Page 79 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
He turns to face me, one hand still on my shoulder, and lowers his voice. “Don’t you want to see her again, Julien? You haven’t come by at all. Have you just been going through La Belle Vie?”
I wince.
The pain in my heart is too much to hide. I turn to him, my jaw tight, my voice heavy, and tell him, hoping it will unburden me a little more. My God, I need it to. Do I ever need it to.
“She doesn’t want to see me,” I say heavily.
His jaw drops. “What? After all that? After all you did?”
“It’s just one of those things about Muses,” I say, adding a shrug, like that softens the blow to my soul.
It doesn’t.
Remy isn’t going to accept that as my final answer, so I explain briefly and emotionlessly what happened to us when Clio saved the art. “So, if you ever see me go near that trapdoor, handcuff me and keep me away. Please.”
His eyes are sad. His lips turn down. “All right. But I won’t let you stay away from our house. I would be a poor friend to let you cut yourself off from life because you are taking a break from love.”
“I won’t do that.”
He gives me a sternly doubtful look.
I raise my hand. “I vow, I won’t. How can I prove it?”
He studies me for another long moment, and then calls out, “Rafe, mon chou! Bring me the thing!”
I already regret this.
Rafe appears beside Remy, mouths I’m sorry to me, and holds out, hooked on his finger, an apron that looks like something a unicorn coughed up. There are pink and purple ruffles, silver ribbons, sparkling trim, and violet glitter.
So. Much. Glitter.
Remy holds it out like a monarch bestowing a medal, his expression imperious. I sigh and take my cue, bowing so that he can loop the apron around my neck. When I straighten, he takes my shoulders and kisses one cheek, then the other.
“Now, Sir Julien, I command you to lead off the dancing.”
“Me?” I hardly notice Sophie tying the apron strings behind me.
“Someone has to go first. Music!” He claps twice and swans off through the gathered crowd of guests, then the unignorable beat of techno pop begins and people move outside where there’s room to dance in the courtyard, with the goat and the sheep.
Rafe kisses each of my cheeks too, claps my shoulder, and tells me, “You’ve made his night, you know.”
Then he’s off, and Sophie is pushing me to where nobody has waited for me to start the dancing.
“I don’t see any dancing, Twilight Sparkle,” Simon tells me, grinning like a madman.
Emilie grabs my hand and pulls me into an empty space. “Come on. I know you can hear that music,” she says, pointing to one of the thumping speakers. She pirouettes and moves gracefully into some clubby dance moves that I can copy.
Music, art, dancing. Those have to be the balms for me. They were for Clio.
Please, please let them be for me.
Lucy joins in, bringing Simon onto the impromptu dance floor, and Sophie jumps around too. Remy pulls Rafe out of the kitchen to dance with him, shaking his hips.
I watch them all. Dancing the way they want, listening to the music they like. I think of Gustave and his subway art, of Max and his caricature classes, of my friends and their random loves, like aprons and five-legged calves and flash mobs on the curving corner of a hilly street in Montmartre.
I don’t know that Renoir would have liked this party. But I do.
I’m pretty sure Clio—or at least the Clio I knew—would have liked it too.
For several minutes, hell for maybe even a half-hour, I don’t feel the ache.
I don’t feel the misery.
I start to feel something else.
Hope.
Hope that I might make it through all this longing.
That I might find a way to come out on the other side of unrequited love.
Later, Remy disappears for a while. When he returns to the party, he pulls me aside, a small smile on his face. “Thalia wants to see you tomorrow morning. Can you meet her?”
I arch a dubious brow. “Why?”
He shrugs, saying he has no idea. “She just asked if you could be at the bridge between the two museums at nine. What should I tell her?”
I don’t know if I like Thalia. I don’t know if I want to see her, and I don’t know what she could have to say to me.
But I still say yes.
It seems I can’t let go of hope.
34
Thalia waits on the Louvre side of the river, one hand resting on the railing, the other on her waist. She wears slacks and a blouse, her red hair loose around her shoulders.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she says.
“Well, it seemed rude to turn down the head of the Muses.”
