Page 8 of Evil Eyed
“If you won’t look at yourself, at least look at your painting. Look at the girl with the paintbrush. Can you deny that’s you?”
I watched her reflection in the mirror as she turned her attention to the painting. “I don’t know when I painted it, but I think the girl is supposed to be me, or at least the girl I wished that I was.”
My jaws ached with the need to roar and curse with fury. I knew nothing of her life before she’d freed me from the stone prison. But it wasn’t right. At all. She’d been wronged so severely, abused and trapped by the changeling, and now I learned that she had been miserable as a child as well. When she could have grown up in the most lavish courts in Faerie.
Her friend came to stand beside us. “You were and are my very best friend in the whole world. I wouldn’t be half the woman I am today without you.”
Riann groaned, rolling her eyes. “Don’t even start, Vivi. You were my only friend. Ever. I wouldn’t have been able to get away from Jonathan without your help. I wouldn’t have moved to Kansas City in the first place. You had the brains and the drive. All I wanted to do was paint.”
“That’s not true. You had the imagination. Remember how we used to lie awake for hours at night, looking up at the stars? You told such wonderful stories. You could look at a heap of tumbled down rocks and call it a castle. An old tree became a sentinel guardian. A wreath of daffodils, the most beautiful royal crown. We pretended we were princesses, playing dress up with cheap Halloween costumes. I think deep down you always knew you were secretly a fairy princess, but you had to hide to stay alive.”
I nodded. “I’m sure that was why Vanta came to you, love. To protect you. Cats are formidable guardians, especially black cats.”
“You had to hide,” Vivi whispered, nodding to herself. “You knew it, even as a child. So did Étain, or whoever sent you here. You had to look and be mortal, hidden in plain sight. So hidden that even the changeling didn’t know, did he? Because if Jonathan had known you were fae, I don’t think he would have given you the chance to ever escape him. He would have taken you to the frog-hell immediately.”
Riann shivered at the memory of Fhroig’s lair. I smoothed my palms up and down her arms, trying to warm those chills away.
Vivi’s lips curled in a soft smile, her finger tracing over the outstretched sleeve of the girl in the painting. “You loved that coat. It had red and gold embroidery on the lapels, remember? With large, chunky gold buttons.”
Smiling, Riann nodded at the memory. “It was gaudy as hell. I had terrible fashion taste even as a kid.”
“You wore it for years, even after it was too small. You loved that thing. Whatever happened to it?”
Riann’s smile fell, her eyes darkening with shadows. I pulled her back against me, encouraging her to lean on me. Allow me to support her with my strength and heat and protection. “I came back from your place one day and couldn’t find it. Frantic, I looked and looked, under the bed, outside by the rope swing, the picnic table, everywhere. I even begged Mom to drive me up to school so I could see if I’d forgotten it on the bus. She said there was no need.” She swallowed hard, her voice gruff. “She’d burned it while I was over at your trailer.”
Vivi’s eyes flared with shock, her fingers shaking as she traced the painting. “Oh, honey, I had no idea! Why on earth would she do that?”
“She said it was an old rag, tattered and threadbare and too small anyway. My elbows had poked through, and I’d lost all but one of the buttons. I broke down and sobbed, completely hysterical. I couldn’t believe she’d thrown my coat out. She ended up slapping me to get me to be quiet.” Her hand fluttered up to her cheek in memory. “I ran outside to the fire pit to see. Sure enough, I found a little scrap of green and the last button, a bit charred and melted. I kept them anyway.”
Rage boiled and simmered hotter. Normally I was the stoic treasure, steady and slow like my stone gargoyle. Aidan had the quick trigger, though he was oddly silent. So quiet that I turned my head to see if he was still in the room.
He must have dashed downstairs and back because he had his twin swords. He sat cross-legged on the floor, sharpening one of the blades in his lap. His eyes burned like cold blue flame and he flashed an unholy grin of sheer evil glee up at me.
If this woman who Riann called Mom still lived, she would soon make the Slaughterer’s acquaintance.
“In that little tin box, right? Your treasure box. We used to find all sorts of trinkets and special things in the woods.”
Riann’s eyes widened, some of the tension easing in her shoulders. “I remember! Yes, my treasures.” She laughed, rubbing her head gently against my chest. “I had no idea that I would someday meet the four Irish treasures. I wonder what happened to that box?”
“I still have it, I think.” Vivi frowned, tapping her finger lightly on the canvas. “When you moved in with Jonathan, I’m pretty sure you left a box of keepsakes and memorabilia with me. I’ll look for it when I go home, and if I do have it, I’ll bring it over tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I’d like that. Maybe I left myself some clues before Jonathan got a hold of me.”
Something niggled in the back of my mind. “Where did you get the green coat, love? Perhaps we can do some shopping and find you a replacement.”
She was silent for so long that I tuned in to her thoughts. Shadowed turmoil churned in her mind. The sadness and grief of a broken heart. The furious hurt of a child who knew she’d been denied the most basic support and love from her parents. Neglect and disappointment and loneliness clung to her like the muck from Fhroig’s lair.
“I don’t remember,” she whispered, shaking her head. “It might have been a birthday present? Though I can’t picture Mom buying something like that, even at a thrift store. She was much too prim and proper to buy such a bold color, even without all the embroidery. Do you remember, Vivi?”
“Nothing specific. You were five or six, I think. You wore it a couple of years, only putting it away for the summer.”
Riann pulled away, bending closer to the painting. Completely unaware of the way light danced across her skin, rainbows and prisms of color flaring in the air all around her. “I look like I’m quite a bit older than that here. Maybe even twelve or thirteen. The coat was long gone by then.” Sighing, she straightened and turned to us, a wan smile on her face. “Like I said, a wishful vision of the girl I wish I could have been. Is it safe to keep it here, or should you take it back to the Summer Isle?”
Warwick covered the painting. “I think it best that we keep it hidden, but whenever you want to look at it, I’ll gladly fetch it for you, my lady.”
With a snap of his fingers, the painting and easel disappeared. I watched as she hugged her friend and walked them back downstairs to leave. She didn’t notice Aidan’s swords or the grimness on Ivarr’s face. The fire burning in Keane’s eyes had nothing to do with desire. Only a thirst for retribution.
As their leader, I felt all that and more. A floodgate strained to the breaking point. A powder keg waiting to explode. Though I didn’t burn for retribution. I had but one thought only. One determination.
