Key of Light
Page 33

“Not bad,” Flynn said and helped himself to another slice of pizza.
“I’ve got some more.” Still she said nothing as she reached into the box herself, topped off her wine. “I put in some Internet time running the three names Malory heard in her . . . in her dream. “Niniane” comes up a few times. Some legends have her as the sorceress who enchanted Arthur’s Merlin and trapped him in the cave of crystal. There’s another that has her as Merlin’s mother. But when I put her together with the other two, I found one hit from this esoteric little site on goddess worship. It gives a variation on the Daughters of Glass—and calls them by those names.”
“Those are their names. You can’t think it’s a coincidence that I dreamed those names and you found them today.”
“No,” Dana said carefully. “But isn’t it possible you came across the same site and the names stuck in your head?”
“No. I would’ve written it down. I would’ve remembered. I never heard them before the dream.”
“Okay.” Flynn patted her knee. “First, I’ll tell you I haven’t found any record of a shipping or moving company that serviced Warrior’s Peak. And no record of any company shipping furniture here for clients under Triad.”
“They had to get all that stuff in there somehow,” Dana protested. “They didn’t just click the heels of their ruby slippers together.”
“Just giving you the facts. The real-estate company didn’t make the arrangements for them, either. At this point, I haven’t found any trail leading Rowena or Pitte to the Peak. Not saying there isn’t one,” he continued before Dana could protest. “Just saying I haven’t found one through the logical sources.”
“I guess we have to look at the illogical ones.”
He shifted to beam at Zoe. “There you go. But I’ve got one more logical step to take. Who do I know who collects art seriously, someone I could use as a source? The Vanes. So I gave my old pal Brad a call. It so happens he’s heading back here in a couple of days.”
“Brad’s coming back to the Valley?” Dana asked.
“He’s taking over the local headquarters for HomeMakers. Brad’s got the Vanes’ passion for art. I described the painting to him, or started to. I wasn’t close to being finished when he gave me the title. The Daughters of Glass.”
“No, that can’t be. I’d have heard of it.” Malory pushed herself to her feet and began to pace. “Who’s the artist?”
“Nobody seems to be sure.”
“Just not possible,” Malory continued. “A major talent like that, I’d have heard. I’d have seen more of the artist’s work.”
“Maybe not. According to Brad, nobody seems to know much about the artist. The Daughters of Glass was last seen in a private home in London. Where it was, by all accounts, destroyed during the Blitz. In 1942.”
Chapter Eight
 
MALORY closed herself in her apartment for two days. She submerged herself in books, telephone calls, E-mail. It was foolish, she’d decided, to run around chasing a dozen different angles and suppositions. Better—far better—to conduct the search with technology and systematic logic.
She couldn’t function, simply couldn’t think, in disorder. Which was why, she admitted as she carefully labeled yet another file, she’d failed as an artist.
Art, the creation of true art, required some mysterious, innate ability to thrive in chaos. Or that was her opinion. To be able to see and understand and feel dozens of shapes and textures of emotions at one time.
Then, of course, there was the little matter of possessing the talent to transfer those emotions onto a canvas.
She lacked the gift, on all levels, while the artist of The Daughters of Glass had it in spades.
The painting at Warrior’s Peak, or one done by the same artist, was the path. She was sure of that now. Why else did she keep coming back to it? Why had she somehow in her dreams walked into it?
Why had she been chosen to find the first key, she thought, if not for her knowledge of and contacts in the art world?
She’d been told to look within and without. Within the painting, or another by the same artist? Did “without” mean to look at what surrounded the painting?
Opening a file folder, she studied the printout of the painting again. What surrounded the daughters? Peace and beauty, love and passion—and the threat to destroy it. As well as, she mused, the method to restore it.
A key in the air, in the trees, in the water.
She was damn sure she wasn’t about to pluck a magic key out of the air or from a tree branch, so what did it mean? And which of those three was hers?
Too literal? Perhaps. Maybe “within” meant she was to look inside herself to her feelings about the painting, both the emotional and the intellectual response.
Where the goddess sings, she reflected as she rose from her piles of research to pace. No one had been singing in the dream. But the fountain had reminded her of music. Maybe it had something to do with the fountain.
Maybe water was her key.
And, she thought in frustration, she might not have left her apartment, but she was still running in circles.
There were only three weeks left.
Her heart jumped at the quick rat-a-tat on her glass patio doors. There stood the man and his dog on the other side. Instinctively she ran a hand over the hair she’d yanked back into a ponytail sometime that morning. She hadn’t bothered with makeup or with changing out of the baggy cotton pants and tank she’d slept in.
Not only was she not looking her best, but she was pretty sure she’d dipped below her personal worst.
When she opened the door, she decided Flynn verified that when he took a good, hard look at her and said, “Honey, you need to get out.”
She felt, actually felt, her face arrange itself in a sulk. “I’m busy. I’m working.”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the neat stacks of research materials on her dining room table, the pretty coffee carafe and china cup. There were small containers, all in matching red plastic, that held pencils, paper clips, Post-its.
A glass paperweight swirling with ribbons of color anchored a few typed pages. A storage box was tucked under the table, and he imagined she placed everything that related to her project inside it every night and took it out again every morning.