Page 91 of Noctis

I racked my brain for other monochrome subjects. “A piano? A newspaper? A chessboard?”

“I’ll show you when it’s finished.”

I smiled. “Spoken like a true artist.”

I left him alone after that, happy for us both to paint in silence for a while.

“I don’t know why I ever gave this up,” I said as I added the kind of detail to the leaves that would have made Edward proud. “It’s very calming. I guess as my social life got busier, I devoted more time to that and forgot how painting made me feel. And Tyler wasn’t really into art.”

Mention of Tyler had me glaring at the pile of his stuff in the corner that I still hadn’t gotten around to sorting. He kept messaging about it, and I kept ignoring him. Making him wait a little longer was immensely satisfying, even if it was petty.

“You should show your paintings in an art gallery,” Caligo said with complete earnestness.

“You haven’t even seen them. I might be rubbish.”

“I doubt that.”

“Why?” I was genuinely curious.

“You have an artistic soul.”

I laughed. “Do I?”

“Purple souls are artistic.”

“And I have a purple soul?”

“Purple and blue.”

“What’s the blue?”

“Passion.”

Caligo said it so matter-of-factly that I knew it must be true. “A passionate artist? I’ll take it. Maybe I will try to paint some pieces that a gallery might be interested in.” I waited a beat before deliberately making my voice casual. “By the way, I’m meeting a friend for dinner tonight. I’ll be gone most of the evening.”

What about when you do something he doesn’t like?

Shut up, Laura.

“You’ll be okay on your own, right?”

Caligo placed his paintbrush down with a flourish. “Finished.”

So much for that conversation. “Can I look?”

When he nodded, I joined him at the easel. I’d expected something childlike, perhaps the artistic equivalent of a square house with four windows, a door, and the obligatory sun in the top right-hand corner.

Instead, I found myself staring into a swirling black mass that seemed capable of sucking me into its depths. He’d somehow created depth and contrast using almost nothing but black, diluting the paint by different amounts so some strokes appeared solid while others resembled smoke. There was very little white on the canvas, and I suspected that if I hadn’t pushed him to use another color, it wouldn’t have been there at all. Next time, I vowed to keep my helpful suggestions to myself.

“And you’ve never painted before?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Is it terrible?”

“No. Not at all. It’s surprisingly good in a dark and deeply unsettling way. It makes you wonder what it’s actually showing, which is what art is supposed to be about. Is it space? Is it a vortex? Is it the pathway to hell?”

“It’s not a zebra.”

“It’s definitely not a zebra,” I agreed.