CROSS MY HEART

"You're going to go blind doing that," Camille said from the doorway, arms crossed, a paper bag of takeout dangling from two fingers. "I'm already blind; that's how I afford to work for people like this." Selene didn't look up. On the easel in front of her sat a 19th-century portrait, cracked down the middle like a fault line, a stranger's ancestor staring out at her with one eye restored and one eye still ghostly and faded. "Mr. Alvarez wants it done by Friday. He apparently does not care that the original artist has been dead for a hundred and forty years and can't exactly text me back with color notes." The brush trembled in Selene Calloway's hand, not from nerves, but from three hours of holding it at the same impossible angle while she rebuilt a dead woman's face one hair-thin stroke at a time. "Mr. Alvarez also still owes you for the last two pieces." "He is aware." Camille dropped the bag onto the only clear surface in the studio, a stool that mostly held drying rags and perched on the arm of the couch instead. "So make him pay before you hand this one over." "That's not how this works." Selene finally set the brush down, rolling her shoulder with a wince. "He pays when he sells it; I get my cut. That's the arrangement." "The arrangement where you do a hundred hours of near-invisible museum-grade restoration and he flips it to some private collector for four times what he's paying you?" "The arrangement where I make rent." Selene said it flatly, no drama in it, because there wasn't room for drama when the number in her bank account was the number it currently was. Camille studied her for a second too long. "How bad?" "Landlord bad." "Selene." Camille reached into her bag and pulled out a folded magazine, dropping it on top of a stack of reference photos. "Read this before you say no to me." Selene wiped her hands on a rag already too stained to save and picked up the magazine. A glossy page, a headline in bold black print. CROSS ENTERPRISES ANNOUNCES SEARCH FOR NEW ART TALENT — SUBMISSIONS OPEN TONIGHT. Underneath it, a photo of a man who looked like he'd been carved out of granite and given a tailor. "No," Selene said immediately. "You haven't even heard what I'm going to say." "I don't need to. The answer is no because I know exactly what you're going to say, and it's going to involve me putting on a dress and standing in a room full of people who can smell secondhand fabric from across a gallery." "It involves you submitting a portfolio to the single richest art patron in this city, who is apparently personally reviewing every piece tonight." Camille tapped the page. "Selene. This is real money. This is not-restoring-dead-people's-eyeballs-for-a-guy-who-ghosts-you money." "It's also a guy who's famous for being an ice sculpture with a bank account. He'll take one look at my stuff and toss it." "Or he'll take one look and realize you're better than every trust-fund painter submitting tonight." Camille softened, just slightly. "You keep saying you want to stop doing this; the restorations, the under-the-table stuff, all of it. This is how you stop." Selene's phone buzzed on the desk. She glanced at it, a text from an unsaved number. Her mood changed. "Everything okay?" Camille asked, catching the shift in her face. "Fine. Client stuff." Selene shoved the phone in her pocket and stood, already moving toward the door that led to the back room, the room Camille wasn't allowed in, not because Selene didn't trust her, but because some things were left safe and unknown. "That client stuff you're not going to tell me about?" "That client stuff I'm handling." Selene managed a smile that didn't reach anywhere near her eyes. "Give me ten minutes." The man in the back room didn't sit. He never sat. He stood by the window with his hands folded like he was already impatient with the amount of oxygen the conversation was going to cost him. "It's not finished," Selene said before he could ask. "I didn't come for the piece." He turned. Mid-fifties, expensive coat, the kind of quiet menace that came from money that had learned a long time ago it never had to raise its voice. "I came to tell you the last one sold. The client's thrilled and thinks it's the real thing." "It is the real thing. I don't forge paintings. I restore damaged ones and I don't ask what happens to them after." "Semantics." He set an envelope on the table between them. It was thick. Cash-thick. "There's more where that came from, if you're willing to expand what you don't ask about." Selene didn't touch the envelope. "I fix what's broken. I don't manufacture provenance. That's a different business, and it's the kind of business that ends with people like me in a very small room with very bad lighting." His mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Everyone finds their price eventually, Miss Calloway." "Maybe, but this isn't mine." She pushed the envelope an inch back toward him. "Take the payment for the last piece; leave the offer." He studied her for a long moment, the kind of look that made her skin itch, then picked the envelope back up. "You're an interesting woman. Talented, poor and principled." He said the last word like it amused him. "That combination doesn't usually last long in this city." "I'll take my chances." He let himself out without another word. Selene stood there for a full minute after the door clicked shut, waiting for her pulse to come back down to something reasonable. When she walked back into the studio, Camille was still on the arm of the couch, magazine open on her lap, eyebrows raised. "You look like you just saw a ghost." "I saw a client." Selene grabbed the magazine out of her hands before she could stop herself, scanning the submission details again. Tonight. 8 PM. The Ashford Gallery. "So?" Camille pressed, sensing the shift. "What changed your mind in ten minutes?" Selene looked around her studio, the cracked portrait on the easel, the overdue notices tucked under a jar of brushes, the ghost of a conversation she never wanted to have again with a man who thought principles had a price tag. "Nothing changed," she said. "I just remembered I'd rather be broke doing something honest than rich doing something I can't take back." Camille grinned, already reaching for her phone. "That's the most productive guilt trip I've ever caused. Okay, we have four hours. What are you wearing?"