Page 26 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
Some things can’t be confined to one time or mode. Music. Movement.
Moments where the universe slows, narrows down to the sliver of space between two bodies.
As the painted women dance, Clio’s soft, slender fingers inch across the bench toward mine. I catch the motion out of the corner of my eye, her edging closer to me, and it sets off a rush of heat from my chest outward.
She sparks a thrill in me that zips along my nerves all the way to the fingertips almost brushing hers.
For the longest time, I admired her from afar. Falling for her without knowing a thing about her.
What could that be but a silly infatuation?
But now, two nights in, nothing about this seems foolish at all. It feels like she wants to hold hands because we have talked, we have wandered, and we have watched art together.
I finish the thought, reaching for her hand, sliding my fingers through hers.
At her soft gasp, I smile privately. I squeeze her hand a little harder, and she squeezes back.
When I turn my head slightly to glance at her, Clio is watching the performance, but I sense her attention sliding my way as she nibbles on the corner of her lips. All I want is to lean in and kiss that corner then the rest of that pretty mouth.
But that would be rude to the dancers.
The finale is enthusiastic, and when they’re finished, we break our handhold to clap. Clio shouts “Brava!” as the corps take their swanlike bows then leap back into their frames.
The stillness is jarring after the gallery had been a pastel whirl of arms and arabesques a moment ago. Knowing how Clio felt while trapped in her frame at the house in Montmartre, I watch an immobile Emmanuelle and wonder what happens to her during the day. Is she a spirit yearning to escape a bizarre eternity of paint, or is she simply a shadow—a representation of the girl she once was?
I’m still mulling over the question as Clio and I resume our walk through the galleries. She is so vastly different from them, but I still don’t understand how or why.
"Clio,” I begin, uncertain how to ask this or if I even should. “When we held hands just now, you felt real to me. You’ve never felt anything but completely real to me. Hell, you are real.”
“Well, thank you,” she says drolly. “I can’t argue against that.”
I drag a hand through my hair. That was not the best start. Maybe this will ruin the mood—no, it will definitely ruin the mood—but I have to wrap my head around what I’m dealing with. I want her to help me so that I can better care for the paintings—in the general sense, and in light of the plague of art anomalies at the Louvre. I don’t know if I can do anything about the art there, but I want to protect what is here.
Most of all, I want to know how to protect her. And I can’t do that if I don’t understand her.
“What I’m trying to grasp is whether you are the woman Renoir painted? Or are you—I don’t know—a version of her that lives on in the art?”
“Am I like the other paintings? Paint coming to life at night?”
I grimace at her tone—not chilly, but definitely . . . tepid. A sharp contrast to how she was when we were holding hands. That moment already seems like forever ago. “You make the question seem rude when you say it like that.”
Her mouth pinches, and she doesn’t meet my eyes. “It’s complicated.” Then her nose wrinkles, as if she can’t help but let me see her feelings. Tepid isn’t in her design. “The essential nature of one’s being doesn’t seem like a topic for a second date.”
She’s right, and my steps stutter as that sinks in. We haven’t known each other as long as it feels like we have.
Perhaps I’ve assumed too much from the moment we shared while watching Swan Lake. Taken too many liberties.
Then again, what is the right number of dates before you can say to someone, “I think you’re real, but I need to understand how that can be”?
Thing is, I never questioned her personhood, even when she was at Remy’s home. Maybe that’s my answer and I should trust my instincts.
“I can tell it’s complicated, and that’s why I ask. You seem different than the rest of the art here, and it’s the paintings that I’m wondering about. They don’t seem trapped or unhappy—or anything, really—and they hardly talk. I think Emmanuelle has said more to me than the whole of the other artworks combined. They don’t notice me at all, mostly. They go about their patterns like spirits reliving an event. So, I have to wonder . . . are they?”
