The image of his painting grew before him, each color blending to the next, woven from a tapestry of threads that never existed in the center of the room.
Incense smoke and candle light?
Too much alcohol and flashback images?
Sammy played, and the questions faded to meaningless white noise in the back of his mind.
The painting grew, hers now, his as well, but altered.
More vivid.
The notes danced along the iced parapets and flowed around the base of each tree, gushed from the geysers and taunted him with all that had remained just beyond his clouded vision.
He heard the birds.
He heard the rush of water and the echoes from within the caverns beyond the massive doors.
He heard the echo of drums, marching feet, a horde. A heartbeat.
The image shivered, and Art held his breath.
The music reasserted itself, and the room flickered into focus.
He wanted to shake his head, but he held the urge in check.
The notes weren't stopping, merely shifting, and the smoky air coalesced once more.
A face twisted and writhed, fighting its way through the gloom, drawing strength from the sound.
The eyes flashed with emotion.
Anger?
Lust?
Rage?
Desire?
Art gripped the arms of his chair and leaned back.
The features snapped into focus for one long, lingering moment.
The eyes focused, not on Art, but on Belle, who lay back now, knees spread wide and back arched, long hair flowing over her shoulders to the floor scant inches beneath.
Her gaze was locked on that image, her lips parted and her breath came in heaving gulps.
Art stared, the image forgotten, the music lost as the motion of her body called out to him.
His body reacted with stunning force and he gripped the chair arms more tightly still, hips arching, jerking.
Her flesh was coated in a hot sheen of sweat.
Her eyes were wide and her taut nipples strained against the loose fabric of her blouse.
A string broke.
The silence that followed this jarring sound was deep, molasses thick and cloying.
The scent of the incense flowed in.
The dim light of the candles drew back, dragging shadows across the floor and into the corners.
The image snapped from existence so suddenly that breath stilled. Nothing moved.
The room was a still life, each of them frozen in disbelief.
In loss.
In pain.
Belle broke first.
Her carefully arched body, still stretching to the air above Sammy, curved like a tightly strung bow.
Her eyes rolled back and Art saw her hands slip to her hair.
Her shoulders slumped to the floor as she tore wildly at the long, silky locks.
Her lips parted, but no sound emerged.
Not at first.
She drew breaths too deep, too full for any lungs and her jaw worked so fiercely that he feared she'd bite through her own tongue.
He started to rise, to go to her and pull her close and bring her back, to be the anchor that bound her to reality, despite the fuzziness in his own head. He nearly made it to his feet before she screamed.
The sound pierced Art to the core of his soul.
He slapped his hands ineffectually over his ears, but it had no effect on Belle's tortured wails.
The sound vibrated through his skin, seeped into his pores and resonated deep within his senses.
His nails dug into the flesh of his cheeks and he pressed his hands so tightly to his ears that the pressure threatened to burst his skull.
He heard her as if he were kneeling beside her, ear pressed to her soft red lips.
There was no escape.
Art dropped to his knees, and the screams slowly died to silence.
The dulcimer was silent as well.
Art eased the pressure of his palms on the sides of his head, and very gently opened his eyes.
Belle had not moved.
She lay back, arched against the floor, eyes closed and her hands tightly gripping long handfuls of her own hair.
Art leaned closer, sliding his arms beneath her, one hand in the small of her back, the other behind her head.
He held her there, afraid to lift her free of the floor.
Afraid of her anger.
So quietly that it was difficult to be certain she'd spoken at all, Sammy's voice broke the silence.
Art glanced at her, shocked again and unable to react in any way other than to listen.
"A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As
e'er
beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain
momently
was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail."
Belle's eyes flickered.
Opened.
Art turned to her, watching her face. She barely breathed.
Her entire frame shook, trembling with the strain of holding the position she'd contorted herself into as she screamed, but she was unwilling to shift.
Art held her very still, and very carefully, not daring to speak and break the silence.
The air was a miasma of silence.
Sammy had returned to her mute scrutiny of things unseen.
Her fingers lay limp on the strings of the dulcimer.
The glass, only a short time before brimming with liquid emeralds and alive with promise, lay canted to one side on the floor, a very thin trickle of absinthe feeling its way tentatively over the rim and seeping into the carpet.
With excruciating care, Belle released her grip, letting her hair slide back and down over the carpet.
Over Art's hand.
She closed her eyes, relaxing, breathing, and very softly, she spoke.
"Help me," she whispered.
Art needed to hear no more.
He slid his arms under Belle's shivering frame more fully, braced himself, and lifted.
She came easily into his arms, slumping against him, and the nearness of her nearly buckled his knees.
His mind shot back to the way she'd arched, the way she'd looked as those eyes that could not have been there, floating above Sammy in the half-light, had devoured her form.
Art banished the images, and staggered from the room.
Laying Belle gently on her bed, Art sat in a chair beside her.
She looked up only once, catching his gaze, holding it, then looking away and curling into a fetal position.
Art reached down, drew her blanket up over her thin shoulders, smoothed her hair gently, and stood.
As he left the room, he glanced back at her. She was asleep.
With his mind awash in impossibilities, Art walked down the hall to his own room and did the same.
Belle was up, scribbling furiously in her notebook when Art staggered out of his room.
Her hair was wild, and he noticed with appreciation that all she wore was one of his own shirts, buttoned about halfway.
She was seated cross-legged on the floor.
Belle glanced up.
Without a word, she turned back to her work.
Beside her on the floor she had arranged a number of things, a bottle with the latest recipe minus the peppermint and still intact, some vials, a sheaf of yellowed paper, and other implements so familiar Art paid them little mind.
Apparently satisfied with whatever she'd been figuring, Belle dropped the notebook suddenly and grabbed a small mortar and pestle she had set aside.
With deft, sure motion she plucked two peppermints from a bag and dropped them into the wooden bowl.
With quick, decisive strokes she crushed them to powder, working well beyond the point where Art would have considered them to be dust.
Belle carefully inserted a small funnel into the mouth of the bottle and poured the peppermint through.
Art watched, fascinated, as the fine powder whirled in the green depths of the bottle like a small tornado, then faded.
"That was it, then?" he asked softly.
"The missing link?
The big
mojo
?
Some peppermint?"
Belle glanced up at him, more sharply, and gave her head a shake.
"Not all," she said.
"Almost.
Very close."
"It wasn't the broken string?" Art asked.
"I thought..."
Belle shook her head.
She didn't look up, but she replied.
"The string broke because it wasn't right.
If it had been right, she would not have broken the string."
Art frowned.
Strings broke all the time.
How could the mixture of a drink have any effect?
He might have bought it if Sammy had been trashed, but she had one drink, and only one drink, and she had been playing beautifully.
It had been real.
Too real, in fact.
"Who was he?" Art asked, shifting subjects.
Belle did not look up.
She did not answer.
Her cheeks colored, and Art's brow furrowed.
"He wasn't real," Art said at last.
"He was a hallucination, Belle.
A dream."
She ignored him, but the muscles in her neck tightened, and she leaned more closely over her work.
"He wasn't real."
Art mouthed the words, but did not breathe them to life.
He turned away.
Three deep green sprigs of parsley sat on a napkin at Belle's side.
She pored over her notes.
There was enough in the bottle for one, maybe two more attempts, and she'd have to start again.
The process was slow and tedious, bringing the mixture back to the point she'd already reached would take weeks.
She had narrowed the possible missing ingredients dramatically, but there were still unknowns.
Secrets were never easy to steal.
Her mind drifted.
She could still feel the sharp tingling sensation of his gaze, probing her, commanding her.
She felt the heat rising and drew in a quick breath, gritting her teeth and clamping her eyes closed hard enough to send dancing spots across the inner screen of her eyelids.
She curled her leg back and pressed her heel tightly between her thighs, rocking against it for a moment and shaking.
The moment faded, and she breathed more slowly, not trusting herself to move for a long moment.
Everything she did had a price attached to it, and to spill the bottle, or ruin the mixture, would be more than she could bear.
She was so close.
Sammy's voice lingered in the background of Belle's thoughts.
She'd heard that voice so seldom, and never the poetry.
It was a soft voice, rich in timbre, but subtle.
The room had resonated with each verse, but Belle knew that the silence that had been the backdrop was largely responsible for the illusion of volume.
Belle's thoughts were clouded with the memory of heat.
Her body had reacted, held and stroked by each note from the dulcimer, bent and nearly broken by the words.
She had felt his breath, had shivered with the beat of something so alien, so powerful and erotic, that if she had died in that instant, the only thing she would have regretted was the incompletion.
She'd been aware of Art, as well, had known his need and felt it funneled through her into the moment.
The hint of licorice burned on her tongue, coated in peppermint and soaked in deeper flavors.
So different from where she'd started, the green bottle with the white label, bought at an off-the-street liquor store for too much money and releasing only the slightest hint of the magic within.