Page 56 of Marked By Moonlight
Neither Marius nor I spoke until we were several blocks away. He was back in bodyguard mode, studying our surroundings for potential threats, while my mind remained on Franz Marc’s horses.
“Don’t even think of getting involved in this,” he finally grumbled.
I scoffed. “Because a little old lady and her painting can be so dangerous?”
“A little old lady and a valuable painting,” he countered. “Or am I wrong?”
I shook my head. “Very, very valuable.”
“How valuable?”
I thought it over. “Another Franz Marc painting —The Foxes— sold a few years ago for fifty-six million dollars.”
He stopped in his tracks. “Fifty-six million?”
I nodded, waving back in the direction we’d come from. “But that painting would be worth much, much more. It would be the find of the century, if it came into the public eye.”
Marius’s skeptical look told me what he put those odds at.
“Fifty-six million reasons for you to stay away from it,” he warned.
I scowled, but he was right.
He touched my cheek, then showed me the red smudge on his finger.
“Anastasia went a little heavy on the lipstick,” he explained.
That made me smile, but a block later, I found myself pouting a little.
“Well, I’ve done what Gordon asked, so I won’t be involved any more.”
I ought to have consoled myself with having seen the painting in person, but my mind was too busy releasing those horses into an open, rugged landscape, as their creator intended. A painting like that shouldn’t be hidden away for only a few to see. It should be out in the world and celebrated.
“Gordon is going to have a hell of a time finding a buyer that fits Anastasia’s specifications,” I added. “I don’t think his network includes any art aficionados who aren’t capitalists, crooks, or…what was it?”
“Mediocrities,” Marius grumbled. “Another reason you don’t want to get involved.”
I tilted my head in question.
“A class act like you mixing with the rabble?” He shook his head at the notion.
Ha. Me, a class act? My fingernails were chipped and caked with flecks of old paint from all that scraping I’d been doing.
Marius pulled me along for another few blocks, making a beeline for the nearest Tube station. The sights and shops of Kensington High Street were a blur to me, though. All I saw were those horses, prancing impatiently in place on the wall in Anastasia’s lovely but fading apartment.
Chapter Thirteen
MINA
I thought about the painting and its fate throughout my trip back to Paris. A vampire-free trip, thanks to Marius, but one still fraught with fears and anxieties.
“Repeat after me,” Marius insisted before I left him to report back to my godfather. “I will not get involved in any of Gordon’s deals.”
“I will not get involved in any of Gordon’s deals,” I echoed sullenly.
“I will not do any favors for him, no matter how innocent they seem,” Marius went on.
I echoed that too, partly through gritted teeth.
