Immortal Muse (39 page)

The birds fluttered down to rest, and he brushed the seeds off his hands. A few pigeons cooed at his feet, their heads bobbing as they searched for the seeds in the grass among the sparrows. “You have someone that completes you the way Charlene did me?” the old man asked her. “A husband, perhaps?”

“A boyfriend,” she answered. “But—”

“But?” His eyebrows lifted. “You love him? He makes you happy? He treats you well? He makes you laugh?”

“Yes, all of that. And more.”

“Then it's simple,” Etienne told her. “You should stay with him for as long as life lets you.” He plunged his hands into the paper bag again and the sparrows lifted from the ground eagerly. Twin chirping gray clouds formed around his hands. “The birds know,” he said. “You must grab for what you want while it is there. Otherwise, you may never find it again.”

 * * * 

“Where hav
e you been?” David said when she returned to the hotel. He was in the lobby, pretending to read a newspaper, even though it was in French. He leaped up as soon as he saw her approaching. His camera swayed on its strap around his neck. “I was beginning to get worried.”

“You should have called my cell. But, I have breakfast,” she said, lifting a paper bag of croissants. “Come on. It's a beautiful day; let's walk.”

“You're in a good mood.”

She grinned at him and grabbed him around the neck, pushing the camera aside so she could hug him tightly and kiss him. She saw Dominique—who had come on duty—smiling at the affectionate display from behind the desk. “I am,” she told David. She took his hand. “Very much so. Come on. I want to you to meet someone.”

They ate the croissants as they walked alongside the Seine in the shadow of Notre Dame. They strolled north and west past the Louvre and into the Jardin des Tuileries. Camille looked for Etienne, but his chair sat empty. A few pigeons scavenged around the iron legs. “Who did you want me to meet?” David asked.

“He was here earlier,” she told him, “but he's gone now.” She looked up the length of the park. “Maybe he's just moved. Let's just keep walking . . .”

It was a slow stroll, with a stop for ice cream, but an hour later they were at the western end of the park, standing at the fountain there with its black stone figures edged with bright gilt. They gazed out at the Place de la Concorde and the tall, gold-capped spire of the Obelisk of Luxor at the center of the square.

Staring up the long, rising expanse of the Champs-Élysées toward the Arc de Triomphe, Camille remembered an entirely different scene, when Place de la Concorde had been called Place de la Révolution, when rather than the obelisk, the bloody guillotine had pierced gray Paris skies near the Hôtel Crillon.

Nicolas . . . Pressing Antoine's head down onto the stock as the blade of the guillotine creaked upward . . .

“Camille?” David's voice brought her back to the present. “Hey, are you okay?”

She tried to smile for him as the scene snapped back to the present, as the vicious, eager roar of the crowd faded in her ears. She heard the click of a shutter and realized that David had been taking photographs of her. They were surrounded in an emerald glow so strong that she wondered that the people passing them didn't notice it.

“I'm fine,” she said. “It's just that seeing this brought back some memories of another time I was here.” She shuddered, suddenly and visibly, then grabbed David's arm again. “Thanks for walking with me. Sorry that the man I wanted you to see wasn't here.”

“No problem. I love walking this city, and I love watching you. It's like you see the city as an old friend, one you've known forever, with all her quirks and foibles.”

She laughed breathily, the sound almost unheard against the rushing traffic around the roundabout of the Place. “Yeah, it's something like that,” she said.

“It's almost too bad we have to go home,” he said, lifting up the camera again. “I almost wouldn't mind staying here forever. After what happened back home . . .” He grimaced suddenly, and she knew he was thinking about Helen—and that reminded her of Nicolas once more.

She remembered what Etienne had told her:
Then it's simple. You should stay with him for as long as life lets you. . . .
But it wasn't so simple, not for her. And not for David, as long as he was with her. “I wish we could, too,” she told him. “And maybe we can, one day.”
After I kill Nicolas. After he's really and truly dead.
“By the way,” she told David, “I got a phone call early this morning. I have to go back to New York City tomorrow—some business with my accountant that I can't let slide. It'll only take a few days.”

“Oh,” he said, obvious disappointment in his voice. “That's too bad. I guess we'll have to come back some other time . . .”

“No,” she told him. “I want you to stay here. There's no reason for you to have to come back with me. Stay here; see the city. Or take the train out to Chartres or the Loire Valley or Normandy. I'll come back and join you just as soon as I can.”

“I don't know, Camille,” he said, but his face contradicted his words. She squeezed his hand.

“You should stay,” she repeated. “And maybe I'll bring Verdette back with me and we really will just stay here afterward.”

 * * * 

They returned
to the hotel late that afternoon. Dominique handed them the key to their room, then called out after them as Camille was pressing the button for the elevator.

“Oh, I nearly forgot. A package came for you while you were away, M'mselle. Here it is.”

Dominique placed a small wicker basket on her desk. In it, nestled in rustling straw, was a bottle of tequila:
El Tesoro de Don Felipe,
the label on the clear bottle proclaimed.
100% Blue Agave Tequila
.

“Is there a note?” David asked over Camille's shoulder.

There wasn't. “Who brought this here?” Camille asked, probably too harshly, since Dominique's eyes widened.

“Why, a delivery man,” she answered in her accented English. “One of the local ones.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don't know. . . . An older man, his hair gray and balding here.” She patted the top of her own head. “Taller than your boyfriend, and heavier.” She tilted her head quizzically. “Do you think you know him, M'mselle?”

“Tall . . .” So it wasn't Nicolas. She felt the panic which had started to rise in her chest subside slightly. But not entirely. “No, I don't know him. What service brought this here? Do you have their address or telephone number?”

“Oui, M'mselle,”
Dominique replied, though with a quizzical, concerned look. “Let me write it down for you . . .”

David was also looking at her strangely. “I get it, Camille,” David said. “One of our friends has figured out we're not in Mexico, and sent us this as a joke. I'll bet it was Mercedes; that would be like her. She knows her tequila, after all.”

Camille managed a half-smile as Dominique handed her a slip of paper. She was just as certain that it wasn't Mercedes or any of their friends, but Nicolas who had done this.
“Don't you understand, Perenelle? You're my passion.
” This was a message to her: he was watching, and he knew where she and David were.

David had picked up the basket. “Thanks, Dominique,” he said, then hefted it in Camille's direction. “Guess we'll have tequila rather than wine this evening, eh? We can celebrate Paris with a bit of Mexico.”

“We can do that,” she told him. “Why don't you go on up to the room? I'll be up in a moment; I want to call my accountant and let him know when I'll be arriving . . .”

David shrugged. “Don't be long,” he told her. She watched him enter the tiny elevator, then went to one of the couches in the small lobby as she pulled out her cell phone, placing the paper Dominique had given her on her knee. She dialed the number.

“
Bonjour
,” she said to the woman who answered. “This is Camille Kenny, staying at the Hotel de Notré Dame on rue de Maítre-Albert. One of your drivers just delivered a basket with a bottle of tequila here for me.”

“
Oui, M'mselle.
Is there some problem?”

“No. Not at all. I just wondered . . . There was no note, and I would like to know which of my friends sent the gift, so I can send a thank-you note.”

“I understand. One moment . . .” Camille heard the buzz of the hold, her stomach churning in time to it, then the woman came back on the line. “The package was sent from a Dr. Pierce, of New York City.”

“Was he
here?”
Camille asked. “Did he order it in person?”

“Oh no, M'mselle. The order came in through a long distance call from the States.”

“I see.” The acid threatening to rise in her throat subsided a bit.
He's not here. He's still in New York.
“That's all I need, then.
Merci beaucoup
.” She ended the call, sitting on the couch with her eyes closed.

Her plans had just been shattered. Leaving David here wouldn't mean that he was safe: Nicolas knew where to find him, and even if Nicolas himself stayed in New York, Camille was certain that he still had contacts in Paris. He could reach David here, through them, or through a simple plane flight.

The best way to protect David now is to keep him near you. You know that. He's in danger because of you, but you're his best shield. You can't leave him; you know that from the past.

She couldn't leave him unless she was willing to accept his death. She couldn't leave him until she could rid her life of Nicolas: forever.

But she'd known that for centuries, and it still hadn't happened . . .

 * * * 

“David?”

He was l
ying on the bed in their room, an arm over his eyes against the light from the window. He stirred sleepily. “Yeah? What's up?”

“I want you to go back with me.”

The arm lifted and David sat up, rubbing at his eyes. “I thought . . .”

“I changed my mind,” she told him. “My accountant thinks it could be a week or more before we get things settled. If that happens, then you'd be coming back anyway. I'd rather not be away from you that long. I already booked us seats on a flight tomorrow afternoon. We'll come back to Paris later, maybe in a month or two.”

“Okay,” he shrugged. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

Another shrug. David swung his feet off the bed. “Then let's make the most of the time we have left here,” he said. “To hell with a nap . . .”

They stayed out the rest of the evening, seeing the sights a last time, watching the sun set over the city from the summit of Sacré-Couer and eating dinner in the Montmartre district.

Despite the pleasures of the day, Camille had been unable to shake the sense that they were being watched, and that somewhat spoiled the evening for her. The steep inclines and the twisting, crowded streets of Montmartre were tinged with the faint possibility of Nicolas being there, watching them, though whenever she glanced behind there was never anything there: no Nicolas, no stranger looking at them too intently, no faces she recognized from earlier in the day.

David's constant stopping to snap pictures wasn't as invigorating as it should have been; she found herself jittery. She kept looking at the entrance to dark alleyways, half-expecting to see someone there or the glint of a sword's blade striking for her neck. She glanced constantly behind them in the crowds, wondering if she would glimpse someone following them, and she kept her hand near the opening to her purse, ready to reach for the 9mm there.

All the paranoia was wasted: she saw nothing. They took a late subway train back to the hotel. By the time they returned to their hotel, she was exhausted and frazzled. She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed, as David had done, but she pulled the Tarot deck from where it was tucked in a silk scarf in her suitcase, intending to quickly lay out the cards and see what they told her. They could tell her where Nicolas might be, whether he was still back in New York. She switched on the desk light . . . and the bulb immediately flared and went dead.

She stared at the dead bulb.

“I can call down to the desk to have them send up a bulb,” David said from the bed.

David's comment woke Camille from her reverie. “No,” Camille said, her hand still on the switch, “it's fine. Leave it. It's our last night anyway.”

She glanced down at the Tarot cards, but she left them wrapped in the silk. In her life, she had learned to believe in omens—the cards hadn't wanted to be read. That's why the bulb had burned out.

She undressed and lay next to him. When he moved to caress her, she demurred. “I'm sorry, David; I'm so tired . . .” He finally fell asleep, but she did not, her mind moving too fast, listening to his quiet snoring and feeling the warmth of his green heart. The tendrils of it wrapped around like a second set of arms, enfolding her.

In the dark, she took a long, shuddering breath, staring at the ceiling. David stirred in his dreams. His hand reached out. His fingers found her neck and the pendant there and stayed, warm and comforting.

She imagined killing Nicolas, his bloodied head rolling like some evil stone across a nameless floor, his mouth gasping for air like a fish tossed up on the back, his eyes wide with the shock of his decapitation. The image was terrifyingly sweet.

 * * * 

The tequila bottl
e stood unopened on the desk, the clear glass reflecting sunlight back to her. An accusation.

Camille stood at the window of their hotel room, looking off into a foggy morning. In a few hours, they would be flying “home” to where Nicolas was waiting. She felt the surge of David's green heart, its energy causing her to lift her head as she tasted the sweetness; she heard a camera clicking, several times, then the sound of David putting the camera down again. “What'cha thinkin'?” David asked her, coming up behind her and hugging her. She leaned back into his embrace, nearly sobbing with the luxurious feel of it, with the sense of complete connection.