Page 14 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
It seems like a sign that I’ve done all I can, and a glance at my phone’s screen says I’ve been here longer than I intended. I drag myself from the mystery and the voices, and sprint up the stairs two at a time, like if I don’t go fast, I won’t be able to pull myself away at all.
It seems to take less time to go up the spiral than down. The trapdoor above is a square of light and reality, and I climb out into the TV room, safe and undiscovered.
The hallway door is still closed, and I yank it open. Simon and Lucy topple into the room, a tangle of limbs and lips.
Simon catches himself and Lucy both before they hit the floor. She giggles as he grabs her waist and sets her upright.
“Whoa! PDA much?”
“Nothing to see here,” Simon says casually. “Just blocking the doorway. Make it too awkward for anyone to ask to get by.”
“That’s very ingenious of you,” I say dryly.
“It was a chore,” he says with a grave face, “but sometimes you have to suffer to help out a mate.”
I look solemnly at Lucy. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”
She points at me and wiggles her finger. “You owe me now. Don’t think I’ll forget.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” I say, enjoying how quickly Lucy gets on with anyone. She’s perfect for Simon.
We step into the hall, and as I close the door behind me, Remy rounds the corner.
“Are you having the time of your life?” he asks sunnily.
Lucy takes a loud breath like a sob and declares, “I’m having the worst time. The absolute worst, most awful time of my life.”
Covering her face, she breaks into tears. The genuine shock and dismay on Remy’s face is classic. He only manages a distraught stammer before Lucy takes pity on him.
“Gotcha!” She flashes him a grin.
Remy wags a finger at Simon’s new girl. “You are trouble, I can tell. But well done, well done.” He steps to the side and gestures toward the festivities. “Your reward should be some hot chocolate in the kitchen. It’s Rafe’s own recipe, spiked with cayenne. Sweet with a kick—perfect for lovebirds.”
Simon glances at me, brows raised to ask if I’m good with that, and I tell him, “Have fun, Romeo.”
Remy watches with an indulgent smile as the pair goes by, then he turns back to me, head cocked, eyes smiling like we share a secret. “The voices are lovely, aren’t they?”
I blank my expression the best I can, trying to look unsurprised. He must mean something up here, something I should know about. He can’t mean the cellar voices.
“Like a poem,” he adds.
I’m still not sure how I should react. If he’s heard them too, does that mean I’m not hearing things, or are we suffering from the same delusion?
But I have to know, and denial won’t help. “What are they?”
The question pleases him, judging by his grin, like I’ve passed a test. “They’re Muses.”
“Muses?” I echo. I don’t know what I expected, but not that.
Remy nods, enjoying my reaction. “Inspiration personified.”
I know what the Muses are—they appear in Classical art from Greek statues to the Romantic period, where they’re more allegorical. But he isn’t exactly reassuring me on the non-delusional front. “There are Muses in your cellar?”
“Of course,” he says. His casual certainty catches me off guard. Somehow makes things seem more plausible.
“How did you come to have mythic creatures in your basement?” Not “if” but “how.” That’s how far gone I am.
“Julien,” Remy chides, “they aren’t mythic. They’re real. And they’ve always been there. Though, technically, we have a door to the Muses. They don’t live down there.”
“Right. Because that would be ridiculous.”
“It would,” he agrees, then continues. “I don’t know which came first—the Bonheur patronage of the arts or our connection to the Muses. Family lore says the connection goes back at least to the Middle Ages.”
“You don’t mean Muses metaphorically?”
“I am not given to metaphor at the moment. Not as it relates to the Muses.”
I’m not sure how long this candid Remy will stick around before charming, quirky, and unhelpfully enigmatic Remy returns. So I don’t waste time.
“Here’s where I admit I wasn’t paying attention when Rafe and Adaline talked about provenance of Woman Wandering in the Irises the other day. How did the portrait come to be in your family?”
His eyes flick toward the media room door then back to me. “You seemed familiar with the artist Suzanne Valadon?”
“First woman admitted to art school in Paris? Contemporary of Renoir, Monet, and other Impressionists during their heyday?” I give him an “I see what you did there” stare, picturing the drawing on the trapdoor. “Model for some of Renoir’s paintings, like Dance at Bougival?”
Remy grins. “She’s the one. She’s my great-times-whatever grandmother. She and Renoir were collegial at one point, but they fell out over ideology, hers being an artistically egalitarian one and his being an elitist exclusionary one.”
