Read Online Kiss Kill Vanish by Jessica Martinez - Free Book Online Page B

was worried you got lost.”
    I turn, but he keeps his hand in place, so we stay too close, the arm of his tuxedo sliding over my arm. So this is how it’s going to be. I glance around for Marcel, but I don’t see him at the bar, which means he’s probably off in a corner trying to get too friendly with a server, or on one of the balconies smoking something more calming than a cigarette. It’s possible that my hopes for using him to distract Lucien were overly optimistic.
    â€œYou look like Aphrodite in that dress.” He takes a sip from the champagne flute in his hand. I’d love one too. “I don’t know why a goddess portrait never occurred to me,” he says, touching the fabric draped over my hip. “Maybe after we’re finished in the cemetery.”
    I take an oyster from a passing tray. It’s cold and briny, and I let it slip down my throat before I can gag.
    â€œSo what do you think?” he asks with a nod to the nearest wall.
    â€œI think your friend paints beautifully.”
    â€œHe’s not my friend.” Lucien scowls, irked by the compliment as I’d hoped he’d be. “And nobody calls his paintings beautiful . You’re not even looking at them.”
    So I look at them. Lucien’s hand on my back, we push through the crowd to the nearest painting, then the next, and the next, and the next. We move at his pace, which is too fast and not fast enough; it’s a blur, but I want it to end.
    â€œSee?” he says.
    He’s right. They aren’t beautiful, and the artist didn’t want them to be. They’re angry, not just the models’ faces but the emotion vibrating from each canvas. There’s something garish and hateful about these women—not beloved. Certainly not beautiful.
    â€œThey make you uncomfortable,” Lucien says.
    â€œNo.” But I am uncomfortable. It’s not the paintings, or not quite. It’s that niggling feeling that I’ve been ignoring something big. All the incongruities I’ve been chalking up to Lucien’s weirdness are being brought into focus by LaFleur’s nudes. Everything seems sharper now. This is art—the bare human form in all its strength and vulnerability, musculature, rolls, bulges, and dips, every angle and shade on display. I’ve grown up knowing this.
    But Lucien hasn’t asked to paint me nude. Not once. I’d say no, but he doesn’t know that. He thinks I’ll do anything if he just increases the price.
    The price is all wrong too, though. Three hundred dollars an hour is ten times the amount art school models are paid in Montreal. I checked. It was less disturbing when we started, when it was a hundred dollars, but I let the price surge, no, forced it to, without wondering why he’d pay so much. My excuses—he’s rich, he thinks I’m interesting to paint, paying too much makes him feel powerful—smoothed over enough of the bumps for me to proceed, and I’ve been greedy enough to make believing worthwhile. But now, it’s so obviously all wrong. Why doesn’t this heightened focus point to something specific?
    My stomach feels stirred, the back of my throat thickens, and my eyes burn.
    â€œI can’t imagine she’s enjoying this,” Marcel says, his voice so close to my ear I startle. He’s behind us, between us, above us, all at the same time. I don’t know whether it’s relief or revulsion that pulses through me.
    Lucien cringes and takes a step forward, pulling me with him. “I thought you left.”
    â€œChanged my mind,” Marcel says, and inches behind us, not seeming to care that we don’t turn around. His breath tickles my bare shoulder. There’s no reason for him to be standing this close, but the annoyance on Lucien’s face makes it bearable.
    Marcel reaches over his brother’s arm and holds out a champagne flute for me. “You must be