Page 179 of Beau and the Beast

“Can I just say—Marco, is this weird for me to say? Am I overstepping boundaries here?”

“Oh, here we go, buckle in, Beau,” Marco joked.

“Beau your boyfriend is acatch,” she said. “Is this, like, is it offensive that I really, really have a thing for Wolfram?” Daphne asked, smiling.

“Not at all—“ Beau said, laughing.

“She seriously won’t shut up about him,” Marco said.

Beau laughed again. “Daphne, we’re shooting an NHP pinup calendar right now for next year to benefit the NHPAA—“

“Oh myGod,yes!”

“I’ll be sure that we send one your way.”

“The real question is, is Wolfram going to be in it?” Daphne asked.

“I’m working on him,” Beau said. “We’ll see.”

She clutched his hands. “Beau, hehasto be. Wolfram, if you’re watching right now… Call me—“

The audience laughed raucously.

“No—no! I’m kidding! You love your boyfriend, don’t call me,” she said, waving her hands in the air. “But I’m with Beau here. Youmustbe in this calendar.”

“Ok, ok, quit flirting with the man’s boyfriend, good God Daph,” Marco said. “Let’s talk about your new book,My Year with Remarkable People.It came out yesterday and I’ve been loving it so far.”

“Thank you.”

“Give people the elevator pitch, Beau,” Daphne said.

“My Year with Remarkable Peopleis literally a book about just that,” Beau said. “It’s about the year afterWolf & Iwas released, when NHPs began to come forward. Wolfram and I were some of the first people that NHPs reached out to as they left hiding, and Wolfram’s tremendously talented staff came together to found NHPAA, the Non-Human People Advocacy Association. We’ve spent the last year helping NHPs re-integrate with society, finding them housing, employment—“

“Ok, but you make it sound sodry, Beau,” Marco cut in. “This book is really terrific. You talk about all of the NHPs you’ve met—and what really struck me is the way that you capture them the same way you did with Wolfram. Like, I feel like I know these people.”

“Youdoknow them,” Beau said. “We all know them—because they’re just people. They have their own stories and they have their own different abilities, but they’re exactly like me and you. I mean, all you have to do is look at your audience to see that the landscape has changed. NHPs have been here the whole time. We just needed to make the world a safer and more accommodating place for them.”

The camera panned to the audience and Violet could pick out several NHPs among them, a tall woman with skin like tree bark, a man with the lower body of a lion, and a person she could barely make out with short, sharp horns in the back.

“The important thing to remember is not to treat NHPs like a novelty,” Beau continued. “Many of them have spent their lives wanting nothing but to work and live like we do. And now they can—they’re taxpayers and students and our neighbors and friends.”

“And boyfriends,” Daphne cut in. Beau blushed. “I just have to say, your love for Wolfram really shines through in the first book. It’s amazing that you don’t even touch on your relationship with him beyond your friendship, but it’s so apparent from page one that you’ve never loved someone as much as him.”

Beau nodded and Violet could see him getting embarrassed. “I—thank you—“

“It is such an epic romance,” Marco agreed. “I’msoteam Beaufram.”

Beau squeezed his eyes shut at the nickname, reaching for the mug of water they’d set out on the table.

* * *

The first daysafter the curse was broken—or changed or transmuted or whatever it was that they eventually settled on calling it—had been chaotic and strange.

Violet, in her wisdom, had put her entire life on hold, rushing to publish the manuscript even while the rest of the staff members returned to their families, to the wreckage of the old lives that they’d left behind them.

She’d pushed it through as an ebook on a popular self-publishing platform—in the nonfiction section.

Within 48 hours, the book had gone viral as a beautifully penned hoax—and suddenly people were clamoring to know who Beau Blake was and where he’d come from.

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