Page 75 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
She presses a finger against her lips. Footsteps pass dangerously close to us. I don’t breathe until they leave the room. Then she rolls out from under me, and we head for our final destination.
“Why were you crying back there?” I ask once we’re safely on the bridge.
“It was the Vermeers.”
“Well, are they okay? Did you fix them?”
“Yes, they look so beautiful now.” Her voice breaks. “I was overcome.”
Chicago is our final stop.
The sick Morisot is only a few rooms away, and I’m so pummeled by witnessing Clio losing her love for me that I barely care if I get caught. Worst-case scenario, she can slink out of the museum in the morning and find the Chicago entrance back to her home. She doesn’t need me anymore to get around.
As for me, I’ve always wanted to see Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, his image of three lonely people in a diner. Tonight, I can commiserate.
It’s a few rooms over, and I go inside and order a chocolate milkshake. The guy at the counter nods as he hands over the tall, frosty glass.
It’s fantastic, and I feel as if I could stay here all night. No one talks to each other. The other three people just stare off with empty eyes at their lonely worlds.
I thought I would fit in here, but I don’t. My heart is being ripped apart, but my world is not lonely. I have friends back home, enough to keep me from becoming an empty-eyed nighthawk. I have places to be that aren’t this diner.
So I leave, and I walk to Monet’s Japanese bridge, where Clio’s already waiting. A guard sees me and calls after me in American English.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Getting a milkshake,” I tell him, and keep going.
I don’t bother hiding my British accent. It will make a better story when he reports it to the Chicago police.
“You want to be arrested, smart-aleck?”
No, I don’t. I’d rather not be arrested and stuck on this side of the pond without a passport.
Surprise on my side, I spring into motion and run to the bridge painting, diving into it with Clio.
I don’t make it all the way in. He grabs one booted foot. Clio pulls me farther into the Monet, and the guard yanks harder on my foot. With the toe of my other shoe, I push the boot off and slide into the painting, picturing a guard in Chicago bewildered by the worn black boot in his hand.
31
Clio and I stand at the front doors of the Musée d’ Orsay. It’s time for us to leave.
I pause as I grab the handle, remembering when she told me how easy it would be to free her. You don’t need a crazy car chase or knife fight to free me. Nothing violent, nothing dangerous. It’s simple because art is grace. Art is class. You can free me by holding open the door and letting me out.
I do the thing Clio didn’t want me to do a few days ago. Because there is nothing for her on this side of the door. There is nothing to tie her to the museum. Not her frame and not me.
She crosses the threshold, and her feet touch outside ground for the first time in centuries. There is a woman beside me who wasn’t there before.
Anyone can see her. She’s no longer bound to the painting Renoir trapped her in. She’s bound to being a Muse, and she can’t wait to start up again.
I call Remy and ask him to let Thalia know the missing Muse is coming home. “Meet her at La Belle Vie,” he says, and I hang up, wishing I wanted to let her go, wishing maybe I felt like she does right now.
I would like to feel nothing; I want to be numb. But I feel everything. And worse, I feel it for someone who feels nothing for me.
We walk down the steps like two acquaintances, like two coworkers who did a job together. A job well done, but now we’ll move on. To the next city, the next assignment. I walk her across the river and to the block with La Belle Vie.
I stop on the Rue de Rivoli, my heart aching, ripped to shreds as I get ready to free her in the best and worst possible way. I brace myself for this moment. For the serrated knife’s edge of her farewell. “Goodbye, Clio.”
“Goodbye,” she says, her voice clipped and cheery. She doesn’t even use my name.
“Do you remember what happened with us?” I ask tentatively because she seems like a robot, like she had her chip erased of all past memories.
Her grin is so friendly it could be an advertisement. “Of course I remember. We had a nice time together,” she says, and smiles even bigger now, more brightly, but her eyes are empty. There’s nothing there for me. “And now I get to go back to work.”
