Free Shimmer: A Novel by John Passarella

armchairs, and two towering bookshelves. Between the boxes of books, leaning against the desk, shelves, and walls, were several ornately framed paintings.
Nightmares captured on canvas,
she thought.
    Before giving the dark collection the closer inspection it deserved, she turned her attention to the old man absently filing books on the shelves with a muttered commentary meant for his ears alone. His full head of hair and bushy eyebrows looked like wild tufts of cotton. He wore a rumpled dress shirt with a blue, checkered pattern tucked into equally rumpled khakis and, improbably, blue and white Nike running shoes.
    “Ambrose,” Liana said. “We have company.”
    “Company, you say?” Ambrose—Logan’s great grandfather—looked up, and blinked a few times as he focused on Fallon. “Ah, yes. But we haven’t met. I’m sure of it.” He placed the moldy old tome up on the nearest shelf, paying no mind to the location. “No, I would never forget such a lovely young woman.”
    “Thanks,” Fallon said, feeling the first tinge of a blush creeping up her neck and cheeks.
    He dusted his palms against his rumpled khakis before offering his hand. “I’m Ambrose,” he said. “Ambrose Walker. Delighted to make your acquaintance Miss…?”
    “Maguire,” she said. “Fallon Maguire. I have English Lit with Logan.”
    Ambrose clasped her hand in both of his. His palms were cool and soft with a texture that made her think of rice paper. Peering out of a prodigiously wrinkled face, his watery blue eyes seemed out of place. They were youthful and vibrant and ever so aware as he stared at her with unexpected intensity, almost as if he could judge her character with nothing more than focused concentration. He smiled and released her hand. “Welcome to our new home. Please excuse the clutter. We’re settling in.”
    “My room’s much worse, and I’ve lived there for years,” Fallon said. She indicated the paintings propped up around the room. “But your taste in artwork is kinda… dark.”
    Ambrose flicked a glance at Liana. “Hmm. So I’ve been told.”
    Fallon approached a painting of a scarred landscape littered with fish heads, which had swarms of insects carrying what looked like gray, bloated organs. “This one looks like a Bosch.”
    “Good eye,” Ambrose said, beaming.
    Another painting, in the surrealist style, had a tall, grotesquely thin golden man, in the foreground of a barren landscape, facing a vibrant blue sky dotted with white, puffy clouds and circular holes which revealed other landscapes. One such hole spilled a stream of brackish green water and a mass of suckered tentacles. “And this one looks like a Dali,” Fallon said. She glanced at the others and shrugged. “Don’t recognize the others.”
    “Bruegel, and Grunewald,” Ambrose said.
    “They’re fine reproductions, except…”
    “You think so?” Ambrose inquired playfully, one bushy eyebrow raised dramatically for effect.
    She was missing something.
Inside joke maybe,
she thought. “I’ve never come across any of these particular works—the Bosch or the Dali, anyway—in any art books or online galleys. I’m sure I’ve never seen either of them before.”
    “That’s because they’ve never been exhibited anywhere,” Ambrose said. “Not publicly.”
    “But how…”
    “Private collection.”
    “Whose?”
    Ambrose cleared his throat and spread his hands.
    “Wait… They aren’t reproductions? They’re—originals? But that’s—they must be worth a fortune.”
    “Possibly,” Ambrose said. “Probably. But I have no intention of selling them. They have sentimental value.”
    “Wow,” Fallon said breathlessly. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Then why not tell us why Logan brought you to us today?”
    Logan cleared his throat. “She, um, mostly brought herself,” he said, then hefted the backpacks. “I’m just the pack mule.”
    Ambrose chuckled and patted Fallon on the arm. “Ah! The take-charge type.