The first thing that caught my eye was Michael’s most famous painting of me. Michael’s Archangel. It hung on the far wall in the back. My image floated above lavender clouds that puffed around the edges. I hovered in the center, my hair flapping out in soft, brown wings that took over most of the picture. Some of the strands wrapped around my body, but not all of it. There were peeks of nipple and flesh to tease the viewer. The coolest part of the painting for me was my actual strands of hair that Michael had embossed the painting with to give it texture. Hex has the original? Holy shit. He must’ve paid an awful lot to purchase it. An empty canvas of similar size rested to the right of Michael’s Archangel. Buckets of black, red, and silver feathers sat in front of it.
I stepped farther into the room. Metal served as the floor. My footsteps sounded on the hard surface. In the center of the room stood a huge table at least six feet long and four feet wide. It reminded me of those movies where a character who loved trains would have a big table with a full model of a town on it. Hex’s table was similar, but instead of a train and tracks, a mini model of the castle and its property decorated the entire surface. A circular moat with real water surrounded the outer stone wall and massive castle inside of it. I leaned in closer. Tiny herbs served as the grass and bushes throughout the property. I caught the scents of rosemary and mint, but figured more were used in the depiction. Trees sprouted throughout the area. From what I remembered, all the trees and bushes looked exactly where they should be. Numbered tags hung on each tree.
Why is he numbering the trees? He does climb them a lot. Does this have anything to do with the collection? Is this model a part of it?
For some reason, I didn’t like the tremors of fear rushing through my veins as I took in the model even more. An electronic display with several green, white, and black buttons lay on the table. I couldn’t figure out what the display was for, maybe some sort of remote control or even a tiny computer screen, maybe. Miniature people lay in a box on the edge of the model. There were ten of them and all were women. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure Hex hadn’t walked in, I hurried to the box, looked in it, and picked up a few. None were recognizable. Sure, they had detailed features carved into the molded plastic and wore little clothes, but I didn’t know any of them, except maybe one. I put the others down and seized the tiny woman with red hair and a sparkling sea green dress with tiny white flowers painted on the fabric.
Patricia. It has to be her. This was the dress she wore the night of X-Lab’s opening. Why would he have a model of her?
I searched through the box and didn’t see me, Alvarez, or their grandma in it. Ten little models of women. Last night Hex told me the story of how his father and mother kidnapped ten women and killed them all. Was ten just a coincidental number or did it mean things I didn’t want to think about? I set the box back down. That time, I took more care in how I walked around the room, tip-toeing so Hex wouldn’t be alerted that someone had been in this area, listening every few seconds for any movement around me.
Ten models. Ten women, and one of the female models in the box is Patricia? That’s not a good coincidence, but it doesn’t mean Hex has anything to do with the murders. Maybe he is somehow reenacting the murders as a sort of art therapy. This could be therapeutic. But then why did he number the trees?
I touched the cool stone of the tiny walls and castle. All of it took time. There was no way Hex threw the model together in twenty-four hours. Maybe if he’d had help, but still I wasn’t so sure.
I have to tell Alvarez about this.
Turning around in a slow circle, I tried to memorize everything else in the room. My attention caught on a large jar on the top shelf in the corner of the room. If I hadn’t been attempting to see everything in the space, I probably never would’ve even found it. But there the jar sat, at the top of the shelf, and inside floated a small tan penis connected to a scrotum.
Screams ripped from my throat and burned everything in its path. I raced out of there without looking at where I was going and bumped my leg on the end of a table. It didn’t matter. I limped out as fast as I could. All of my guards barreled into the studio.