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Slowly she went to the painting sitting on its easel, glowing in the moonlight. She walked around it and stood there, seeing but not understanding what she saw.
The painting was of her. Just her. Regan Ferry. Surely there had to be more to it than simply a portrait of herself. It was supposed to tell her the secret of eternal life, not taunt her with her own bloody face.
Regan reached out and touched the wet canvas, angrily smearing the paint.
The portrait burst into flames and Regan screamed.
She ran through the woods, away from the ghosts and the things they showed her. She heard a howl of endless agony. The wolf again? No. This time the howl came from Regan. The cry was hers. The agony was hers.
“Regan,” Arthur said. “Wake up. Wake up, Regan. Look at me.”
* * *
Her eyes fluttered open.Regan was in her sitting room lying on the chaise. Her glass lay overturned on the rug, spilling red pomegranate wine like blood.
A profound relief rushed through her body. It felt nothing like waking from a nightmare. It felt more like she’d been drowning and someone had pulled her from the choking waters.
With a gasp she sat up. Arthur knelt at her side on the floor. She put her arms around him and pressed her forehead to his.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “What happened?”
She told him about the wine, the strange happy sleepy feeling that had come over her. The hare loping through the penthouse, the cry of a wolf, and Gloom reciting Poe. Finally the forest and the ghost and the vision in the fire.
“I would have rather seen myself burning in the fire,” she said as she drank from the cup of water Arthur had brought her. Her hands shook, spilling water on herself. “I would rather have seen myself eaten by the flames than see you with another woman.”
“So you don’t want to love me, but you can’t stand it if I love someone else?”
He asked the question very gently, so as not to hurt her.
It hurt her anyway.
Before she could make any protest, he said, “I’m sorry. Forget I said that. I’m not going to be with anyone but you.”
“But you will someday,” she said. “You have to be. I’m not going to marry you, have your children. And you’re the hare.”
“I’m the hare?”
She smiled tiredly. She’d never felt so fragile before. “Theheir.”
“It’s the twenty-first century, Regan. No one’s going to force me to get married if I don’t want to.”
“Yes, but you want to, don’t you? You want to get married?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“I saw something else in the woods,” she said. “A woman who was me, but not me. She looked like me, except for the clothes and hair. She was painting a portrait of…me. And she said that was the secret of eternal life, whatever that means.”
“It means this,” Arthur said. He took her hand in his, gently unbuckled her watch band and stroked the faded ink embossed onto her wrist.
Art is Eternal.
“Yes,” she said, “but you don’t want to marry a painting, do you?”
She drank more water, felt like herself again, though her head ached. “You said Malcolm only interferes for good, yes?” Regan asked. She needed to believe there was a light at the end of this dark, strange tunnel.
“For the good of our family.”
“But I’m not part of your family.”
