Elisabetta sat quietly across from them in the sitting area of Verin’s blood library. The square of plush couches was arranged beside an unlit fireplace and a low coffee table Dylan was filling with sandwiches, scones, crisp salads, and a pot of fragrant tea that Elisabetta breathed in gratefully before pouring a cup.
In the light of morning, Nicole could appreciate the painter’s features better: her soft face and light brown hair. There was a subtle arch to her nose when she turned which Nicole had memorised from the artist’s self-portraits.
She looked better and the cut at the side of her head had stoppedbleeding. There was a slight flush in her pale cheeks which could have been from the head wound, or perhaps the mysterious location she’d been painting in.
Her round eyes, which observed quickly and deeply, landed on Nicole.
‘What are you? If you don’t mind sharing,’ Nicole asked as the painter put down the teapot.
‘Ah, that has no clear answer, I’m afraid.’ She hadn’t lost her Italian accent despite the centuries. ‘Your mother saved my life. A servant, or perhaps a rival male artist, had been poisoning me slowly. Freya – she went by a different name then – was meeting with me for a commission. She smelled the poisoned wine and slashed it out of my hands before I could take another sip.
‘She offered me a deal: she would help me fake my death and escape, if I painted something for her when the time was right.
‘I realised, however, that I’d stopped ageing shortly after. Some artists become immortal through their art and I think that happened to me. Later, we were termedGrays.’
A peal of pure fascination rang in Nicole’s mind. ‘Like Dorian Gray?’
The painter smiled slightly. ‘Yes. It’s rare for women and anyone that went against the grain to become Grays, because the immortality comes from the renown of our paintings and so few of us are known. But there are other complex reasons why we turn immortal and they’re not always the same. As long as people know of our work, it keeps us alive. Mine is not so well known, but a sculpture was made of me at my “death” by the people of Bologna and we think that was what immortalised me.’
Had the fact Nicole’s family kept, and loved, the portrait Elisabetta had done of her mother added to the painter’s immortality?
‘It took several hundred years for Freya to come back and ask me to fulfil that debt. By that point I was in England, helping a group of women begin underground painting lessons. If you can believe it, the rules around women painting had barely changed in four hundred years.’ She made an unamused sound that had a surprising roughness to it, as if her voice was still affected by the poisoning. ‘That was where she found me to paint her portrait. But I always suspected that wouldn’t be the end of it.’
Nicole had to force herself not to ask about the rest of Elisabetta’s history: being a court painter in the 1600s as a woman, what other Grays might be out there—
‘My wife left us a note,’ her father cut in, ‘saying that she hid her last lead with you.’
The painter looked between them. ‘Are you certain you wish to know?’
Bells glanced at Nicole with concerned eyes, pinching a finger sandwich so tightly it had little marks all over it.
Nicole nodded. ‘Yes. Anything you can tell us could change everything.’
After all they’d learned in Estwood, there was no way they could stop now. But finally facing the next step made her inexplicably nervous.
She looked to her family. Dylan hadn’t relaxed the entire time. He was so rigid on the edge of the couch to Bells’ left, Nicole was mildly concerned. His hand had formed a slight fist, his forearm as tense as the sculptures in the now-ruined studio. Her father sat to her right, wired with anticipation – finally faced with one more piece of the woman he loved. Verin watched patiently beside a grand piano.
Nicole took a breath. They were together, they were safe. They could face what came next. So she nodded again.
‘She didn’t tell me everything. That wasn’t her way,’ Elisabetta said.
Their father made a small noise of agreement.
‘But she asked me to use blood in the portrait. I made it into a pigment for the lips and a tiny amount in each eye, along with gold leaf. Her eyes always had such a darkness, but that Empyrean flicker was there, too.’
Elisabetta pulled out something she’d tucked between the cushions at her side. ‘This is the last of it.’
The painter placed the velvet-lined box on the low marble table between them and opened it. Inside were old-looking jars and vials of—
‘Pigments,’ Nicole realised.
‘This is it,’ Elisabetta said, showing them a tiny vial no bigger than the tip of her pinkie finger. Inside looked to be the very last essence of a red pigment.
‘The blood?’ Bells asked, a frown drawing her doe-coloured brows together as she scooted to the edge of her seat.
After Estwood, Nicole had learned that substances from creatures could be used – for good or ill – in, or on, paintings. But to use bloodasthe paint, thus hiding its true nature …
‘What type of blood is it, my dear?’ Verin asked. ‘It’s been driving me mad for days.’
