Page 22 of Beau and the Beast

"Sure," he said. "I haven't had dinner."

"Don't be shy," she said, pulling open the door of a huge refrigerator.

He was a little awed by everything inside. There were shelves of produce, different dairy products in a wide array of flavors and formulations, big plump fruits and brilliantly green vegetables.

And meat.

Lotsof meat.

Beau's head swam a little at the sight of it. There was an entire shelf dedicated to different cuts of meat, all of it blood-red beef... Pounds and pounds of meat, large steaks stacked on top of steaks.

"Big carnivores in the penthouse, I guess?" Beau ventured.

Violet blanched. "Everyone has their own, uh, preferences. Hope you're not a vegetarian."

"I am," Beau said, frowning.

He didn't bother waiting for Violet's response because in a drawer he'd spotted a nice hunk of cheese. He grabbed it out and tossed it in the air, appreciating the heft of it.

"I'll make a sandwich, if that's ok?"

"Absolutely," she said.

* * *

Violet satat the bar in the kitchen, not to monitor Beau but to help him find his way through all of the drawers and cupboards there. It took a while, she knew, to understand where everything was hidden.

She could remember her first few days in the penthouse. In between crying jags, she'd gone exploring. She wasn't used to a place like the penthouse where there were fifty light switches on every wall and hallways took abrupt turns. At first, she never knew if she was going to end up walking into a wine cellar or a sauna. Looking for things in the kitchen had been impossible.

She could remember, too, the despair she had felt during those first few days.

Hopefully Beau wouldn't feel that way. There was no reason for him to, of course. Unlike Violet and the rest of the staff, he was being compensated for his time there and—though he didn't know it—he could leave any time he wanted to and go home to his brother.

The staff had tried to leave. They'd experimented with the parameters of the curse, trying to figure out how far they could get from the penthouse before it kicked in.

That's how they'd lost Ryan, of course.

On the third day, Ryan had lost his mind a little.

It was only natural. They'd all been pushed past their limits by a reality that made no sense. It was surreal, went against everything they'd ever known in life, everything any of them had experienced.

Ryan had called them cowards, had told them that they needed to ignore the fear that they felt when they tried to leave the penthouse. It was just a trick, he said—not something real, not something that could hurt them.

He'd gotten on the elevator, even as James and Violet protested.

They'd been too late.

By the time Ryan reached the bottom floor, he must have been gone—or near gone. They heard the sound of ambulances rushing to the building just a few minutes after Ryan had disappeared and Violet had known in her heart that he hadn't made it.

Their fate was sealed, then. The next day's newspaper confirmed it with Ryan's obituary. He'd died suddenly of cardiac arrest, the papers reported.

And that's how they would all go, they realized, if they tried to leave the penthouse without breaking the curse.

One by one, they'd severed ties with their families.

Though it hadn't been easy for any of them by any means, she was the only one with children.

Her oldest daughter would be in college now.

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