Stomach bursting with carrot cake, I moved on to my next mission. Operation have-a-conversation-with-the-famous-artist. Ryan Raynard was in the house, and I’d be a gammy Irish fool if I let this opportunity slip me by because of a little fae chaos.

I needed something to take my mind off everything. Losing Corbin had distorted everything. All the progress we’d made as people undone in a moment because that idiot had got a knife through the guts. Maeve may have been the epicenter of our coven, but Corbin was the glue. Now that he was gone everything was coming unstuck.

I was coming unstuck.

Arthur’s twisted face as he lashed out at Blake flashed in front of my eyes.

When Arthur got in one of his moods, I could usually wrangle a smile out of him and dissipate some of his fiery magic. Corbin was the only one who could talk him down, but I could distract him. That was what I did. I was the funny guy. I made people laugh so they didn’t cry or burn things.

I skipped down the hall, flinging open doors and peering into darkened rooms, searching for Ryan’s studio. He had to have one somewhere. All these ghastly rooms, one of them would make a decent—

Ah hah!

I flung open a pair of double doors, revealing a bright, elaborate ballroom. A marble floor stretched across the enormous space, and a vaulted ceiling rose high above, held up by arched stone pillars hung with industrial lights. Much of the space had been painted white, and the bright walls reflected light from the high mullioned windows and modern skylights, casting interesting shadows on the elaborate plaster detailing.

Bold, detailed paintings were stacked against the walls and along the sides of a white grand piano in the center of the room. Along the far wall at the back ran a mural depicting a wild fox hunt. In front of the mural were shelves of paint cans and brushes and stretched canvases. It was an artist’s paradise.

Ryan sat at an easel near the window. Light from a floor lamp streamed across his canvas, which he painted in deft strokes.

“What are you doing in here?” he growled, kicking the foot of his easel to turn the canvas around so I couldn’t see it.

Shite. I backed toward the door, my hands up. I’d forgotten that Ryan, for all his hospitality, was a recluse. He wasn’t used to other people in his space, let alone in his creative studio. I was trespassing.

“I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” I backed toward the door. “I just… wanted to see where you painted.”

Ryan wiped a lock of red hair out of his eye. “I don’t really like other people being in here.”

“It’s fine. I get it. I used to kick the guys out of my studio all the time.” I shrugged. “I guess that doesn’t matter now, since mine burned down.”

Ryan sighed. He set down his brush and swiveled his chair to face me. “Did you want to talk to me about something, Flynn?”

“Yeah.” I scratched my head. “I mean, it’s so stupid because you’re who you are and I’m just some lowly scrubber—”

“I’ve got to finish this painting today so we can release it to the market tomorrow. I don’t have time for your self-flagellation. Just say what you want to say so I can get back to work.”

“I want to be an artist,” I blurted out. “Like you. Well, not like you because you’re amazing and I’m utter shite. But a passable artist who actually makes a living from his work. It’s the only thing in the world I could be good at except for stand-up comedy, and I’m told comedians get paid even less than artists. I want to make a living, but I don’t know where to start.”

“You can start by stopping the Banksy idolatry,” Ryan shot back.

“But he’s a genius!”

“That may be true. But he, or she, or they, can’t stand up and claim their work. Making a living the way Banksy does is hard. And Banksy’s doing it a lot better than you ever could. Don’t try and compete. Don’t be like me, either. I’m a terrible example. Just be yourself.”

“But I don’t know what to do!”

“You just had the most horrific thing happen to you – losing someone you love. I think that should be the subject of your next work. Your grief connects you to your audience, because they’re grieving, too. Everyone in the world is grieving for someone or something.”

“But I don’t want to make people sad.” That wasn’t who I was.

“You don’t have to. Grief isn’t always sad. A lot of the time it’s about celebrating the life of a person you love. You can make the best parts of them live on forever. That’s noble.”

I nodded vigorously.

“And get yourself a website. Use social media. You’re young. You don’t have to be entrenched in the galley world to make a living. You have so many opportunities if you don’t hide yourself away.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah. Don’t be like me. I don’t do this out of choice, Flynn. Don’t think what I do is noble or artistic or romantic. The only person I talk to is Simon. What’s romantic about that?” Ryan gestured out the window, toward Briarwood. “You get hundreds of visitors a week during summer up at the castle. Why don’t you include a gallery space as part of the tour?”

“Fuck, that’s genius.” I could already picture it. There was a large room opposite the ticketing office that had once been servants’ quarters on the bottom floor of the eastern wing. When it was in use it would’ve been divided into several small rooms, but now it was one big open space. Currently we used it to store the signage for the tours and gift shop, as well as a dumping ground for all our random junk (Corbin’s rowing machine, stacks of Rowan’s jams that didn’t fit in the scullery, a tapestry Arthur burned through when his favorite footy team lost the semi-finals). It had large windows looking out over the parterres and the topiary maze, and a high ceiling. There was all this old graffiti on the walls, including amusing caricatures of the house’s noble family. It would be perfect for a gallery.

Ryan grinned. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Thanks, mate. You know, you’re different from what I imagined.”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “You spend a lot of time imagining me?”

“Don’t get excited. I didn’t mean in a homoerotic way. Just in a general sense. You’re our neighbor, but you never leave the house, and even though you’re famous you don’t let anyone see your face. I thought you must be horribly disfigured or you had a second nose growing out of your forehead or maybe you were a collective pretending to be one person. There are as many theories about you as there are about Banksy, you know.”

“I know. But so far, no one’s even come close.” Ryan’s face was grave.

“Hey, I don’t suppose you have a canvas I could use? I’m feeling a mite inspired. I promise I’ll sit in the corner and not say a word. Not a peep. I just…” I wrung my hands. “I need to do something.”

Ryan grunted, but he got up and dug around in the supplies at the back of the studio. “What size?”

“Big.” I flapped my arms out. “As tall as I am.”

Ryan held out a long canvas, the material expertly stretched and primed. “I was going to use this,” he grumbled.

“I’ll buy you another one, I promise.”

Ryan grunted again and dragged over a chair from under the grand piano, the legs squealing against the marble floor. Next, he moved an easel to a window as far as possible as it was to get from him while still being in the same room. “You sit here. You can use any of the paints and brushes you can find. The only rule is that you can’t bother me again. I need to focus.”

“You’re a star, mate. I promise I’m going to sit right here and not say a peep.”

“You’re still talking,” Ryan growled as he turned his easel back toward him.

“Right. Gotcha. Not a peep, I swear on the Virgin Mary.”

I grabbed up a stack of colors and chose some lovely sable brushes. I thought of the dream Maeve had that she refused to share. I know she would never believe her dreams, but there was far too much of this prophetic stuff going around to dismiss it. Once she realized she couldn’t ignore it, she’d let us in, I knew it. She just needed to deal with her own grief first. We all did.

Arthur needed to stop being angry, and he hated that because anger was far easier for him than what was underneath. Blake needed to fully become part of this world. Rowan needed to grow a pair, which was nothing new. Maeve needed to believe in herself and her power, and let go of the control she wanted to exert over the whole world.

Corbin… Corbin needed to not be dead. Hot tears stung my eyes. I squeezed my eyelids shut, forcing them back. I wasn’t going to cry in Ryan Raynard’s studio. What would my uncle the hardarse mobster say? Hell, what would my ma, god rest her drug-addled soul, say?

But even if Corbin was still alive in some sense, even if he could be restored, his body was gone. Maybe what he needed was a new one.

Whistling an Irish ditty under my breath and calling up a surge of power within me, I dunked my brush into the black paint and made my first strong, dark line.