‘Ah, but that’s not quite true,’ Callum said. ‘Because Úaithne may not have been the name of the harp, but the harper himself. Which means only a god, or one of Úaithne’s descendants can play it.’ He smiled. ‘If we can find them.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Nicole
THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MUSE’S APARTMENTSWERE SO WELLwarded and varnished Nicole had no memory of what the front looked like until she and Remi were unlocking an ornate, pale green door. They entered into a triple-height stairwell that curved up to a landing on the right.
The walls were papered in olive with tiny details in its design: amber vines and star-white flowers, delicate wine-dark birds in various stages of flight, repeating their routes all the way up to the ceiling. There was gold leaf too, lambent and bewitched, catching light from the extravagant guttering lantern above, and the stained-glass windows that cast coloured light over the staircase.
It was like the bowers written of by the Romantics.
‘Okay, I want to live here,’ Remi whispered.
Kyan had told them where to go and what to do – unable to be seen joining them. Nicole wished he was here, even just to give them more of an idea of what they were walking into.
‘Don’t let her unnerve you,’ he’d instructed when giving Nicole the key. ‘Everything she says has a purpose, even if it sounds like nonsense.’
‘Double meanings.’ Nicole nodded, taking it in. What was her life if not double meanings, codes, and secrets?
‘If you’re not out in an hour, I’ll get inside.’
She smiled now at his parting words, and began the journey up stairs.
Anticipation danced through her stomach like the wingbeats ofthe mural’s birds. She was about to meet another supernatural. One who should have more information about her mother and the next step in this quest.
The top of the staircase met a mezzanine, then another set of steps to the right, where the door to the Muse’s apartments waited.
‘Ready?’ Nicole asked Remi as they reached a set of rosewood doors.
Remi merely smirked and Nicole laughed softly.
She knocked the way Kyan had shown her, so the Muse would know it was him or someone she could trust. Then Nicole slid the key in the lock – a part of her twisting with unease that the woman had been imprisoned in this way – and pushed open the doors.
Nicole immediately scanned for danger, her senses spearing through the art-choked room.
It was a lengthy, wide rectangle filled with luxuries. Directly before them was a sitting area with large bay windows to the right which overlooked the city and Liver buildings. Across was an archway with folded open mahogany doors that led into more rooms and another wall of windows.
But it was the details that stole her attention: a pearl-pink and bronze throw, as lucent as liquid metal over a luxurious silk couch. A floral gold screen Nicole had no doubt was a real William Morris. Flowers overflowed in all sorts of vases or crystal jars, some gently rotting and filling the warm air with a cloying, heady perfume. Roses for undying love, peonies for compassion, all flowers depicted in Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
Easels stood proud and paint-smeared, as if waiting for a new canvas, and empty gold frames and half-finished paintings of red-haired beauties were stacked against walls.
‘Hello?’ Nicole called. She secured the door behind them and slipped the key into the back of her jeans. ‘Kyan McCarter let us in, we need to speak with you.’
‘I don’t hear anyone,’ Remi murmured, as she moved over to a long dresser to the left, full of treasures. ‘Are you sure she’s in here?’
If she wasn’t, they were in a lot of trouble.
Remi’s fingers hovered over a silver-handled mirror, then danced above a selection of ceramic pomegranates, their deep pink and red skins done in a glaze, split open to reveal an interior crust of tinyjewels. Large, elaborate birdcages with taxidermised birds was another repeating image, and even living butterflies whose wings moved so lazily Nicole worried that they were near exhausted death.
She looked at the windows, wondering if she could open them a crack so they could escape, only to realise they were painted shut in a deep forest green. Even the walls were papered in murals that shimmered, as if alive.
‘An Art Witch made it,’ came a low, sensual voice from the archway. ‘Used Chinese mirror silk.’
Nicole turned to find the immortal beauty of the Pre-Raphaelites standing silently in the archway.
Her robe had puffed sleeves and silken cuffs, all in a shimmering olive fabric, finely embroidered with tiny burgundy and navy flowers. Silk rose slippers peeked out from the floor-length hem.
But it was her face, her presence, that struck Nicole into silence.
