The Color of Light (77 page)

Then, as if someone was calling him, he cocked his head, listening to a voice beyond Rafe’s hearing. “I have to go now,” he said. And then he turned around and went tripping off down the lane. His outline shimmered, then disappeared into the thin cold air, leaving Rafe alone in the snowy graveyard.

She found him in the garden. She stepped out the French doors, looking up at the sky. It was a deep Prussian blue; she could see Venus twinkling overhead. He was dressed in gray trousers and a soft black crew-neck sweater. It was as casual as she had ever seen him. His hands were in his pockets; he was staring absently up at the stars. This late in spring, the Japanese cherry was already weeping its petals to the ground. Moonflowers turned their pale, open faces to the night sky, weaving themselves through a white clematis vine that trailed up and around an arched wooden arbor. A fountain of white roses clambered enthusiastically up the wall of the next building. Hanging pots of night-blooming jasmine perfumed the air. He turned at the sound of her padding down the steps.

“Your ring,” she said. “I noticed you weren’t wearing it anymore.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve put it somewhere safe.” Before the Graduate Exhibition, he had lifted it off from around his neck, held it in the palm of his hand. He had bent his head and kissed it goodbye before shutting it carefully away in a velvet box in a drawer in his bedroom.

Her hair was wet, falling to her waist. She smelled of the lily-of-the-valley shower gel that was in his bathroom. He pulled her up onto her toes, pressed his lips to hers. Pushed the robe down around her shoulders and nibbled kisses down her throat.

There was something she wasn’t telling him, an unspoken air of regret. He pulled away, looked gravely into her eyes.

“What is it, sweet girl?” He was hesitant with her, awkward, almost shy. “Did you…was it…was I all right?”

She put her arms around him, whispered into his chest. “It’s just that… well, I can never save you again.”

He pushed aside her hair, cupped her face in his hands. “You’re wrong about that,” he told her earnestly. “You do save me. Every day.”

He went down on his knees before her, bowed his head to kiss her belly, the muscles of her abdomen reminding him of the body of a violin. A memory teased at the edge of his consciousness. Something about Clayton’s centaur. It had been a little too accurate.

“Tessa,” he frowned. “Did Clayton see me naked?”

“Um. He might have.”

He grimaced. “Anyone else I should know about?”

She lifted her shoulders, dropped them. “Ah
—
maybe Ben.”

He sighed.

“It really helped him with his sculpture,” she enthused. “Did you see?”

Art students. The robe spilled to the ground with a silky splash. He made love to her amidst the clouds of white flox creeping across the earth at their feet.

She dabbed a jot of raspberry jam onto her croissant, poured them both a cup of coffee. He preferred his black; she took both cream and sugar.

“When we’re in Paris,” she said dreamily. “It will be like this every day.” She was sleepy and radiant, her hair tumbled in tawny ringlets around her face.

His heart filled with love for her. Inside, he was already grieving. He couldn’t go back to Paris. Sorrow was etched on every building and streetlamp in the City of Light. Turning a corner in le Marais, in St. Germain, in Montparnasse, in Montmartre, each vista would bring renewed feelings of tragedy and loss.

He busied himself with stirring cream and sugar into her second cup of coffee. “It’s going to be brilliant,” he said courageously, trying to work up some enthusiasm. “I want you to do everything I did…take classes, sit in cafés, paint in the Louvre. You won’t want to come back.” His smile was a ruse to conceal his grief. “You can even stay in my old rooms. I think I’m still paying rent on them. Then again, you might prefer the Marais. It’s gotten very hip.”

The first cloud of doubt crossed her face. “You’re not coming with me, are you.”

Slowly, he shook his head no.

“You can take a year off, the school is in the black now,” she said quickly. “You can fly back whenever they need you.”

He dropped his gaze. “I can’t go back to Paris, Tessa. Too many memories.”

“We’ll make new ones.” She reached across the table, took his hand. He rubbed his thumb over hers. From the look on his face, the lengthening silence between them, she knew he meant it.

She looked down at the table, heaved a sigh. “Then I won’t go, either.” she said decisively.

He looked up at her in alarm. “What do you mean? This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Tessa. You
must
go.”

She shook her head resolutely. “I’m not leaving you. If you’re not going, I’m not going.”

He sighed, covered her hand with his, wished he had a cigarette. “Tessa,” he said quietly. “I want you to have the life that was stolen from us. From Sofia and me. I owe it to her.”

“I have that life,” she said. “With you.”

“I nearly killed you, Tessa. That’s the life you have with me.”

He couldn’t meet her startled gaze. “I never told you. The night you saved me…The night you did that brave and foolish thing…”

“Anyone would have done it.”

“No. No one but you.” He squeezed her hand. “You were in shock. Dying. The ambulance wasn’t coming. I almost…” He looked away for a minute, remembering her unconscious in his arms, her life bleeding away into the oriental carpet. “I almost made you…one of us.” He sounded tired, even to himself. “I’d already made the slash across my chest. If you had swallowed even a drop of my blood, that would have been enough. Ram stopped me.”

She leaned both elbows on the table, took her head in her hands.

“I would do anything to keep you here with me.
Anything.
Understand? Even that.”

He’d crossed some kind of a border, he knew. But he had to shock her to her senses; she had to be made to understand. She was a sweet and lovely girl, and he was a Beast. Her purpose was to live in the light. His was to
punish the wayward, the ones that ask questions, the ones who stray. They could have no future together.

She got to her feet.
This is it,
he thought dully.
I’ve really done it this time
.
This is goodbye.
He tried to steel himself, found that he couldn’t. He had used up all his defenses.

She sank to her knees in front of him, unbuttoned his shirt. The air was perfumed with the scent of sandalwood. She stared at the star-shaped scar she had made over his heart, then kissed it. He made some kind of a sound, bowed his head.

She reached into the shirt to put her arms around him, laid her head on his chest. “I love you, Raphael Sinclair,” she whispered. “And I am not going to Paris.”

So he lied to her. He told her he would join her in September. Now she was excited; there were flights to arrange, boxes to pack.

She’d spent the entire day moving her studio equipment back to her apartment while he slept on, insisting that she could do it all by herself. Now she was asleep in his bed, exhausted. Barefoot, he went downstairs. Alone among his trophies and his possessions, dressed only in a pair of striped pajama pants, he stood before Sofia’s drawing and tried to think.

He would not repeat the agonies of this past winter, when he laid waste to his carefully cultivated reputation and almost destroyed the school. It was the only legacy he had to leave this world. He would die first.

Rafe put a disc into his new CD player, recommended by the lethargic heroin addict with a pierced lower lip working the counter at Tower Records. Lotte Lenya’s throaty vibrato hissed out of the speakers.

He had caused so much pain to so many people over the span of his long life. This time, before the demons took over, while he would still be remembered as the founder of the American Academy of Classical Art, and not for whatever atrocities he might commit after madness robbed him of his higher faculties, his thoughts turned toward taking his own life.

Better to die now, while his mind was clear and his conscience at peace. While he was still a man, and not a monster. Tessa would be taken care of, he had seen to that; she would get the house, the art, whatever he
had recovered from Blesser before he paid so dearly for his crimes. She would never have to think about money again.

He had worried that she would find another lover. But that had never been the real issue. She loved him completely, he knew that now, she would never leave him. But to keep her for himself meant to steal her away from the light, forcing her to exchange it for an eternity of darkness. With him there would be no family, no car pools, no cheerful holiday feasts with aunts, uncles and cousins. No soccer practice. No shambling house in the suburbs. No children. And always, always, the lurking possibility that she might come to harm at his hands. Taking himself out of the equation seemed like the logical solution to all of his problems.

She would be devastated, there was no way around it. Simple logic dictated that he wait until she was far away in Paris, settled in, entrenched in her new life. But he would be lost by then, cutting a bloody swath through the boroughs of New York City. If he did it now, while her friends were still close enough to lend support, while Levon was still here to see her through, while that damned David was still in love with her, she could mourn him over the summer and then fly off to Paris to get on with the life he had planned for her.

He went to the window, pushed aside the fringed velvet curtain. It was still dark out. He cranked open the casement window, inhaling the crisp night air, scoured clean by a passing shower. New York City was very dear to him, now that he was leaving her. He could hear the lonesome tinkle of wind chimes drifting in from a neighbor’s deck, the sibilant whoosh
–ssssss
of a bus braking at Third Avenue. He could smell the vinegary odor of mulch rising up from the park below, of new life breaking through the clods of damp earth to the surface. The acrid scratch of a lit match, the sweet perfume of tobacco. The smell of lilacs floating up to him from someone else’s garden.

The way he saw it, there were two possibilities. One, he could turn himself in to the Romanian Orthodox Church, see if they were still in the business of sending vampires back to God. It might be painful, but it would be quick. The second choice was easier, but would take some courage; he could simply walk outside and wait to greet the sunrise.

As if in response, a harried rustling began in the plane trees below, like the wings of a thousand birds taking flight; it came to a tumultuous crescendo, then died slowly away.

There must be a God, he thought, otherwise, how else to explain the existence of a creature such as himself? And if he had been, as the old Archbishop had said, part of His design, perhaps there would also be forgiveness.

He would have liked very much to believe this; he did not, however, hold much confidence in the quality of His mercy. Isaiah had died and he had lived, where was the justice in that? If there were indeed a heaven and a hell, he was sure to be sent straight to the latter. He entertained no vain hopes of a heavenly reunion with Sofia. She had died a martyr’s death, she was a shining star; he had been an agent of the Other.

The long-case clock bonged softly, told him it was five a.m. It was almost dawn. Suddenly, he felt a deep longing to hear Tessa’s voice. He took the stairs two at a time. He climbed into bed, slid his arms around her waist.

“Mm,” she said. There was a silky commotion of sheets as she rolled over to face him, nestling back into the quilts. Her scent, blackberry and musk, trapped in the tangle of sheets and blankets, escaped lazily into the air.

“Hello, sweet girl,” he said. A feeling of peace washed over him. He pushed the twists of her hair, not blond, not brown, not red, away from her face. “I just wanted to say good night.”

Her eyes cracked open, eased closed again. “Come to bed,” she sighed.

He put his mouth very close to her ear. “I love you,” he told her, wanting to be sure she heard it.

“Love you,” she repeated drowsily, tucking herself into the hollow of his chest.

He held on to her, reluctant to let go of her soft, warm body. Then he pulled the covers up around her chin, pressed his lips to her raspberry mouth. She smiled in her sleep.

Sitting down to his desk, he took out a sheet of monogrammed notepaper, scratched out a letter of explanation. The thought of her searching the house for him, calling his name, was unbearable. By the time she awoke, there would be nothing left of him but a handful of ashes.

He didn’t want to die. Far from it; he wanted to live forever with his darling Tessa, just the two of them, playing house forever in the brownstone at the edge of Gramercy Park. But he couldn’t do it to her, couldn’t do it to Sofia.

A quiet voice arose within him, presenting itself for consideration.
Go back to bed,
it suggested.
Everything looks worse at night. Just go to Paris, memories be damned.

I can’t, he answered sadly. Sofia’s face is imprinted on every Rue and Boulevard. And not just Sofia. All those living, breathing human beings that I transformed into lifeless corpses. I can never go back.

All right then,
the voice argued reasonably.
Just tell her the truth, that you’ll die without her. Ask her to stay.

Was it that simple, then? Just forget all this sacrifice and nobility, live happily ever after, like in the fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood with the Big Bad Wolf?

“No,” he said out loud. “I can’t. It’s wrong.”

He was shivering, and not from the cold. Still wearing only pajama bottoms, he unlatched the French doors, stepped out onto the balcony.

There was a haze hiding the face of the moon, a fresh breeze blowing down from Canada. He closed his eyes, felt it caress the hair off of his forehead. His mind wandered back through the years, over all the accidents of chance and the choices he had made, that had brought him to this place, to this moment. The lonely boy at school, finding salvation in Art. The broken-hearted young man, letting his lover walk away into the blue of a Paris evening. The angry young man, foolishly entering the cracked and cobbled courtyard with a beautiful stranger, his life bleeding away into the cracks between the paving stones. The murderous young man, waiting for unfortunate stragglers amidst the billowing smoke and the crackling fire pits of the Blitz. The same young man, hapless witness to a modern massacre of the innocents. A changed young man, his head filled with plans to save his lover and her child, unaware that they had already been claimed by the jaws of history no matter what he did.