Page 18 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
When I take my leave of Claire, I double back through the museum, keeping an eye out for any other anomalies as I walk the galleries. Impressionists, Romantics, Neoclassicists . . . No signs of trouble until I get to the Dutch masters.
Rembrandt’s Bathsheba in his Old Testament scene has always been a round-bellied woman, but now she looks bloated, her stomach bulging. Close up, bits of flesh are poking out of the frame.
It’s grotesque, and like nothing I’ve seen in my museum.
I picture Cézanne’s peach, how I’m able to put it back in its canvas. I glance around. There’s no one in the gallery, and perhaps if I can push the protruding bit of Bathsheba back into the canvas, everything will be fine. But there are alarms and security cameras, and this isn’t the Musée d’Orsay, where the guards all know me.
Before I can take the risk, a new group of tourists pours into the gallery. I slink into their midst to see the art through their eyes.
Not one person remarks on Bathsheba, or the canvas that for some reason can no longer contain her.
And once more, I don’t know if art is losing its mind or if I am.
“The Young Girls at the Piano looks fine,” I tell Adaline when I reach the Musée, managing not to flinch with guilt. “You’d never know there’d ever been a problem.”
My decision not to tell my sister about the fading piano key comes down to the fact that I don’t know what to tell her. Sun damage no one else can see? Even if she believes me, what can she do? What can I do about it?
Still, I walk the galleries, inspecting every painting for the least sign of trouble. There’s nothing—everything here is in perfect shape.
For now.
I have an early class the next morning, and immediately afterward, I take the train from the university to the Louvre. I hardly slept last night. I worried about our paintings in the Musée d’Orsay, but it was the Louvre that kept me wide awake with a kind of inevitable dread.
My instincts didn’t lie. Whatever happened yesterday is spreading. More keys on the piano are disappearing, a peacock feather droops in Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, and the mirror inside a Titian has a hairline fracture.
Bathsheba hasn’t fared well either. She’s painful to look at. There’s a black-and-blue bruise on the rolls of her stomach.
She looks ill, and that thought leads me to a crazy notion—are these anomalies some kind of contagion, spreading from frame to frame? And did bringing that sun-damaged Renoir here introduce some kind of epidemic to the Louvre?
But while the Rembrandt, the Titian, and the La Tour are bruised and cracked and burnt, the Renoir seems to be simply fading again.
Either way, the art here isn’t so much coming to life as it is dying.
A pit deepens in my stomach, and I can’t exit the Louvre fast enough, hating the sense that I’m leaving the art here to spoil. But a bigger panic seizes me.
I call Remy as soon as I’m outside. “Is the painting okay?” I ask before he even has a chance to speak. “Is she okay?”
“Of course.” He sounds startled at either the question or my tone. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I need to see it. I need to see her.”
“Now?”
It’s not a reasonable request, but I’m not feeling reasonable. “Yes. If I can. I know it’s the middle of the day, but it’s important. You said she has to be protected.”
There’s no hesitation this time.
“Come, then. I’ll let you in.”
7
I hit the nearest Metro station and take the next train to Montmartre. It’s only fifteen minutes, but it’s the longest fifteen minutes in my memory, and when I reach my stop, I climb a hundred looping spiral steps to the exit. I start out at a quick walk, but near the house, I break into a sprint up the hilly street.
Remy opens the door before I can text that I’m here. He’s dressed casually today in skinny purple pants and a white T-shirt that I’m sure were never peddled in a department store.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, as serious as I’ve ever seen him.
I’m about to do something drastic. I haven’t told a soul that I’ve been living in a mirage since that night the ballerina danced out of the Degas. But Remy said the Muses live below his home. Now I know something is really happening—to me, to the art—and he’s the only one I can think of who might believe me.
“This is going to sound completely mental,” I blurt out in a rush.
His knitted brows climb into a more Remy-like arch. “Mon ami, what besides the sheep on my balcony and a carousel in my living room makes you think I am not accepting of all kinds of madness?”
