Page 25 of Beau and the Beast

"Please do it for us," she said softly. "Do it for my children."

He opened his eyes. Her hands were back in her lap.

"It won't work. It won't do anything but draw attention to us—and then all of this will be over."

"If you don't try, it will all be over soon anyway," she said, gesturing to the gold watch sitting on his bedside table.

"And then the curse will be over for you," he said. “I’ll die and you can leave.”

"We don't know that," she said. "It's just a guess—just like all of this. We're all fumbling in the dark."

She was right. He'd always hung his hope on the fact that when the curse was over for him—when he died or when he gave into the beast entirely—that his staff would no longer be prisoners of the penthouse. But he didn't know for sure. Maybe they would be lost along with him.

"Just meet him. That's all I'll ask you for tonight. He's... I don't know what to say, Wolfram. There's something about him that's special."

Wolfram snorted in spite of himself.

"What’s special about a second-rate reporter who was coming to accept blackmail money?" he asked.

"After all that's happened to us, you're still skeptical that things happen in this world that can't be explained?"

He shook his weary head.

"Please," she said again.

He had nothing to lose. He knew he owed Violet more than this one thing—that he’d never repay the debt he had to all of them.

"Fine. I'll meet him."

Violet’s posture relaxed and she tilted her smooth face toward him as she smiled. Wolfram may come to regret meeting the man but he knew he would never regret giving her this one small thing. She deserved so much more.

"Do you want me to be there when you meet him?"

"No," he said. "I'll do it alone."

"Do you want me to... warn him? To tell him about the curse or try to explain—"

"Do you really think that he would believe you even if you tried?" he asked.

Slowly, she shook her head.

"He'll need to meet me," he said, "if he's going to believe the first thing about our situation."

* * *

Beau slept betterthat first night than he had any right to.

He should've been pestered by nightmares of tigers come to rip him to shreds or ghouls tormenting his brother while he was gone.

Instead, Beau felt like he had half-melted into the wide, soft bed. He'd slept soundly, but his reverie was short-lived. Turbulent reality swirled around him from the moment he woke up.

Beau's first conscious thought was that he was utterly alone.

He'd become so accustomed to waking up with someone nearby—either his brother or, over the past year, sometimes Lincoln. He wasn't used to being alone. There hadalwaysbeen someone nearby, and the enormity of just how alone he was felt like a pressure at the base of his skull.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

The penthouse was a maze of secrets. These people wanted things from him that he couldn't even understand—wanted him to trust them when they'd given him no reason to yet.

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