Counsellor (Acquisition 1)

“What? Until what?” I didn’t want her to stop. All this was news to me and I was starved for information.

“Oh, nothing. I shouldn’t have said. It’s all ancient history. It’s just, those things aren’t really talked about. Not in the house, especially.”

“If it’s ancient history, then why can’t you talk about it? What harm could there be?”

“Mr. Lucius should be home in a couple of days.” I’d learned that Renee’s subject change signaled the end of the conversation, despite my many unsuccessful attempts to make it otherwise.

There was only one part of the house we never visited—the top floor.

“It’s mostly shut off and dusty. No one goes up there, really. Not anymore.” Renee always led me away from the stairs to the third floor, even when I had placed a foot hesitantly on the bottom step. The steps weren’t dusty, and I got the feeling Renee’s hurried explanation was hiding something more. Then again, this house was full of secrets—Renee’s not the least among them.

A few days later Renee and I were whiling away the afternoon in the library. I still hadn’t set eyes on Lucius or Vinemont since my recovery. I sometimes caught myself wondering what Vinemont was doing, where he was. Then I reminded myself of the scars on my back and turned my thoughts elsewhere.

Renee sat under a throw blanket and read as I tried to paint. She had ordered every supply I could think of to get my art started again. But for the third day in a row, I just stared at the blank canvas.

Before, I would let whatever I was feeling meld itself to the canvas. Now, it was as if my emotions were in too much of a vicious muddle to do anything other than a Picasso imitation, my pieces scattered in ways that reflected how fragmented I was inside.

My back had healed. It no longer stung or ached, but I knew it was different, scarred. Renee smeared some sort of specialty cream she’d ordered from Juliet over my back every night. She said my scars had already faded much more than her own. Even then, she wouldn’t tell me about her Acquisition, about why she lingered here in this house.

While I was lost in my thoughts, my hands worked on the canvas of their own accord. Before I knew it, I’d drawn out a harsh line, then another, then another. I worked feverishly, sketching a body drawn impossibly tight and covered with the crisscrossing lines. I drew and shaded until the image came forth from the white background just as it had done in my mind.

The canvas was macabre even without color. The woman’s head lolled to the side. A hand with a whip reared back as if the aggressor stood where I did, on this side of the easel, ready to inflict more violence. When I finally changed to paint, mixing the colors with a rough hand, I realized it had grown late. Renee slept on the couch, a book resting against her softly rising and falling chest.

I woke her gently and sent her on to bed before returning to my work, intent on finishing what I’d begun. I smoothed on the crimson, letting the painting run in streaky rivers before sweeping through them with the edge of my brush. I let that part dry and worked on the edges and background. I swiped my hand on my long skirt, leaving a streak that I knew would never come out.

Vines in blacks and greens—matted, twisting, and snakelike—grew from my brush strokes. They looked as venomous as I’d intended, threatening from the canvas, seeking to taste the crimson of the foreground. They wrapped around the nude woman’s ankles and wrists.

When I finished, I stepped away, giving a critical eye to the piece. It was dark and needed a good deal of touching up, but it was my soul in pencil and paint. The darkness infecting me had leached onto the bristles and then the threads. Would getting it out keep the rot from going any deeper?

“You captured it.”

I whirled. Vinemont stood behind me, so close that I didn’t know how I hadn’t heard him. He was clean shaven again, well put together. He wore a suit, the tie loosened and his top button undone. His eyes, though, were haunted. They were still his deep, turbulent blue. Beneath them were gray circles, unease or worry having left its mark.

“You look well,” he said.

“Do I?” I crossed my arms over my chest, not caring that I got paint all over my shirt. It wasn’t the first time. “Maybe you should see my back. It might change your mind.”

He finished the job on his tie, pulling it loose so it hung open around his neck. “I did what I had to do, Stella.”

A burning rage erupted in my chest, my mind. My anger had simmered for so long that seeing his face forced it to boil over. But what made it worse, what really sent me over the edge, was that some part of me recognized a change in him. The things he’d said to me that night in my room, the way he looked now—none of it fit with what he’d said about willingly hurting me again.