Page 60 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
She’s bent over what looks like a handwritten musical score spread out on the counter—a woman with loose flaming-red hair . . . and laboratory goggles. I watch for a moment as she pores over the pages then, with surgical precision, picks up something with a pair of tweezers and examines it. She flicks some silvery dust onto it, shakes off any extra, and replaces it on the score.
When she’s done, I clear my throat. She jumps, whirls around, and then laughs at herself as she pushes the magnifying goggles on top of her head.
“Oh! Sorry about that.” She offers me her hand—like Clio, she has a thin silver bracelet on each wrist. With her high cheekbones, she’s delicately lovely, but her eyes look tired. “I’m Thalia, as you may have guessed. The owners of this shop are music lovers, and it makes for a quiet place to concentrate on coaxing out stubborn semiquavers. They can be so fiddly, you know.”
“Right?” I say, as if I hear that all the time. “I was just saying that the other day.”
It takes a moment for my humor to reach her, and then she laughs again. “I knew I’d be working on this symphony for a while, so thank you for meeting me here.”
“Thanks for seeing me.” I realize she’s squeezing me in as she multitasks. Clio did say life as a Muse was all work. “So, is that from one of your composers?” I nod at the score.
“Sort of. It’s a lost symphony, and Mahler isn’t available to tweak it himself, so here I am.” She waves away the extraordinary fact of a newly discovered symphony like it’s yesterday’s laundry. “I do some inspiration work myself, but lately my tasks are centered more on troubleshooting.”
It’s the perfect opportunity to cut to the chase. I don’t just need help, I need information. And if a human muse is such a big deal, then it seems like I should rate some answers.
“Since you mention troubleshooting,” I begin, and a tiny flinch from Thalia tells me something I should have realized. “You know what’s going on at the Louvre, don’t you?” But it’s not a question. “How can you fiddle around with semiquavers or whatever when the art is coming apart at the seams? How can you not do something to stop it?”
“Do you think I didn’t try?” Thalia asks sharply in what sounds like frustration, maybe directed at herself. “I was at the Louvre the second it opened. I laid my hands on all the damaged paintings.” She pinches the bridge of her nose and ducks her head, and her hair falls in a curtain around her face. This moment and another—the mane of red hair I saw on the museum steps hours ago—snap together.
“I saw you there.” I feel foolish for not realizing it straightaway, but I don’t feel guilty for questioning her. “At the Louvre this morning.”
“I tried to fix it, Julien. I was the first one through the door when the museum opened.”
It’s surreal that a Muse has to go through the front doors like everyone else. I look at her, leaning against the counter, looking bone-weary and sad and . . . human, even though I know she’s not.
Thalia’s shoulders slump. “I sent Calliope over to the National Gallery in London too. They’re having the same problem with their Turners.”
“The flooding?” All those beautiful J. M. W. Turners seascapes full of dappled sunlight on the water.
“All over the floors, Calliope said.”
“Then what can we do?” I ask. “Because a mop and bucket aren’t going to cut it.”
“Julien,” Thalia says, intense but calm. “You need to put your human brain to work on it. That’s why we so desperately need people like you—you can think in ways that we Muses can’t. Your mortality—your humanity—gives you insight and ideas that escape us.”
“All I’ve been doing is improvising, Thalia.” Suddenly I’m voicing a frustration that has been simmering for days, waiting for me to put it into words. “What good is being a human muse or whatever if I don’t know how to fix this painting meltdown or the fading Renoirs? I’m banging around in the dark. How can I save any of the art like that? How can I keep Clio safe if you don’t give me answers?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Julien! I don’t have the answers to this one.”
This one.
The emphasis is tiny but meaningful.
“What about the Renoirs?” I ask on a hunch. “Everything started with the fading Renoirs. If he could trap Clio in the painting, could someone use the Muse dust to curse his other work . . .?”
There it is again—the tic in her jaw, the flinch between her brows, the drift of her gaze away from mine.
Oh . . .
I see now.
Not how or why.
Who and what.
My body goes cold.
