Her Incubus Master (The Children of Lilith) Read Online Free Page A

he
asked, following her gaze.
    "Yes, please!" she said, enthusiastically.
    Her own apartment was a quirky little place in one of the
city's older neighborhoods. It had originally been a mansion belonging to a
prominent newspaper publisher in the 1920s. The family had lost everything in
the Great Depression, and their home had been subsequently divided into
apartments.
    Her place wasn't elegant, but it felt cozy, with beautiful
old molded-plaster ceilings.
    But Andras' place was like something out of a magazine
spread, or maybe a movie set—a single huge space with hardwood floors, sleek
Scandinavian furniture in leather and teak, and walls covered with
tastefully-framed prints of modern landscapes and cityscapes done in style of
classical Asian brush-painting.
    The apartment was saved from model-home sterility by a pile
of yellowing, tattered science fiction paperbacks shoved under the coffee
table, funny cartoons about banking stuck to his refrigerator, and a mountain
bike with mud-encrusted tires parked on a canvas drop-cloth near the front
door.
    Most of the framed prints on his walls were modern works, by
an artist she didn't recognize, but when he led her up a spiral metal staircase
to the open loft that served as his bedroom, she saw that the painting over his
large, four-poster bed was very old, done in oils, set in a heavy,
ornately-carved gilded frame.
    In it, a young, beautiful red-haired woman leaned over a
sleeping, spectacularly-nude young man. She was wearing draped garments that
looked ancient Greek or Roman, and held an oil lamp raised high in her hand.
The lamp illuminated her intense expression and the muscled body of the youth
on the bed, but the rest of the painting was depicted in dark colors, as if the
lamp were the only source of light in the room.
    The artistic quality was extraordinarily life-like, and yet
larger than life, the emotions on the woman's face vivid with apprehension,
longing, and desire.
    His hand resting lightly on her waist, Andras let Katie
study it.
    Finally she said, hesitantly, "Seventeenth-century. Maybe
Dutch from the use of lamplight, but figures and composition look very much
like they were influenced by Caravaggio, so it could be Italian."
    She noticed his gaze on her face, and bit her lip, hoping
she wasn't coming across as pretentious. "Uh, sorry, seventeenth-century
painting was one of my favorite college classes, and I try to visit exhibitions
whenever I can. It's amazing, though. Who was the artist?"
    "You're absolutely right that it's seventeenth century,
and it's Italian. Family legend has it that this Cupid & Psyche was
a private commission done by Caravaggio or one of his followers, possibly Bartolomeo
Manfredi. The lack of a signature has always been troubling." Andras
pointed at the painting. "There's no documentation to support either of
those assertions, but as you noticed, the quality is superb."
    "Aren't you worried that someone might steal it?" Katie
breathed. Now that Andras had mentioned the painting's theme, she could see the
young man's wings, half-concealed by shadows and rumpled bedclothes, and a bow
and quiver filled with arrows hanging from one of the darkened bedposts.
    Andras shook his head. "You're one of the few people
outside the family who's ever seen it. It's been in my family's possession
since it was painted, so there aren't any records of it in catalogs or at
auction houses. Plus, I have an excellent security system."
    "It's amazing to see something like this outside a
museum," Katie said. "And it's been professionally cleaned and
restored—how did you keep the painting a secret? An iron-clad non-disclosure
agreement?"
    "Better than that--it was a family job. I have cousins
in Italy who are restorers at a major museum." Andras' gaze returned to
the painting. "As an interesting side-note, the two models in this painting
are my ancestors. They were successful merchants who wanted to celebrate a
wedding anniversary, and they were rich enough to