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.A painting in an elaborate gold frame caught my eye and I went over to it.It was painted in a Renaissance style and looked a little like the Last Supper except there were five people at the table, not thirteen.Two women and three men, dressed in robes that looked almost sheer, even though you couldn’t see much of their bodies underneath.All five people were beautiful.There was no other way to describe them.Even with the long-faced Renaissance style of the painting, they had an ethereal look to them.The blonde woman sat at one end of the table staring off into the distance with a dreamy look on her face.A ridiculously handsome blonde guy stood behind his chair next to her.He held something that looked like a long staff in one hand and his face had kind of a sneer on it.Even though he was model material he looked stuck up and superior, and there was something about him that reminded me a little of Slick.I shuddered.Next to him sat a brown-haired man who was kind of a stunning mountain man.If it was possible to look graceful, strong and capable while sitting in a chair, he did it.His gaze rested on the dark-haired woman to his right.I’m not sure how it’s possible to see that in a painting, but I felt like the dark-haired woman had just looked away from the mountain man and was now looking directly at me.Obviously, not me exactly.But the artist had made it seem like she looked straight out of the canvas.I moved closer to study her eyes.“That’s Jera.” Millicent’s voice startled me.I was so engrossed in the painting I forgot she was there.“She’s staring at me.”“She does that.”That seemed as unreasonable as anything else my grandmonster had said so far so I ignored her and continued to examine the painting.Sitting on the far side of the scene, a full space beyond Jera, was a black-haired man who was the most striking person there.Everything about him seemed dark, and even his sheer robe was two shades darker than everyone else’s.He wasn’t glaring arrogantly like the blond guy, but the intensity in his gaze was unsettling.I couldn’t tell if the Dark Man was looking at Jera or the Mountain Man or both of them, I just knew I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that stare.The strangest thing about the painting though was not the cast of characters in it.It was the space between Jera and the Dark Man.It was what wasn’t there.The artist had a perfect sense of proportion and scale.Every person was fully occupying their own space in the scene and their body positions were completely balanced by the person next to them.It made the gap feel like a hole, a mistake, or maybe like something was missing.I looked closer but couldn’t find any marks to show that someone had been painted out.Somehow that was even more unsettling.Like the artist wanted the viewer to feel the wrongness of the scene.Jera was still staring at me from the painting and her eyes felt alive.I gasped and stepped back, and with the extra foot of distance her eyes became painted again.“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Millicent sounded awed.I turned to her, surprised at how angry I suddenly was.“It’s wrong.”She took a step back from me.“What do you mean by that? What’s wrong with it?”I scoffed at her.“If you can’t see it on your own nothing I say will change it for you.” I turned away from the remarkable painting and went back to the leather-bound book on the table.Millicent was studying the painting so I had the book to myself.I turned pages beyond the two little girls.The photos were old and the clothes and hairstyles were probably from around Victorian times.The photos were family shots mostly, of the girls and their parents doing things around the manor house.I turned another page and barely contained another gasp.A young woman stared out of a sepia photograph – a young woman wearing pearls, my pearls, who would eventually become my mother.Millicent wasn’t lying about that.Could she be telling the truth about everything else? The final picture of my mom showed her at about twenty-two.She was laughing at whoever took the photo and she looked totally happy.I stared at Millicent, realization suddenly dawning.“So you’re not really my grandmother.” It wasn’t a question and she didn’t answer it.“I never had any children.”I had to fight a feeling of sympathy that single statement roused in me.Like her weird bitterness about my mother leaving the family, this was personal, and probably way more information than I’d ever get from Millicent in any other circumstance.“So why did you help me?”Millicent sighed.“I am your first cousin, once-removed and, as your mother will have nothing to do with us, the current matriarch of the Elian Family.Regardless of my personal feelings about what she’s done, it’s my duty to care for every member of this family.”Oh my God.This woman sounded like she was saddled with the weight of the world and it was all my mother’s fault.I suddenly felt sorry for Millicent.She must have sensed it because her eyes narrowed dangerously.“Even the illegitimate ones.”That did it.Sympathy gone.Millicent was absently stroking the back of a velvet and gold chair, waiting for my reaction.“Well, the job doesn’t seem to be without its perks.” Scorn crept into my voice and I didn’t bother to hide it.The lines on Millicent’s face were etched in stone and her voice was suddenly flat.“Or costs.” She suddenly turned back to the painting and started talking as if she was reciting a lesson.“Like time itself, the rules for Jera’s family are strict and cannot be changed lest we invite catastrophe.” Millicent turned back and spoke to me in the softest voice I’d ever heard from her.“What I might want has no place in Jera’s rules for us.”“Jera’s rules? You lost me.”Millicent indicated the painting.“Has anyone ever spoken to you of the Immortals?”Not since last night, I thought with some satisfaction.But I decided to play dumb.I shook my head “no.” Millicent pointed to the vague-looking blonde on the left of the painting.“Aislin.The Immortal, Fate.” Her hand moved right to the handsome blond warrior guy with the sneer.“Duncan.The Immortal, War.” She kept moving across the painting.“Goran.Nature.”I interrupted her.“Isn’t Nature usually depicted as a woman in mythology?”“Mortals have always tried to tame nature and make it soft and gentle, so they’ve created female representations.But Nature is unforgiving, harsh, strong and totally careless in its destruction.It’s also unexpected and striking and can take your breath away with its gifts.And as you can see, Goran, as the Immortal, Nature is unquestionably male.”No doubt about it.He was about as manly as they come.“Jera is the Immortal, Time.Thus we are of her family.”“So, we’re time-travelers?”“The Elians are the descendants of Time.The ability to travel in time flows through our family lines as a direct inheritance from Jera herself.”“Can everyone in our Family do it?”Millicent seemed to pause slightly before answering.“No.”And I got nothing else on that one.She pointed at the black-haired man on the end of the painting, effectively changing the subject.“This is Aeron.He is the Immortal, Death.”“Death that can’t die? Sort of an oxymoron.”Without a trace of humor, Millicent remarked, “Aeron isn’t fond of the term.I’d advise you don’t use it in his presence.”I stared at her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]