Page 32 of Beau and the Beast

"I must admit, Mr. Blake," Mr. Wolfram said, letting his tea cool, "I'm surprised that you're taking this so well."

"I have to admit that I am too," Beau said. "Surprised, that is."

"I assure you my appearance is not a trick."

"It didn't occur to me that it would be," Beau said. "It's a curious thing, I suppose, but that's only because I've never met someone like you."

Wolfram narrowed his eyes at Beau.

"Of course not," Wolfram said. "I'm the only one."

Beau puffed a laugh through his nose. "And I'm the only Beau Blake. I guess that makes us both entirely unique."

* * *

Wasthe boy makingfunof him?

Had Violet and the others hired a man who was completely out of his mind?

Wolfram waited for the questions that he knew would come. But Beau sat politely, his legs crossed, sipping the tea that had been offered to him.

"Don't you want to know how this happened?"

"The way you look, you mean?" Beau asked.

Wolfram nodded.

"If you think it's any of my business, I assume that you'll tell me," Beau said. "As it stands, I don't think it's polite to ask people about their appearance unless they invite the question."

"Consider this your invitation, then," Wolfram said, spreading his hands in front of him on the table.

Beau smiled at him again. His beauty threatened to steal the air from Wolfram’s lungs.

"Tell me, if you please, how you came to look like this, Mr. Wolfram."

Chapter Seven

Wolfram hadn’t plannedon getting this far with the reporter. He hadn’t practiced what it was he was going to say that day because he never believed they’d be exchanging calm words over tea.

He’d never had to put the events into a timeline for someone else, and as he spoke aloud about those last days he’d had as a human man almost ten years ago, he realized just how absurd it all sounded.

Putting the events together like a neat strand of beads was somehow freeing.

They’d all worked so hard to make sense of what had happened to them, to draw logic out of the illogical. To finally put it together in this way for someone else meant putting a name on what had happened to him.

And so Wolfram told Beau—and in telling Beau, some unknown weight was lifted off of his broad shoulders.

He told Beau about his final days at IW Securities Group, how Harriet Mueller had tried to warn him about the recession, about the millions that would be lost, the people who would be bankrupted and made homeless because of his actions.

He told Beau about the inevitable crash and how he had fired Harriet, couldn’t even remember her last name three days after he did it.

He told him how Harriet had died and how later, after they’d pieced everything together, Wolfram and his staff had come to understand that Harriet was no normal woman. Her family was one full of powerful witches—a statement that sounded as illogical as it was frightening. Harriet’s sister had sworn vengeance and tracked Wolfram down, learned the names and faces of his cronies.

Using Wolfram’s voice as a trick, she’d lured his six top staffers to his penthouse and waited until he was home to deliver the curse to all of them.

He repeated back the cursed poem she’d given him that day, words they had all come to know by heart:

Ten years it took a good man’s heart

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