Immortal Muse (58 page)

“I love you.” To Ana, that meant that there was no one else, no one else alive in the entire world to whom she could say those words and mean them. But though she felt Lotte's green heart stir toward her when Lotte spoke those same words to Anaïs, there was always a reserve there.

They didn't define love the same way.

In February, Lotte's grandfather died, and Ana helped Lotte struggle with her grief. Around the same time, Lotte stopped working on the grand project of her life. “It's done,” she told Anaïs finally. She showed her three simple, large cardboard boxes, stuffed with over a thousand individual gouache paintings on thick paper, some of them double-sided due to the war-caused shortage of painting supplies. “I've finished it.”

Ana picked up the last paper that Lotte had done, on top of the pile in the final box. It showed a woman in a green bathing suit kneeling on a beach, her back to the viewer as she painted on a strangely transparent pad on her lap. On the woman's bare back, words had been painted in German: Leben? oder Theater?
Life? or Theater?
It was as if Lotte were questioning herself and her own reasons for having thrown herself into this obsession. The papers rustled as Ana laid the painting carefully back in the box. “And what now?” Anaïs asked Lotte. “What do you do now?”

“I've been painting, still, but . . .” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “There's something else I'm supposed to do now,” she told Ana. Her eyes were bright and eager, her lips curling upward. Ana felt the green heart lift and pulse with the words, surrounding Lotte in the glow that only Ana could see.
Yes, there's something else . . . if I can help her find it.
“I just don't know what it is yet, but I can
feel
it in here.” Lotte touched her heart, her breast. “There's something else, but it's just not ready to tell me what it wants to be yet.”

Ana loved her more in that moment than she ever had.

After
Life? or Theater?
was finished, not long after her grandfather's death, Ana saw less of Lotte, though they were still together often. She moved back to villa l'Ermitage, where she'd stayed with her grandparents when she'd first arrived, and Ana also moved back to Nice, so she could be closer. Ana would walk up to l'Ermitage to find that Lotte had gone for a walk by herself, or she might be gone for a few days without having told Anaïs that she was leaving. Ana could feel Lotte pulling away, the energy inside her no longer as drawn to Ana's presence or to her coaxing of it.

Ana found herself, as Lotte had said she was also, waiting to see what her soul-heart wanted her to do.

When Lotte came to see her unexpectedly at the end of May, Ana wasn't entirely surprised, but the sober expression on Lotte's face was worrisome, as was the perfunctory hug that she offered and the catch in her voice when she answered Ana's “
Comment vas-tu?”

“
Ja vais bien.
Mostly.”

Ana tried to coax out her soul-heart, but she felt it resisting; it would only let her taste it, not fully allow her to take it in. “I haven't seen you very much.” The energy seemed strangely thick and low around Lotte's waist, and colored with the azure blue that Ana had sometimes seen with the artists who had also been in love with her: the color that she associated with a true bonding. The hue hung in Lotte's soul-heart, but it wasn't connected to Ana, but inside.

“I know. I'm sorry.” She wouldn't look up from her hands, folded on her lap as she sat in the chair across from Ana.

“Lotte, what's wrong?”

“It's that obvious?”

“
Oui
. And more.” Lotte nodded. Her head lifted, and Ana could see that she'd been crying recently, her eyes rimmed with red. Ana knew then, suddenly; knew why the azure lurked in Lotte's soul-heart and why she couldn't touch it. “You're pregnant,” she said.

Lotte's eyes filled then, and a sob caught in her throat as she tried to breathe. She gave another silent nod. “You're certain?” Ana asked her.

“Yes. I saw a doctor today. I just came from there. He said it's certain.”

“Ah.” Ana fought to keep her face from showing the betrayal that she felt.
You knew she didn't feel the same way about you . . .
But even knowing didn't stop the hurt and the odd sense of betrayal. She tried to smile, leaning forward to pat Lotte's hands. “And the father? Does he know?”

Another nod. “He does. He . . . he says he wants to marry me.”

“Is that what
you
want?” Ana asked.

With that, Lotte managed to smile, the pain in her eyes clearing momentarily and the green heart inside her rising with its bands of sapphire, and her expression tore at Ana more than anything Lotte could have said. “I love him. I do. Yes, that's what I want.”

The words hit Ana like velvet-wrapped fists. The emerald glow slid from her grasp, and she sat back, her own smile frozen on her face. “Good,” she managed to say, then, more emphatically: “That's good, then. Who is he? Do I know him?”

“I don't think so. His name is Alexander Nagler. He lives at l'Ermitage also; I actually met him when I first came here, but he was with someone else then, though he's broken up with her since.” Her smile widened. Some of the tiredness left her voice. Her green heart flared. “He walked me here. I'd like to introduce you to him; he's waiting for me out in the street. I want him to know you, because of everything you've meant to me. He should know my one true friend.”

Ana had no choice. She forced another smile to her face and touched Lotte's hands again. “Yes, I'd love to meet him. Go call him, why don't you?”

While she went to the door, Anaïs went into the kitchen of her apartment and turned on the teapot on the stove, putting out three cups. Then she hurried to her study and opened a drawer there, taking out an old scroll she'd acquired in Paris. She scanned it quickly, her lips moving as she memorized the words there, which kept threatening to slip away from her mind.
If you had Nicolas' skill with magic, this would be so easy . . .
She heard Lotte and Alexander entering and placed the scroll back in the drawer, going into the main room. “. . . .really wants to meet you, and I want you to meet her,” she heard Lotte saying. “She's been ever so important and so good to me. I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for her. Oh, there she is. Anaïs, this is Alexander.”

The man extending his hand to her was thin and sallow, and she could see a mottled, large scar on his right ear and neck. Still, his face was handsome enough; she could see the attraction that he might have held for Lotte. “It's good to finally meet you,” he said. “Lotte's spoken so often about you that I almost feel I already know you.”

Ana didn't like his handshake; it was limp and quick. She waved the two toward seats in the room. “So,” she said, “the two of you are engaged?” She watched his face more that Lotte's. She saw the way his lips pressed together before the obligatory smile; she noticed that he didn't look at Lotte, though she glanced at him. It was Lotte who spoke first.

“Yes,” she said. “We're both very happy.”

He nodded then, as if he had no choice. “Yes,” he echoed. “Very happy.”

The kettle began to whistle in the kitchen. “Lotte,” Ana said, turning to her. “I've started some tea in the kitchen for us. Would you mind?”

“Certainly,” Lotte said, getting up. Her hand lingered for a long moment on Alexander's shoulder. “I'll be right back.”

Ana waited until Lotte had left the room. Alexander was carefully staring at the curtains beyond Anaïs. There was nothing of a green heart within him that she could sense. “Listen to me, Alexander,” Ana told him. “I'm going to say this once, and once only. If you truly love Lotte, then marry her. But if you don't, if you're doing this only because you feel obligated since she's carrying your child, then you should leave—because in the long run that would be better for Lotte than a miserable marriage. Leave right now, this instant, and you can stay free. But if you don't . . . I'll tell you this: if you hurt Lotte, if you make her unhappy, then I'll consider it my personal task to make your life a hell twice as bad as whatever Lotte is feeling. And I have the means to do that.”

Ana spoke the phrase she'd memorized, her hand describing a pattern in the air, and Alexander jumped. The room seemed to darken despite the sun outside, and sweat suddenly beaded on his forehead.

“Yes, you feel that, don't you?” she told him. “The terrible heat, the discomfort, the beginning of pain. Why, in a few seconds, Alexander, your clothing will catch fire and the flames will start to blister your flesh. You'll scream, and you'll try to tear the clothes away, but that won't stop it. Can you feel it, Alexander? Is the heat already searing you? Is that the first scent of smoke you smell?”

Ana knew that the spell was only a trifle, an illusion that would last only a brief few minutes and couldn't actually harm the man, no matter how much he believed that a heat was rising around him. Alexander had risen from his chair, his face red and frightened, his mouth open and gasping. Frantically, he started patting at his clothes, rivulets of sweat pouring down his face, his hair matted and dark with it. Ana spoke another phrase, waving her hand once again, and Alexander gasped again, this time with relief. The room returned to brightness, a cool breeze entering from the open window.

He sat abruptly, staring at Anaïs, a finger sliding along the collar of his shirt as if to pry it away from his neck. “How did you do that?” he asked, his voice choked and uncertain. “What
are
you?”

“I'm someone who will do whatever I can to protect my friends,” she told him, “by whatever means I have available to me, and I have means you can't possibly imagine. Now, I want your decision, Alexander. Quickly, before she comes back. Do you love her? Do you
really
love her?”

He nodded his head. He wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand, but the sweat had already dried.

“Good,” Ana told him. “I'm pleased to hear that. Then you and I will get along well. Ah, here comes Lotte with the tea . . .”

 * * * 

Lotte and Alexander were married on June 17, 1943. Ana was among those who gathered at l'Ermitage in Villefranche to toast their marriage and celebrate with them, though she found the moment at best bittersweet. It hurt her to see Lotte clinging to Alexander, and Anaïs was bothered by the guilty pleasure she felt whenever Alexander glanced her way apprehensively. She saw little of Lotte in the days and weeks that followed, and she realized that she had lost the green heart that had meant so much to her for the last few years. All of Lotte's attention was focused inward, swaddling the child in her womb. When Ana tried, once, to talk with her about the creative project that Lotte had said was still waiting for her to begin, Lotte only laughed, and her green heart barely stirred from where it hung around the child in her womb.

“Oh, I'll paint again. I know I will, but that's for later,” Lotte said. She patted her stomach. “For after the baby comes, eh? I can't think of it now, Ana. I can't. If you were a mother, you'd understand.”

Ana couldn't answer.
A daemon isn't meant to nurture someone that way . . . That's something I can never understand. Before the elixir, there was Verdette, but in all the centuries since, all the men I've lain with, I've never conceived a child. The elixir took that part of my womanhood away.

The excuse sounded empty and hollow in Ana's mind.

By late July, Ana had begun to recontact the local artists, feeling empty, lethargic, and exhausted from the lack of Lotte's energy. Feeding from them was like subsisting on stale bread and water after having spent years dining in fine restaurants, but it was all she had.

Lotte was all but lost to her. The few days she could spend with her were almost painful, because they reminded her of all she was missing, and Lotte's visibly rounding belly was almost an accusation.

That was the first change.

The second would come later: on September 8, 1943.

 * * * 

On that day, Italy surrendered to the Allied forces, and Nice and the surrounding region came fully under German control. That changed everything for the Jews gathered there. Suddenly, the Côte d'Azur was plunged into the foul, rotting heart of the war; suddenly, they were the focus of intense German interest. The papers were full of stories and articles praising the great work of Germany and the obvious superiority of the Aryan race.

Among the newspaper articles was a sentence that sent a spear of ice through Ana's heart. The SS was sending a trusted operative to deal with the Côte d'Azur “Jewish problem.”

That man was SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner.

Nicolas.

Anaïs cried aloud, reading that.
You should have gone to Germany when you first saw him. You should have been the hunter. Now he's coming here, and you're not prepared for him.
With the war, with the restrictions, leaving Nice and France wasn't a good option, even if she could stand to leave Lotte behind.

For the next week, Ana did what she could to prepare, crafting flasks of explosives, memorizing the fire spells that could set them off, and purchasing on the black market a rusty, Great War-vintage French Pistole Revolveur handgun with a handful of bullets.

On September 15, 1943, the papers reported that Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner would be arriving in Nice the next morning. Ana stayed in her apartment, not venturing outside for fear that somehow she might run into him in the midst of the city. He would recognize her immediately, after all. It wasn't that she was afraid of him; she felt at least some confidence that he might abide by the truce they'd come to—after all, he hadn't followed her to France, or to America; he'd been in Germany at the start of the war and his assignment here was only a strange and unfortunate fluke of fate. Still, she didn't want him to see her, to know that she was here and that she knew Lotte or the rest of the artists in the area.