The Artist's Muse

Chapter 15

Her head was spinning, but no longer from pain. There were so many paintings! And each one bore her face. This man was obsessed. Beyond obsessed. But he was also correct; she could feel the strange pull between them, and it screamed for her to listen to him.

So she listened. But how could she believe such wild claims? Nine hundred years old...ridiculous. Yet the more paintings she examined, the more familiar some of the scenes began to be. Glimpses of rooms she'd never entered and snatches of music she'd never heard faded in and out of her mind, making her hands tremble.

It was all so beautiful, despite being hard to believe. When she took herself out of it, a love story spanning centuries played out before her. Two figures destined to be together, yet torn apart over and over again.

And then there was the shadow figure. Like the one in her mirror and the one in the Louvre, it stared at her menacingly. And Sebastian's reaction to her pointing it out did nothing to calm the sick feeling in her stomach. "What do you mean, something is wrong? They're just paintings. How do you not know that you painted that creepy thing into all of them?"

"Because I didn't," Sebastian insisted, backing away from the paintings. "I have no idea how that thing got in them, because it has never been there before." The fear in his eyes caused Isabel to clutch her hands to her chest.

"Okay, then something is definitely wrong, here, and on top of everything else crazy you've told me today, I've reached my insanity limit. Can we get out of this creepy dungeon of terrors? Just looking at that shadow figure makes me feel sick."

Sebastian nodded and reached out to take Isabel's hand, but she dodged him and began running toward the stairs. This all felt too much like she'd somehow stepped into a horror movie of the supernatural kind. Her least favorite variety.

Once upstairs, Isabel really had no idea what to do with herself. Should she pack up and demand to go home? Run to town and tell the police there was a madman living in the creepy castle on the hill? Not that she spoke a word of Italian. Perhaps she should have thought of that before agreeing to fly to another continent to visit a near-stranger!

Her panicking was interrupted by Sebastian hitting the top of the stairs and slamming his feet into his boots. "Isabel, you need to make a choice, and you need to make it fast. I have to go to Venice and find out what is going on with my paintings. I don't know if it's safe for you to stay here alone, so either you need to come with me, or you need to go home to your family."

"What?" Isabel stared at Sebastian, baffled by his urgency. "I still don't really understand what is going on or why something you painted into all of your paintings is suddenly making you act like the apocalypse is upon us."

He shook his head and buttoned his leather overcoat. "I know you don't believe me yet, Isabel, but I didn't paint that shadow figure. I don't know why the figure is there suddenly. But those paintings are infused with magic, and I've entered them all dozens of times. You have entered many of them multiple times through the years." He pulled on his gloves and hood, leaving his face in shadow.

"Never have you passed out in one of them, and never have either of us seen this thing that makes me feel ill. I need to get back to the coven keep and either ask Victor what's going on, or read what the archive has to say about my type of magic. So you have to make a decision. Are you coming, or am I sending you home?"

Isabel felt the panic rising into her throat, strangling her vocal cords and making it hard to breathe. She began to hyperventilate, her chest heaving as her breaths came in short, shallow gasps. Sebastian took a deep breath himself and cupped Isabel's chin with his gloved hand. "Hey, dolcezza, look at me. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like this. Breathe, okay? In, out. In, out. Concentrate on my face, okay?"