The years hadn’t been kind to April. Seeing her teacher in person again, outside the hard controlled gleam of April’s precisely calculated public image, Jane noticed tremor and flakiness there, a touch of madness, even. April Logan was not a happy woman. But success hadn’t changed her much. April had always had that innate jitter and tang, and it was slowly and visibly eating her heart out—but April Logan had a lot of heart. She had her muse in a hammerlock, and she was possessed by the Work. Just to be around April was to feel a radioactive glow from a capable, perceptive, brilliant woman, someone paying a focused and terrible attention to things most human beings couldn’t even see. April was a real artist, the truest artist Jane had ever met. The genuine article. Even the worst and most dismal commercial bullshit in a hell-bound planet couldn’t kill them all off.