Beauty and the Werewolf

seen magic at first hand. She knew, and not just abstractly, that there was so much more outside of the little circumscribed life she had led. Skating expeditions and Guild dances didn’t seem very exciting anymore. Could she ever go back to her old life after this?

Nor was that all… Things are more complicated than even that. Now she had seen what was behind the faces that the King and the Godmother presented to the rest of the world. She knew now, and could never forget, that both of them were utterly ruthless when they needed to be. She had no doubt whatsoever that while Godmother Elena was going to try to save both her and Sebastian, if it came down to a choice, it would be Sebastian who was saved — and if it came down to “Sebastian and Bella or great danger to the Kingdom and beyond,” both of them would be sacrificed without a moment of hesitation. And for the King? It probably wasn’t even a question. He’d wield the blade himself.

In abstract, she knew that this was how it had to be. Part of her knew that this was the only decision they could make. But part of her felt not only afraid, but betrayed. The King and the Godmother were supposed to take care of you! They weren’t supposed to be the ones who watched impassively as you went to your doom — or worse, took you to the edge of the Doom Cliff and shoved you over it!

And if the King and the Godmother, both of whom were extraordinarily good people — she and everyone else in this Kingdom had evidence of just how good — could hide this ruthlessness, then how much darker were the things that not-so-good people hid? What villainy lurked behind the smiling faces she saw every day?

So her safe little world would never be safe again… She knew that the nurturing hand also held the knife, and that was very unsettling. And now if she got the least hint that there was something beneath the surface of an action or a comment, she would be suspicious of anyone she didn’t know well.

She felt the urge to go and unwrap that mirror, so that she could watch someone she knew and loved and trusted, and again resisted. She already knew what she would see, and it would only make her unhappy and lonely. What she needed was something to keep her mind busy. It would be easy enough to keep her hands busy, but she needed something to occupy her thoughts.

Well, she was in a Manor filled with books. There might be a clue about Sapphire and the other unsummoned invisibles in them. She might as well start looking for books about magic creatures.

Although the likelihood of finding anything here in her suite was pretty remote, she had to start somewhere — and besides, so far as she had been able to tell, the books here weren’t organized at all. For all she knew, something had gotten borrowed and left here by a previous guest. She might just as well remedy that before she turned to the larger library.

When Verte turned up to summon her to supper, she had rearranged about half of the books on the shelves, and had already determined that there wasn’t anything about magic or the history of Redbuck here. But really, when she considered who had probably used these rooms, it wasn’t all that likely that the guests had been interested in magic at all. This had probably been a suite for important guests, so the books here were designed to amuse or serve as resources on questions of the Kingdom. They were divided unequally between various sorts of stories for the purposes of amusement only, and books on history. There were even a few about other Kingdoms. Such people had their own wizards or sorceresses to advise them about magic; they didn’t need to learn about it themselves.

She was about to leave the room when she realized that she had never asked Verte the question that had led her to discover the invisibles were not all the sorts of creatures that Sebastian had thought they were. “Verte, are any of your musicians willing to play for me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he wrote on his slate.

Could ghosts be musicians? I don’t know why not. They can obviously be seamstresses; why not musicians?

She hesitated a moment, then made her request. “I should really like to have some music,” she said, wistfully.

The reply was immediate. “You shall.”

Sebastian was already eating when she came down, with a book propped up in front of him. He was shoveling the food into his mouth automatically, completely absorbed in what he was reading. As she entered the dining room and the invisible servant pulled out her chair for her, he actually jumped, as if she had startled him, and scrambled to his feet.

“I am so sorry. I beg your pardon,” he blurted, blushing. “I got involved in researching things, and completely forgot that I wasn’t alone here. I’m just not used to having any people here but Eric anymore, and most of the time he’s off doing whatever it is he needs to do.”

“Do you often read while you are eating?” she asked, taking her seat and nodding when the invisible steward offered her some of the first course.

“Generally, yes,” he admitted. “Eric rarely eats supper with me, and even when he does, he’s not much of a conversationalist. I think he prefers it when I read, actually. It keeps him from having to try to make conversation.”

Why am I not in the least surprised? she thought. Eric does not strike me as a fellow who considers conversation necessary at a meal. Then again, she couldn’t really blame him. Sebastian probably wouldn’t want to talk about anything Eric was interested in. What would Eric be interested in? Women, she supposed. She couldn’t picture Sebastian in a convivial, hearty, semidrunk discussion of women, the way many young men seemed to occupy their time. The sorts of things she had seen going on in taverns, but also in the private parlors of the wealthy when they weren’t out being polite to the young women they were supposed to be assessing for marriage. There were any number of parties she had gone to because Genevieve insisted, where she had taken to wandering off to see what she could find. It was amazing what young men would say when they thought there were no parents or young women about.

But Sebastian didn’t seem at all the sort who sat about and boasted about what he’d been doing with the first chambermaid. Which sent her mind off briefly on a tangent… Could you get up to mischief with one of the invisibles? They had hands, but she wasn’t sure from Sapphire’s and Verte’s ministrations if they were human hands or not. And if you wanted to, how would you know which one was in your bed? She supposed an invisible lover might be very titillating for a while, but they were silent as well as invisible, so would that be off-putting?

Ruthlessly she dragged her mind out of the gutter and back to the dinner table, blushing a little at herself.

Considering the number of meals she had taken in her life where mindless chatter had virtually dominated every bite, she wouldn’t have minded a few meals in silence herself.