Inamorata by Megan Chance Page B

to glimmer, as if her pale skin and the rings on her fingers caught the light and reflected them into the paint. Though I was looking only at heavy impasto, I thought suddenly of the compelling nature of her gaze, those times when its darkness seemed to pull me in, to capture me in an endless orbit, and I saw the same thing now, in the eyes of a painted boy.
    “Do you see, Odilé?” she whispered. “Do you not see the light, even in such darkness? Now that you are looking for it, do you see what is beyond a first glance?”
    She drew her finger from the painting. The boy’s eyes went black again, black as eternity, endless, and yet . . . I saw that glimmer in them, as if the reflection she’d put there had somehow stayed. Ah, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? It was only an illusion.
    When she turned to look at me, I saw that glimmer in her eyes too, something that spoke of hidden things, of a knowledge beyond what anyone could or should possess—a knowledge I yearned for.
    She said, “You told me I should use my talent to change the world.”
    “Yes,” I agreed. “And I was right, wasn’t I? His poetry was stunning, and everyone knows who inspired it. It will last. And so will you.”
    “You know this?”
    “How can anyone know for certain? But yes, I think it will.”
    She looked back at the painting. I heard sounds in the hall beyond, footsteps, the swish of skirts, the low murmur of talk and laughter.
    “And if you had such a talent for inspiration, what would you do?”
    “What I advised you to do. Inspire the world. Leave a mark. ”
    “No matter the cost?”
    “Is there a cost?” I asked. “I confess I fail to see it. And even if there were, surely such an outcome is worth it? To change the world and have your name be known and remembered? Yes, I think it must be worth anything. Now come, shall we move on? I’m beginning to feel the boy’s eyes as you do.”
    She nodded, but before I could take a step, she said, “How glad I am to have discovered you, Odilé.”
    The warmth of her smile was a balm on my irritation. I forgot everything but her. I forgot what we’d spoken of. I forgot the confession she’d wrought from me; I failed to see its meaning. I was glad only to be with her.
    Later, I realized how true were the things she’d said. I was blind. I had no conception of the world beyond my pleasure, and so I did not see how it tilted and bent. I did not see the door I was walking through, nor how it would change my life. I did not realize we weren’t talking of figurative demons at all.

N ICHOLAS

    I t was mid afternoon by the time Giles and I left the Hannigans at the Danieli and returned to our own rooms off the Campo San Fantin, but there were still a few hours before the salon.
    I told Giles I had to run out for a bit, and he didn’t question me; he was too busy looking over his canvas, where he’d scratched in Sophie Hannigan’s form leaning over the balustrade. It was decent enough, though if Giles had any gift at all, it was for allegory. Something about overly muscled, winged gods and fantastical creatures called to what talent he had—perhaps it was simply that no one had ever seen such creatures except in books, and so he didn’t have to make them look real.
    I left him there making endless alterations, and went out the door and down the stairs. Our place was small; no palazzo, this, but just a merchant’s house, with a shop selling relics on the ground floor, owned by a Jew whose constantly circulating inventory of saint’s parts suggested a connection either to the occult or a cemetery. He preferred his home in the Ghetto, as did his wife, apparently, because he rented out the rest of the house. There was a German couple on the middle floor, and Giles and I had the upper, reached by two flights of stairs leading from a courtyard that was mostly a repository of junk, and which included a well with a constant layer of greenish scum that neither Giles nor I would drink