Page 48 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
Clio makes me believe I can be better than I ever have been before. I listen to her and close my eyes. Everything is dark now, but I can touch. This time, the canvas yields as I press my fingers to it. The surface stretches and invites my hands in. Against the blurry black of my closed lids, I see a momentary flash of silver, and in my palm is the softest flutter of a petal, smooth and real. I open my eyes. I grasp, tenderly but firmly, a bouquet of irises.
My jaw drops. I blink several times, astonishment tripping through me.
“I told you so,” Clio teases.
“I never doubted you,” I say, meaning it.
She smiles. “Good. I like that you trust me.” She gestures to the canvas. “Now put them back.”
I do the reverse, much as I tuck things back into the paintings every night, and the flowers fold back into the frame.
“And now, perhaps you’d like to come on inside and see my house,” she says. “Just don’t take anything with you except the clothes on your back.”
I hold out my hands wide, almost in surrender, like I’m showing her how much I do trust her.
I stare at her painting again. It seems odd without her in it. The space where she resides is empty, but not blank white. It’s filled in by other colors, but as if the colors have spilled into the middle. I reach my hand through, and the midsection of the painting expands inward, creating a weird and warped sort of tunnel. There’s a rushing sound far away, like wind is whipping open a secret passageway.
“After you,” I say. “This is definitely a ladies-first situation.”
She drops a quick kiss onto my cheek. “Such a gentleman.”
She steps inside the painting, and even though this might be the most daring thing I’ve ever done, riskier than breaking into a shop, crazier than believing in ghosts of artists, and more mind-bending than talking to Degas’ dancers, since I don’t know how I’ll return, I follow the woman I’m crazy for.
Because I trust her.
I step into the frame, stealing away from the museum and into another realm.
As I go, the canvas closes up, and I am on the other side.
19
I have been to Monet’s garden before. An hour west of Paris, it’s a popular destination for many visitors to France.
But this is like a high-definition version, somehow more vivid than reality, with orange dahlias that blaze like the sun and pink poppies the color of the inside of a seashell. All the flowers are in bloom. In front of me lies a blanket of pale-blue forget-me-nots. The hues here are more vibrant than any palette I’ve seen on the outside.
“We’re not in Giverny anymore,” I say in a daze, my eyes feasting as I take in the scene.
We are someplace else entirely. Someplace that doesn’t exist for anyone else, anywhere else. Someplace that exists only beyond a painting. The flowers, the pond, and the trees are fully alive, but also slightly gauzy, slightly surreal. The scent is too, like a perfect gardenia.
“Do you like it?” she asks, eager and hopeful.
“God, I love it,” I say, then whirl around, facing this brilliant beauty. I cup her cheeks, hold her face passionately, and meet her gaze. “This is a gift. You are a gift.”
A faint blush spreads over her cheeks. “Thank you. Come. Unwrap more of it,” she says, stepping away, beckoning me to follow.
I will follow her anywhere.
“Do you want to see the bridge that Monet painted over and over?” she asks.
“Hell yes.”
Clio points. Hovering over the glassy blue surface of the pond is the green bridge from Monet’s backyard. I take her hand, squeezing her fingers, as we walk over where purple tulips edge the water, past the water lilies, hazy and quivering. We duck under weeping willows that brush our backs, and when I stand up straight again, I step onto the Japanese bridge.
Everything is gorgeous.
Everything is perfect.
But it’s also all she has.
My chest tightens like a noose, thinking of her trapped by beauty.
“Do you love it or hate it here, Clio?” I ask, because even though it’s a strange and wondrous place, it’s also her cell.
A sad smile crosses her lips. “Sometimes both, yes. I used to pretend there was a door at the end of this bridge. A plain, simple wooden door with an old-fashioned ring handle. Dark metal. You’d pull it open”—she demonstrates opening an invisible door, pulling easily—“and there. The other side.” She stays frozen like that, looking at her imagined world. “Now I’ve finally been on the other side.” She takes a long, lingering beat, punctuated by a sigh. “Free.”
She turns back to me, and my heart aches for her for being stuck for so many years. More than a century. “And being with you, that’s an escape too from the life I’ve been trapped in.”
