He stumbled out of the music room, still recovering from that music-elephant that had crushed him in the past hours, and dragging his bewilderment behind him. How could he have been kept there for so long without even realizing it?

He took the first lit candelabra that reached his hand, too tired now to fret over whether or not it might be a cursed footman, and what he might exactly be grabbing were that the case. He wavered along the corridors of the silent house, hesitating at each turn, each door, each set of stairs, until a growing sense of panic took hold of him, lifted him up by his collar, and hurried him along the hallways. At times, he glanced behind him to ensure he wasn't followed, but the house had a ruthless stillness to it.

He reached at last a corridor that was mercifully stripped clean of the golden ornamentation that crawled over every other room. He was certain he was nearing the kitchens. At the third plain wooden door he tried, he found it. It was large, well-equipped, and deserted. Opposite of where he stood, half-hidden behind a tall glass cupboard with rows of crockery, was the small backdoor Myrtle had spoken of. He rushed to it, and noticed with exhausted relief that the key was in the lock. All he had to do was turn it.

As soon as he stepped outside, he waved the lit candelabra to frighten away the darkness of the garden. The night air felt almost brutally cold and fresh compared to the stuffy interior of the house; he was thankful for it.

He waited impatiently by the open door, wondering if his friends might have grown tired of waiting and decided to leave. It was not merely a possibility in his mind; in his mind, it had already happened. His anxieties and fears did not need to make sense: they did not, in fact, ever need to do anything at all to persuade him into believing them. He awarded them endless privileges, and allowed them to visit at any moment, with no warning, no reason, and no end in sight.

He was just standing there like a fool, waving a candelabra at an empty garden.

"Percy! Why the hell did you take so long?"

At any other moment, he would have creased and crumpled at the recrimination in Valeria's voice. As it was, he felt his body ease and thaw with that familiar sound. He watched them as they emerged from their hiding place, edging along the shadows until they reached the kitchen door.

"Listen, I was held up – it's hard to explain how exactly, but I was..."

Evans stepped towards him, with his copper hair set ablaze by the street lamplights. Halfway through the kitchen door and Percy's scattered thoughts, Evans spread his arms and plunged Percy in them. He held him tightly against his chest for a moment. Percy was shorter and scrawnier: all of him, limbs and vision and mind, was folded into that embrace. For a second, he wondered where he was; for a shorter second, he wondered if he could stay. The smoke that had risen within him earlier now scattered in Evans' whisper.

"Thank you."

There was a sincerity to his voice that frightened Percy. He had been taught to mistrust unashamed nakedness, for fear it might undress him too. He quickly slipped away from Evans and retreated into the kitchen. His thoughts lagged behind, and he cursed them for not catching up with his body as promptly as they should.

Once they were all gathered in the kitchen, Valeria took the candelabra from his hand. She held it up and took his chin on her free hand, inspecting his face with a practiced frown. She then lifted his right arm, then his left arm, and turned his head to each side.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking for any injuries you might have got and which you are bravely not telling us about."

"I'm not hurt. It's not dangerous – I think – it's just... unsettling. But I've learned a few things about the curse. We should go to the room he gave me, we can lock ourselves in there while I tell you everything. I'll feel safer there."

"Safer? You just said it's not dangerous."

Percy scowled at Valeria. She stared back, unmoved, with her crossed arms and her stout countenance. He was certain that woman had never been troubled by those impish visitors of his, who came to scour under his bed and behind his shelves and above his cupboards to drag out every tiny, filthy anxiety he tried so hard to tidy away. It would be impossible to explain to Valeria that his was a state of constant disquiet; and that, even when real dangers or threats took their leave, the imps came to unearth the rotting corpses of little fears that never died.

That was what he thought. What he said was shorter.

"Follow me."

He led them through the darkened and silent corridors that he was slowly becoming acquainted with, despite their best efforts to remain strangers to him. He tried not to ask himself who exactly had put out all the chandeliers which earlier dusted the hallways with gold, and who would light them all up again the following evening. Their cautious steps murmured along the carpeted floor as they passed sleeping mirrors and resting portraits. When they reached his room, he hurried them inside and locked the door with a sigh of relief.

As soon as he turned back to them, he saw them herded close around the fireplace, thawing off the cold of their long wait in the garden. Percy hovered nearby, not quite joining them by the fire. He wriggled his foot awkwardly along the edge of the magnificent green carpet, in a half-minded attempt to sweep away his guilt for leaving them outside for so long.

"So what did you find?" Evans asked.

Percy recounted all he had learned of the beast's curse through the course of a dinner, a concert, and several unpleasant moments. His words slowed and halted at times, not because he did not know what to say, but because he did not know how to say it in a way that would make him look good. He considered being truthful about how terrified he had been of Armand's roars and growls, but feared it would make him seem a coward; he considered leaving his terror entirely out of the story, but he still wished to be commended for all his efforts to overcome his cowardice. He had been raised to feed on adoration, and to ferret and forage for it whenever it was not brought to him readily. To seek praise for being heroic was the only path open to him: any other course meant starving. In the end, he settled for a compromise: he kept his words grounded in what needed telling, but, here and there, he strayed a little to present a flattering view of himself.

When he looked at Evans again, Percy saw his ruthless focus devouring the fire. Percy knew at once that all the scenic detours of his tale had been wasted. He stubbed his restless foot on the wooden parquet.

Myrtle was staring hard at a paperweight on the desk. Percy guessed she was asking herself the same questions he had struggled with, when he had been left alone in the crowded company of that heavily furnished room. As for Valeria, she gave him the weary look of one who was used to dealing with the big tales of small children. He cleared his throat.

"Those drinking songs they were singing in the tavern while we were there – I think they were his" she nodded to herself, leaning her full weight on the marble fireplace.

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"There's one thing I don't understand" Percy said. "What they both told me made me think that Delia is... well, his muse. At least, he seems to think of her that way, and she couldn't be more devoted to him and his art. A little too much. So I'm not sure why the curse isn't already broken."

Myrtle looked up from her deeply suspicious inspection of the paperweight.

"Well, it's not that simple. She might not meet every requirement to be officially considered a muse" she said.

They turned to her with a slight rustle of surprise.

"What do you mean?" Evans asked.

"Oh, it's just something I learned in one of my early jobs. It was all a bit annoying, really."

"What was?" Valeria joined in.

"When the master's painter started going on about me being his muse."

Percy felt his eyebrows lift, and lift, and eventually ascend beyond his forehead entirely. The thought of Myrtle as a muse was nonsensical. Porridge for fine dining or mittens on a pedestal – and all this he thought with the most sincere affection for both porridge and mittens. It was not that she was too common for the grandiose: it was simply that the grandiose would not find an inch of purchase in her utterly pragmatic self.

"You were... an artist's muse?" he asked.

"I know, I was as confused as you are about it. He was really famous too, from what I was told. I was a maid at a house he was staying in, and one day he saw me carrying some water, and that was it. Well, he thought it was some water, but it was actually a chamber pot, I just never had the heart to tell him. He asked the master if I could have some time off to pose for him, and him being such a grand painter and all, of course it was allowed. So he had me sit on this wooden stool for hours and painted my portrait and said it looked very rustic. And then it happened again, and again. I don't know how many portraits of me he painted, honestly. And I told him my name was Myrtle but he only ever called it 'portrait of a maid', which wasn't a lie, you know, it was just a bit rude. But at least I was getting more rest posing for him than I ever got in that damn house. Once I even suggested he should paint me reclining on pillows to make for a really daring pose, but really I just wanted a bit of a lie down. I said something about the light and perspective – I picked up a few things because he just wouldn't shut up about it – and would you imagine, he actually went and did it."

She picked up the paperweight, turning it over in her hands absent-mindedly.

"I mean, I admit I enjoyed all the attention at first, it was flattering. And everyone agreed those portraits were his best work. But then it got a little too much. When you're sitting there for so long for the sake of this man's portrait, well, you start thinking, how am I any better than some flowers or a fruit bowl, you know, and why couldn't he go for still life instead and not bother anyone. I felt a bit like an object after a while, which I didn't appreciate, as much as I was used to it."

Her hands stopped for a moment, and she set the paperweight back down on the desk with all the care and courtesy in the world.

"So, after I don't know how many 'portraits of a maid'" she went on, "I told him I was pretty sure people by now knew what a maid looked like, and I put an end to it. And can you imagine what he did next? He started going around saying he would never paint again, and that it was all because his muse had left him. Even threatened to sharpen his paintbrush and stab himself with it at some point. I had to leave my position there, in the end. People blamed me too much for not sitting for him anymore. They said I was depriving the world of the art of a great man, and all I had to do was sit there. Not a single one of them ever managed to understand that that was the problem, really."

"What happened to him?" Percy asked.

"Oh, he's fine. He moved on to hay bales. I heard he's painted them every which way now, big hay bales and small hay bales at dawn and dusk and every hour in between, and in every season too. Very popular paintings, I hear. I'm glad he's happy again. Well, I say that, but he was never happy. People said that was part of his charm."

Myrtle did not provide smooth rides. She could be quiet for a long time, and speak for a long time, and she did not care for easy transitions between either. As soon as she was done with her tale, she stood, prim and poised, wholly unaffected by the jarring silence that tripped the others in its suddenness.

"But... what were you saying about official requirements to be considered a muse?" Evans remembered.

"Ah yes, there was that." Her hands fretted and fluttered in search of something to fiddle with, but she now seemed reluctant to pick up any objects at all. "The problem was that even after I said I didn't want to be his muse, he just wouldn't let go of the idea, and neither would other people for that matter. So I had to go about it another way. I did a lot of dusting in the library – it was almost never used – and I saw a book there, I can't remember what it was called exactly, 'The Compendium of Musae' or something official-sounding like that. It was some kind of treatise on how to be a muse. How to qualify as one. I think there's a guild somewhere? Anyway, I consulted it one night, and there was this pretty major condition that I definitely didn't tick. That part I remember. 'A muse must devote her life in complete selflessness to the artist; self-sacrifice must be her greatest talent'. Once I found that, I showed that bit to the painter and told him I could never qualify as his muse. If I'm honest, I'm still a little sore at how quickly he believed that book over me."

"So you're saying that Delia might not fulfil all of those conditions to properly be considered a muse?" Evans said.

"That requirement is horse-shit" Valeria decreed, spitting her disdain into the fire.

"Well, yeah, of course it is, that and all the other ones I read. There's a reason 'muse' rhymes with 'abuse'."

"Do you remember the other requirements in that book?"

Myrtle launched herself into an enumeration of every item she could recall. But Percy's attention was already drifting away, wading into the murk of what his exhausted mind remembered from the past few hours, particularly his first waking moments in that house. It was no easy task; like searching for fog within fog.

'This is my turf'. How had he not remembered it until then? He gave a little choked sound.

"Wait" he said, interrupting Myrtle halfway through the fifth or sixth item.

She looked duly irked by his interruption, and he noticed it – which was already an improvement. He revised what he said next, shifting away from the triumphant tone he had first intended to announce his discovery.

"You're right. I think that's exactly why the curse isn't breaking. I think she wanted to be brought here by Armand, and that she picked a rose on purpose. She made it very clear she wasn't looking forward to anything in her life outside this house. She said she didn't have any prospects other than getting married, or finding work that would never leave her enough time to play. I think that's all she wants, really – she's a very good musician."

In his haste, Percy rushed past every word as he spoke them. He took no time to say that she was perhaps too good of a musician, and that the night-frozen limbs of his companions owed their current state to her diabolically dextrous fingers.

"And she doesn't seem in any hurry to leave here, on the contrary" he went on, his hands sparking in eager gestures. "She told me how much she liked the music room, and how pleased she is that she can use it whenever she wants. She also kept avoiding my questions about why she'd picked a rose. And they told us in the tavern, didn't they? That people in this city already knew not to go near his garden?"

"They... did" Myrtle hesitated, "but do you think that's enough to assume that she..."

"There was also something she said just as I was waking up – something like 'I was here first' or 'this was my turf'."

The others stared at him for a moment. The fire crackled.

"You could have started with that" Valeria said flatly.

"I'm sorry, I... I only remembered it now, I was half-asleep" he mumbled, his foot fidgeting again as he attempted to brush his apology under the carpet too. It was getting crowded under there.

"So you think the curse isn't breaking because she isn't fulfilling the 'self-sacrifice' bollocks?" Valeria asked. "She got taken on purpose and is benefitting from all this?"

"It may be a little more complicated than that..." He sounded almost bitter at the truth of what he spoke. It bruised his mind, to twist it away from the comfortable confines of simplicity. "I don't think she's a hypocrite. She was earnest when she said Armand was a genius and that she would do anything to help his art. She does believe that, even if she planned to get taken."

"Of course I did. Have you seen the housing prices lately?"

Percy and Myrtle jumped at the voice. Evans and Valeria immediately reached for their swords. Delia was standing by the door, holding a key in her hand. She was just as Percy had seen her before, still wearing her pretty lilac dress and her hair tied loosely with a ribbon. She did not look like she had gone to sleep at any point. Percy cursed the unfairness of sleep: it seemed as uninterested in bearing down on Delia as it was intent on oppressing him with its enveloping weight.

"You must be Delia" Valeria said.

Her hand barely fluttered away from the hilt of her sword. Delia, whose eyes had at once darted to the blade, looked almost flattered that she had not been dismissed as a threat.

"Yes, that's me. And what on earth are you doing here?"