the track marks were terrifying.

“But Marta,” Haven started as the door swung open. She stepped back to avoid being hit and found herself hidden from view.

“I’ve been looking all over for you.” It was Iain’s voice. His whisper was harsh and insistent. “Come back inside. There are people who want to talk to the artist.”

“Do I have to?” Marta protested. “Nobody likes the paintings anyway.”

“How do you know that when you haven’t spoken to anyone all night?” Iain snapped. “Do I need to remind you how much is at stake here?”

“
You
were the one who wanted the show,” Marta complained, though Haven heard her moving toward the door. She peeked around at Haven. “You coming in?” she asked. Haven shook her head silently. “Then it was nice to meet you. If you really like the stuff, you can probably find it sitting next to the Dumpster later tonight.” Then she disappeared.

“Who are you talking to?” Iain demanded.

“Just some girl I met in the alley.” Marta’s voice was already mixing into the party chatter. “Don’t worry, it’s no one from the Society.”

When the door closed, Iain remained outside.

“Hello?” he called. “Someone there?”

Haven peeked out from her new hiding place behind the gallery’s Dumpster and saw Iain’s frazzled eyes roaming over every inch of the alley. His head snapped toward a rustling sound that came from the trash, and he watched a large rat sprint across the pavement. Once he was satisfied that Marta’s new friend must have been nothing more than a drug-induced fantasy, he rapped at the gallery door. It opened immediately and he vanished inside.

Haven was livid.

As soon as she arrived back at the mews house, she spent some quality time scrubbing the toilet bowl with Iain’s toothbrush and spiking his shampoo with cooking oil. Then Haven cursed fate and Frances Whitman as she crammed her belongings into her suitcase. Somehow the woman had stumbled across the very words Haven’s heart had been desperate to hear. The moment Frances had insisted that Ethan loved Constance, Haven’s defenses had dropped, and she’d returned to Iain exposed and vulnerable. Now she would suffer for being so foolish.

But Haven didn’t leave once her suitcase was packed. She sat and stared at it instead. As much as it hurt to stay, she couldn’t go home. Constance had guided her to New York. Haven was there for a reason, and she couldn’t go anywhere until she knew what it was.

Still, the pain was worse than she’d ever expected—and she hadn’t been prepared for the blow. For the first time, Haven understood how her mother must have felt when she had discovered the truth about Veronica Cabe. If this was the damage love could do, Haven wanted no part of it.

At three o’clock in the morning, she passed out with the television blaring. It was a restless sleep, filled with dark images from Marta Vega’s show. But in Haven’s dream, she was inside the paintings, powerless to stop what had been set in motion—unable to bring order to the chaos.

Iain woke her with a kiss.

“Where have you been?” she croaked, praying he would tell her the truth.

“Out with my lawyer.” Iain scooped her off the couch and carried her up to the bedroom. Despite his performance at the party, he seemed remarkably sober.

“What time is it?”

“Late.”

“You’ve been out with some old lawyer all this time?”

“We had a lot to talk about,” Iain said.

“Like what?”

“Aren’t you nosy? What do you mean, ‘like what’? You really want to hear about my legal troubles?”

“I want to hear the truth,” Haven said. Somewhere inside, she still expected him to have an explanation for everything.

“And that’s what I’m telling you.” He lied so easily that it crushed her. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him she’d seen him at the party with his hands on Marta Vega. She wanted to make him admit that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. That the person she’d dreamed of her entire life was nothing more than a fraud and a liar.

But she knew an angry confrontation would ruin everything. She had no choice but to stay close to Iain Morrow if she wanted to solve Constance’s mystery.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered when she started to sob with frustration and rage. “It’s almost over.”

She could taste her own tears when Iain’s lips met hers. Though she knew she should resist, she was just too weak. As Haven forced Marta Vega out of her head, she briefly wondered if Constance had ever done the same to Rebecca. Then the pain vanished, as if Iain’s kiss was the only cure for the wounds he had inflicted. One last time wouldn’t kill anyone, Haven decided.

“Hello?”

“Haven? Where the hell are you?”

“I’m in the bathtub.” Haven groaned and lay back with the wash-cloth over her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to scrub the events of the previous evening out of her brain.

“In the bathtub
where
?” Beau demanded.

“The mews house,” Haven admitted wearily.

“Haven! Jesus! What were you thinking? I thought you weren’t going back there! As I recall, your exact words were that you’d be an idiot to keep sleeping at some psycho’s house.”

“Those were
your
exact words, not mine. But I guess I am an idiot. A big idiot.” Her voice cracked on the last “
idiot
.”

“What happened?” Beau asked softly. “You okay?”

Haven pulled herself together before she spoke. “I had a little setback. Frances Whitman led me down a wrong path. She had me all convinced that I was living some big love story. But I’ve figured it all out now. I’m going to find out why Constance wanted me to come here, and then I’m going home.”

“Home? To Snope City?”

“Why not?
You’re
down there, and there’s nothing in New York for me anymore,” Haven said. “But listen, can we talk about this later when I’m out of the bath?”

“You forgot, didn’t you?”

“Forgot
what
?”

“You sent me an ‘urgent’ text at two A.M. You know, if you’re going to treat me like your personal secretary, the least you can do is remember in the morning.”

“Sorry.” Haven didn’t have it in her to play along with Beau’s attempts to cheer her up. “What did I send you?”

“A couple of names. Marta Vega and Adam Rosier. You asked me to see what I could find out about them.”

Haven sat up, splashing bathwater all over the floor. “What did you find out?”

“The Rosier guy seems pretty clean. His name doesn’t show up anywhere.”

“Really? Not even in connection with the Ouroboros Society? I’m sure he’s someone important.”

“Nope,” Beau said. “But don’t despair. I’ve got plenty of dirt on Marta Vega.”

“Perfect. Give me a minute to dry off and make some coffee,” Haven said, though the news already had her on edge. “By the way, have I ever told you you’re a wonderful snoop?”

“Gee, I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”

“Try flattered for once.” Haven threw on a shirt she’d taken from Iain’s closet to use as a robe. “If I want to offend you, I’ll ask about school.”

Downstairs, she searched the first floor of the house. There was no sign of Iain. His side of the bed had been empty when Haven woke, and she hadn’t seen a trace of him since. “Okay, shoot,” she told Beau as she filled the kettle with water.

“Marta Vega. Born Trisha Taylor in Coon Rapids, Nebraska. Won a big art competition when she was sixteen years old. Moved to New York City when she was seventeen and shacked up with Jeremy Johns.”

“And when did she start cheating on him?” Haven snipped as she set the kettle down on the stove and lit the gas.

“That’s just gossip, Haven. I’m trying to stick to the facts for now.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway, I found out a couple of interesting things about Marta. First off, she’s a member of the Ouroboros Society.”

“I figured she must be,” Haven said. “I heard the president of the Society talking about her.”

“And a drug addict.”

“Knew that, too. Did you find anything out about Marta and Iain?”

“Nothing that would stand up in court. But they do seem to be pretty friendly.”

“I wonder—” Haven started to say.

“What?”

“Well, remember I told you that Ethan cheated on Constance with someone named Rebecca Underwood?”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder if there might be some connection between Rebecca and Marta. Iain told me that people have a way of finding each other across lifetimes.”

“So you’re positive that Ethan was unfaithful?”

Just the thought made Haven wince. “I don’t know for sure about Ethan, but I
do
know in this life Iain Morrow is a big, fat, cheating liar.”

“
Really
? Do tell.”

The kettle began to whistle, and Haven yanked it away from the flame. “Try not to sound so excited, Beau. This is my life. It’s not some celebrity gossip show.”

“Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” Haven took a deep breath and finished preparing her coffee. “So I followed Iain last night. He said he was going to have dinner with his lawyer, but he went to an art gallery instead. I saw him there with Marta. He had his hands all over her.”

“
No
! The slut!”

“She’s not a slut.” Haven was surprised to discover she couldn’t muster any hatred for Marta. “She’s actually kind of cool.”

“I was talking about Iain.”

“Oh.
Right
. Anyway, the weirdest part of the whole evening was that I ended up running into Marta outside the gallery. And get this, Beau: She said that the ideas for her paintings come to her in visions. I didn’t have a chance to ask her much about it, but I think she might be the one that Leah Frizzell was talking about—the girl who’s supposed to show me the truth.”

“Well, that’s
awkward
,” Beau said. “Are you going to suck it up and go talk to her? You want to know where she lives? I’ve got the address right here.”

Haven wished there was another way. “Just what I wanted to do today—spend some quality time with my boyfriend’s lover.”

“You don’t have to go, Haven,” Beau reminded her. “I know I gave you a hard time about going to see Frances Whitman and the Ouroboros people. But this is something else all together. You don’t have to do it. You can come home whenever you’re ready.”

“Sure—and spend the next sixty or seventy years hating myself for being such a wuss?” Haven scoffed. “No thanks. I have to figure out what’s going on here before I go back. And if that means paying a friendly visit to Marta Vega, then so be it.”

“What if she doesn’t want to talk to
you
?” Beau asked.

Haven remembered the sad, lonely girl in the alley. “Marta will talk to me,” Haven assured him. “I’m pretty sure she’d talk to
anybody
.”

 

THE BUILDING NEAR the corner of White and West Broadway was a century-old tool factory that had been renovated to suit the sort of people who never got their hands dirty. It was six stories high and almost the length of a city block, yet the intercom listed only six names. Each apartment took up an entire floor of the building. Haven rang the buzzer labeled VEGA and waited. A minute later, she pressed the button again, and a voice came over the speaker.

“Go away,” it growled.

“Marta?” Haven spoke hurriedly into the microphone. “My name is Haven Moore.”

“I said go away,” the voice repeated. Its owner sounded exhausted.

“Marta, please. I met you last night at the gallery. I need to ask you about your visions. It’s a matter of—”

Haven heard an electronic buzzing. She pushed at the door to the building and let herself inside.

The old freight elevator was a turn-of-the-century antique. Inside its steel cage, Haven watched the floors pass by within fingers’ reach until she made a rough landing on the fifth floor. The elevator released her into a tiny room with a single door. Haven hesitated—then knocked.

Seconds later, she heard the sound of multiple locks turning inside. Finally, the door opened a crack. A bloodshot eyeball examined Haven, then disappeared. The door swung open wider, offering a view of a vast, dimly lit loft. Every surface in sight was coated with a spongy layer of dust and soot. The books on the shelves no longer had names. Objects abandoned on a coffee table had formed shapeless stalagmites. What must have been a bicycle propped against the wall was now a shaggy, two-horned beast. Judging by its thickness, the dust had begun collecting for months.

“Shut the door,” ordered the voice, which suddenly sounded far away. “And be sure to lock it.”

Once she had secured the loft, Haven traced the voice to another door at the far end of the hall. A weak strip of light at the bottom of a pair of curtains lit a once-luxurious bathroom. Now the claw-foot tub was filled with pillows and dirty bed linens. A stack of books teetered on top of a laundry basket, and hypodermic needles cluttered both sides of the porcelain sink. An easel stood near the window, displaying a half-finished painting. Perched on top of the closed toilet lid, with its arms wrapped around its knees, was a ghost dressed in a man’s undershirt. It smiled at the horror on Haven’s face, its skin stretched tight across its bones.