Hesitantly, her finger reached out, like the questing reach of Michelangelo’sAdam, and lightly touched the lily in the painting.
The canvas rippled like a pool of water.
She didn’t have a second to be pleased, to tell Remi. Because something wet and fleshy wrapped around her wrist.
Then dragged her into the painting.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Nicole
IT WAS THE GASP THAT DAMNED HER.
The minute Nicole’s body was submerged in the painting, water rushed into her shocked mouth. Her eyes burned with it, so dark she didn’t know which way was up, body unnervingly light until she realised the shapes in her vision were the stalks of lily pads, and above, legs.
She wasinthe painting, and in the water.
Her body convulsed as she swam quickly upwards. When she burst through the surface to gasp in a breath and wipe the water streaming into her eyes, she found it exactly like the image in the gallery. Nicole coughed and sputtered, her airways burning as scents slammed into her: potent, heady florals and a wildness that hurried her heart. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was what the god Pan’s forests had smelled like: adrenaline and dopamine and intoxication.
It was nearly a drug.
She reached for the shallow bank where Hylas was currently kneeling, half tangling herself in flowers and the tall, grass-like leaves of some non-blooming plant. Her hair was stuck to her head and shoulders, and her clothes were soaked, including, she realised with no small twist of grief, her mother’s jacket. Her legs kicked beneath the water, as she tried to understand how she got in here, and how to getout.
Hylas didn’t even look at her.
But every Nymph stared with those unnervingly dark eyes as they stayed afloat effortlessly.
Glistening between them all was the lily, sparkling and –glass.
They could see her. She could see them.
But what was she supposed todo?
Her eyes darted over the women.
They were even more ethereal here, and didn’t have a painterly texture or seem like moving depictions. No, everything lookedreal. But was it some kind of illusion? Or a portal to a location that looked like it had sprung right out of Homer’sOdyssey?
If we told you you were not allowed to take it, what would you do?came a voice inside her head.
Nicole startled, splashing as she reached to further drag herself onto the bank, looking between all the Nymphs to figure out whose hypnotic tone had spoken into her mind.
‘I – I’d ask if you know why I’m here; why it’s so important,’ Nicole rasped.
One of the Nymphs swam closer. She made no sound and formed only the slightest of ripples. Despite the fact the tableau suggested they were luring Hylas into the water, there was no kill scent permeating this dark glade. They didn’t have an aura of danger or hunger.
Then something caught her eye.
A flash of metal to her left, bright in the gloom, and Nicole moved before she’d formed a coherent thought.
Hylas’ hand had twisted into the Nymph’s hair he’d been leaning towards and he hauled her glowing body out of the water, ready to slit her throat.
‘Hey!’ Nicole roared, throwing herself up the bank. She slammed into him, snatching his knife and tearing it from his grip, but splitting open her hand in the process.
Blood spilled onto the bank and over the flowers.
She caught the crazed look in his eye as two other Nymphs grabbed him and dragged him beneath the water – silencing his shout.
Nicole scanned the other banks for more intruders, the knife gripped in her swiftly healing hand, but all was still.
