The Other Crowd (25 page)

She shrugged. “Not at all. Where’s the booze? I’ve got a nasty case of faeries I need to get over.”

“Did you find any?” Roux asked as Garin prepared a tumbler of Scotch for Annja.

“I found belief,” she said. “That seems to be more than enough for some folk.” She lifted her glass to them. “So, what shall we toast to?”

“To you, Annja,” Roux declared. “Happy birthday!”

She paused, midsip. Utterly flummoxed, she merely stared at Garin and Roux. For a moment she thought she might tear up, but then she gasped and said, “My birthday?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot?” Roux said. “I marked it in my calendar. I know I have the right day.”

“Yes. No, I didn’t—well, yes, I did. I just never think about it all that much. Seriously? So this party is…”

“For you,” both men offered. Roux lifted his chest proudly. The old man displayed much affection toward Annja, which she accepted as a sort of father to daughter relationship. While she suspected Garin’s feelings of desire and pride for her conflicted. “We’ve got a gift for you.”

“I…haven’t been given a birthday gift for ages. What is it?”

Garin stepped back and swept a hand before an easel standing beside a white marble hearth.

Annja stepped over and tugged the black cloth away from the painting. “Oh, it’s a…well, the style looks a lot like Jean Fouquet.” Medieval studies were her forte, and she admired many renaissance painters. Fouquet was fifteenth century. “But no. It’s not Fouquet. It can’t be. I’ve never seen this painting before.”

The painting was a subject that had become very much her own. It featured Joan of Arc tied to the stake with the flames at her feet and a disturbed crowd looking on.

“The colors are beautiful. My gosh, this is so…generous.” She turned to both men. “Thank you. I love it. It’ll add some much-needed color above the couch in my living room.”

“What makes you believe it’s not by Fouquet?” Roux asked. “Take a good look.”

Roux winked at Garin as Annja bent to closely examine the painting. She almost touched it, but then jerked her fingers away. “This is an original.”

“It is,” Garin said. “It was listed at auction as in the style of Jean Fouquet.”

“But it
is
Fouquet,” Roux said.

“The style is most definitely his, but…” She searched her memory for what she knew of Jean Fouquet. “He didn’t actually start painting until around 1445. So he couldn’t have possibly witnessed this scene.”

“What makes you think the man wasn’t sketching the events he witnessed as he journeyed toward becoming a painter?” Roux asked.

“Really? Do you think he actually witnessed Joan’s burning? It’s so sad to consider now.”

Though she wielded Joan’s sword, Annja was ever aware what the sainted warrior had gone through in her quest to accomplish what she believed must be done. And to be punished so cruelly was unthinkable.

“Wait a second.” She bent closer to inspect the face of one of the soldiers in the crowd. Utter horror stretched his face as he looked up the flames that licked at Joan’s feet. “Is that—? It can’t be.”

“It could be.” Roux stood beside the painting and assumed the tilted head pose of the man in the picture.

“That’s you! And the other guy is—” The soldier standing shoulder to shoulder with the horrified one looked away from it all, unwilling to witness the tragic event. She turned on Garin. “You?”

He nodded and shrugged. “It was not a good day.”

“This is absolutely incredible. That Fouquet sketched this and then later rendered it—but it’s not in his gallery of work.”

“It was lost after a fire obliterated his workshop in Tours. We’ve been aware of its existence but have never quite been able to put our hands to it until it showed up at auction recently,” Roux explained.

“We thought you’d like something from both of us,” Garin said over her shoulder. “Deny it all you like, but we three are a sort of family. In a roundabout way.”

So that was the reason behind his reference to family earlier. If she had known he’d been planning this surprise she might have been nicer to him. On the other hand, probably not.

“This is amazing. It’s perfect. Thank you.” She turned and hugged Garin, which surprised the hell out of him. But before he could settle into the warmth of her embrace, she pulled away and went to hug Roux. “Family? I can see that. In a roundabout way.”

“Families can never claim to be perfect, or even nice to one another all the time,” Roux said.

Garin lifted his tumbler. “To family.”

R
ACHEL
C
OLLINS STOMPED
out the back door of her house to the scrubby plot where forest met the field. She spotted the gray rabbit immediately. It disregarded her. She was just the old lady who tended the garden and made it full of carrots and cabbage every summer.

Lifting the spear of Lugh over her head, Rachel thrust it forward. She wasn’t strong, but the spear left her grip with an unnatural speed and found a sure path.

Upon impact, the rabbit flipped into the air, its hind legs twitching and flailing. The spear cut through its gut and moved clean out the other side.

Holding her arm out straight, fingers curled to catch, Rachel caught the spear as it returned.

“Handy piece of work, this old spear.” She trudged toward the rabbit, but a glint on the ground caught her eye. She bent and nabbed the small, cold nugget. “Coo, what’s this? Looks like gold.”