Demon Moon

Ever.”
    “I’ve no intention of—” His voice shook with laughter, and he broke off. Brief silence filled the room as the song track switched from “London Calling” to “Straight to Hell.” “I vow not to push my tastes on to you,” he finished.
    Relaxing back against the door, she smiled. “They’d have been horrified by you, anyway. Is this a compilation—and on random play? You’ve ruined the artistic integrity of the original album.” She rolled her eyes.
    His teeth gleamed through the darkness. “I hardly give a thought to what another’s artistic vision is. Ninety percent of every album is rubbish. I can’t carry everything forward, or I’d have a basement full of vinyl trash. So I keep only what speaks to me, and only the best of it.”
    “Ah, the price of immortality: a music library stocked with Greatest Hits albums. Do you paint in the dark?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you mind if I open the lights?” Perhaps he preferred to keep his work hidden until it was finished. She knew a few digital artists who couldn’t tolerate anyone seeing a work in progress—to Savi’s regret, as the process of it often interested her more than the product.
    “Please do. I shall be down in a few moments.”
    Anticipation quickened her heartbeat, and she found the switch in the same location as the one in her rooms. Were the upper floors of the house laid out symmetrically? This must have been a matching suite, before he’d renovated—
    “Oh, holy shit.” She turned a slow spin, her mouth dropping open, her head tilting up. Caelum surrounded her, hung in multiple frames of varying sizes, but there were more. So many more—large canvases stacked six and seven deep around the room, leaning against the walls. And not all of Caelum.
    Moving to the nearest, a wide landscape that stood as high as her chest, she pulled it forward, looked at the one behind it, and burst into laughter. Hugh and Lilith, as they’d been before she’d known them: a crimson-skinned Lilith in her horned and winged demonic form, standing next to Hugh, her forked tongue snaking out to tease his ear. Hugh, appearing all of seventeen but for the long-suffering expression on his face, wearing a brown robe belted with a rope, his arms crossed over his chest.
    Her laughter died. She had seen him like this, and with his wings. Once, when he’d thrown himself in front of her, then flown with her to the hospital, leaving her parents and her brother behind. There’d been nothing that he could have done to help them.
    She forced that memory away.
    “I’d intended to give it to Castleford,” Colin said from beside her, wiping his hands on a towel. Attired in a white dress shirt and black trousers, he gave the impression of immaculate elegance—despite the casual touches in the two buttons undone at his collar, the unfastened sleeve cuffs, and his bare feet. “But I’m not certain if Lilith would kill me.”
    She tore her gaze from the hollow of his throat. “You’re incredibly good,” she said, and moved on to the next. A smiling woman with coiled blond hair and an empire-waisted dress, holding a baby on her lap.
    “I ought to be after two hundred years. That’s Emily and their first boy, Hugh. I protested the name; I thought it should be mine.” Amusement deepened his voice.
    “You didn’t paint this in the nineteenth century.” The edge of the canvas was brilliantly white, the staples shining.
    “No. Most were destroyed; this is what I’ve managed to produce since the fire. Some others, as well, but the majority of the paintings in the house I had shipped from the attics at Beaumont Court. These have been brought from Polidori’s and storage in the past week; I’ve not yet sorted through them.”
    Her eyes widened, and she glanced around the room again. “All of this in eight months?”
    “I’m limited only by the oils’ drying time. I can paint very quickly. But most of these I’ll toss; they aren’t worth keeping. Even I can produce rubbish.”
    She shook her head in disbelief as he gestured to the next canvas. It seemed perfect to her. “That’s the house at your family’s estate; I’ve seen pictures of it on the tourist website.” A stately mansion, set behind rolling lawns and framed by gardens. “Nani’s going to love it.”
    “Yes. It’s difficult to do otherwise.”
    Swallowing, she said, “I’m sorry about what I suggested last night.”
    “As you should be. It is my nature to be vain and