They stood and watched the painting for almost ten minutes, but even when it had dried, it refused to disappear.
“Maybe I’ve lost the magic touch,” said Molly. “Maybe it only works with living things, not inanimate objects.”
Sissy looked around the room. “What’s different?”
“Nothing’s different.”
“Those are the same paints you used before?”
“Same paints, same brushes. Same paper.”
“I don’t know what it is. Yes, I do. You’re not wearing your necklace.”
“No, I took it off when I changed.”
“Last time you were wearing your necklace. And you were wearing it when you drew those pictures of Red Mask, too. The cards showed you with a talisman, remember, something to make your drawings come to life. Put it on, and try painting that knife again.”
Molly went to her bedroom and came out with her necklace. It looked dull and cheap when she was carrying it — nothing but a jingling collection of glass beads and tarnished mascots — but when Sissy helped her to fasten it around her neck, it started to sparkle.
“I said it had power, didn’t I? And you’re definitely the person who makes it come to life.”
Molly sketched and painted the steak knife a second time. While she watched her, Sissy was strongly tempted to light another cigarette, but she didn’t want to smoke in the house, though Molly was relaxed about it. Trevor could smell cigarettes, even if she had smoked them days ago, just the way that Frank had been able to.
They waited. The air-conditioning rattled and the cicadas ceaselessly chirruped. Five minutes passed and the steak knife remained on the paper, without a hint of its fading.
“Maybe you’re right, and it doesn’t work with inanimate objects.”
“No — look!”
As the seventh minute passed, the steak knife’s handle gradually began to fade. After eight minutes, there was nothing left but the faint outline of the blade. After nine, that was gone, too, and the paper was blank.
Sissy touched the paper with her fingertips. She felt nothing at all, not even the inherent sharpness that a real knife would have left behind it. The paper was completely empty, in the same way that Red Mask was empty. No knife. Not even an absence of knife.
The two of them went back outside. The yard was teeming with cicadas, all glistening in the early-afternoon sun, but there was one distinctive shine that they both saw at once. It was the steak knife, lying on the table.
“You did it,” said Sissy.
“The necklace did it, not me.”
“I’m sure you did it together, the necklace and you. Just like my mother’s ring won’t go dark on its own, the necklace doesn’t work unless you’re wearing it. You’re an artist. You’re a brilliant artist, and the necklace knows that you are.”
Molly reached out and picked up the steak knife. She ran her fingertip down the blade, and said, “Ouch. Just like the real thing.”
“Well, let’s see how it cuts these roses.”
Molly knelt down on one knee and cut the roses as close to the soil as she could. She smelled them, and then offered them to Sissy, so that she could smell them, too.
“Nothing,” said Sissy. “No fragrance at all. If anything, they smell like paper.”
Molly took the roses into her studio and laid them on her desk.
Sissy said, “Let’s see what happens now. If they stay cut, then we’ll we know that we can have an actual physical effect on things that are painted, even if they’re not really real.”
“Like Red Mask, you mean?”
“Let’s hope so.”
That afternoon, while Molly was making a vegetable potpie for supper, Sissy went over the DeVane cards again and again, trying to decode the symbolism of the roses.
Now and again she glanced across at the flowers that were still lying on Molly’s desk, but so far they were showing no sign of changing back into paintings. They reminded her of the day she had married Frank. He had heaped their honeymoon bed with dozens and dozens of roses, crimson and white.
Molly had borrowed four library books on roses, which she was using for reference for her Fairy Fifi story. “Roses are a symbol of beauty and love,” declared The Illustrated Rose. “But at the same time they are a sad reminder that beauty and love always fade away and die.
“Roses are also a symbol of great secrecy. There is a myth that Cupid offered a rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to bribe him not to disclose the sexual indiscretions of the goddess Venus.
“In ancient Rome and Greece, a host who suspended an upside-down rose over a table would expect the guests who were gathered underneath it to keep their discussions confidential — hence the term sub rosa.”
Sissy frowned. An upside-down rose, suspended over a table?
She shuffled through the DeVane cards until she found les Amis de la table, the first card she had turned up after Molly had painted the roses and they had come to life. Here they sat, four people eating a lavish dinner together, two young people and an older woman, and a mysterious man whose face was hidden under a gray hood. And there it was, hanging above their heads: an upside-down rose, tied to the candelabrum with a ribbon.
Unlike some of the other cards, there was no writing on les Amis de la table apart from its title, so the presence of the rose could mean only one thing. The picture itself must hold a secret. But what?
She tucked the card back into the deck and shuffled it. But when she tried to pick out another card, it was the same one, les Amis de la table. She tried again, shuffling even more thoroughly this time. But again, when she drew out a card, there it was, les Amis de la table. She did it again and again, and every time, les Amis de la table reappeared.
She took the card into the kitchen, where Molly was cutting up carrots. “You see this card? The first time I picked it, I thought it meant that I was welcome to stay here another week.”
“Well, you are,” said Molly.
“Yes, but now the same damn card has come up four times in a row. I shuffle the deck, I pick a card, and it’s always the same one. The cards only repeat themselves when they’re trying to tell you that you’ve missed the point. It’s like they’re saying, Hello, stupid!”
“So what is the point?”
“I’m not sure. But this upside-down rose means that the card has a secret hidden in it someplace.”
Molly looked at the card and shrugged. “I don’t see any secret. Except. well, you can’t see this hooded guy’s face, can you? So you can’t tell why this old woman is looking so worried about him.”
“Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s somebody famous. Or somebody who was famous, back in the eighteenth century. An artist, you know? Or a politician. Or maybe he’s a saint. Maybe, if we knew who he was, we could begin to understand how to turn murderers back into drawings of murderers.”
Molly examined the card more intently. “Look. you can see his face reflected in that dish cover, can’t you?”
“Yes. But it’s so distorted. He’s all nose.”
“That’s easily fixed. Here.” Molly took down a ladle from the rack above the hob and held it up close to the card. Inside the concave bowl of the ladle, the image of the hooded man’s face was turned upside-down, but his features appeared almost normal.
She turned the card around, and now they could clearly see who the hooded man was.
“My God,” said Sissy. She felt as if the floor had dropped away beneath her feet. She stared at the hooded man’s face in disbelief and then she stared at Molly. “It can’t be.”