068 Two-Million-Dollar Secret

For day after that night, Erebus didn't even get to catch Kitty.

They bumped into each other exactly once, and it was because Erebus had been increasing HUGELY on his times of taking the elevator.

And it seemed that Kitty even stopped taking the guest elevator.

"She's still a little girl." Metis poured Erebus a drink when he again, stood by the office window, gazing at the nebulous sky, "Of course it got harder for her to face you now. You DID reject her."

"What about the 'proving me wrong' movement?" Erebus frowned at her as he grabbed the cup out of her hand. He only shows this capricious side of his when he was with Metis, "She's only locking herself in the room mostly."

"Well," Metis held back a light laugh, "She HAD been out."

"To do what?" Erebus asked in a haste, annoyed at the fact that Metis stopped where she was deliberately to tantalize him.

"This." Metis handed over her phone, and there was a picture of a picture on the screen.

"She drew this?" Erebus asked in awe as he staring at that picture.

It was a picture of the ocean. The whole picture was blue, yet the light, foggy blue of the sky and the dark, heavy blue of the water gave the whole painting a low gravity, as if the ocean is with the weight of the whole world while the sky was a feather of dream, floating above.

The waves were giving out a silent roar just with a few white splashes by the shore, and the dark, brown cliff in the distance was in awe of the ocean. The sky, the cloud, the ocean, the wave, the mountain, and the shore. All simple, all in similar color. Yet the painting looked so rich as if it contains the whole world.

"I want it." Erebus said as he gave back her phone, like a little prince demanding for a toy.

"I'm sorry, my Lord." Metis nodded, "We put a price on it as soon as we saw the painting in sale by the owner of the gallery. But it was already bought."

"Of course it was. It was a brilliant work of art. Just talk to the buyer, I don't care how much they paid, outbid them." Erebus waved his hand.

"The owner set the price at 20 dollars. I assume it was a price given in the consideration that Kitty was just a kid with no previous work." Metis said in a hesitating tone.

"And?" Erebus was confused at the seemingly easy-to-solve problem.

“And the buyer paid two million." Metis said.

"Sure, outbid it." Erebus finished his drink, "It's worth it."

"Yes, the problem is not at the price, but at the buyer." Metis was still in that hesitating tone, "See--"

"Curtis." The drink cleared Erebus's head a bit for him to finally got what Metis was hinting at, "The buyer is Curtis, isn't it?"

"We think so, yes." Metis nodded, "It was not under his name, but..."

"But why would an art lover pay such a difference over the set price initiatively, even for a great work." Erebus said slowly, trying to press down his upset.

"Yes. The owner didn't keep it all to himself. He gave Kitty a 20k check. Probably because they are looking for more work from her." Metis said.

"Bastard." Erebus mumbled, "They are taking advantage of her."

"Still, it was probably the biggest paycheck she had ever got in her life." Metis nodded in agreement, "But that's not what caught our attention."

"Metis!" Erebus was annoyed realizing that Metis was just having fun with him.

"Sorry, my Lord," Metis burst into laughter, "It was huge news, and it's hard to understand the real huge thing we found without knowledge of that."

"Fine!" Erebus said as he poured another drink for himself, and said sarcastically: "Out with it then, now that you have paved a whole avenue to your main theme."

"Yes, my Lord." Metis smiled at his sarcasm with patience, "What we found really strange, is that she had mostly been in her room. And the time that she spent outside, she was always seen. She had not been painting outside."

"So? She's painting in her room. That's the big mystery?" Erebus squinted his eyes at Metis, "Have you had a drink already?"

"No, my Lord." Metis bowed her head a little. As smooth as she could talk with Erebus, she could never get intimate, but only with lenient patience, "The big mystery is, she never bought any paint."

"..." Now Metis, for the first time tonight, really caught Erebus's attention.

"She definitely created the painting IN her room." Metis said, "But there was no way she could have gotten any paint nearly enough for a painting like that into that same space. We've checked the security tape."

"That painting," Erebus put down his again empty glass as he said slowly: "was made with..."

...

"Magic is so cool!" Kitty threw herself in her bed at dusk with a big grin on her face.

She was holding a thick notebook with a cowhide cover in her left hand, and a paint brush in the other -- the broken magic weapon that Winnie gave her, the one with exactly one protection spell left.

Well, should I say, supposedly, broken magic weapon.

Knock, knock knock. Someone was at the door.

Kitty jumped up from the bed and went to the door with the brush in her hand, leaving the notebook behind.

The notebook had an ancient look. The edge of some of its pages were even in curl. But while it looked dusty, it was not fragile. It was quite the contrary: it was as if it was JUST right, by itself. No surrounding was going to effect, or add to, or diminish it in anyway. As if it was in its own little universe, and the look was merely one side that it was showing to this world.

"Hey!" Kitty said with a huge smile.

Curtis smiled back and held out his hand:

"Hey, beautiful. Ready for dinner?"