Hadn’t I known from the first notes that it had been mine? Even having never heard it with my ears, I’d have recognized it anywhere.

I fixed my hands on the desk, and before I could grasp that I had already begun to lose control, I threw it over. It landed with a deafening crash that shook the room—perhaps the whole house, though there would have been no one here to hear it.

No one but the masks.

The masks. What would they do to me now?

Wrath had seen this coming. Had there been some hint of her unearthly gift that I had ignored? Was this what Wrath had been alluding to? The reason I’d seen her face reflected in his mask and what had summoned the new masked figure who had looked so much like her?

While Stephanie might have been someone who would have caught my eye during my life before the curse, the thing that I was now could have, before today, sent her away with nary a wit. Even if she had intrigued me.

At least that was what I had been prepared to make myself believe at any cost.

But now . . . ?

The ringing of Stephanie’s voice. It had done what I had been unable to. In essence, it had ripped the mask from the truth. And now here I was, left to gaze in horror at what lay just beyond.

Stephanie. Stephanie.

How had this happened?

I replayed the events of our encounter again in my head, buying my mind another moment before having to put my realization into something so inescapable as words.

Her porcelain angel. She had discovered it in the parlor as I had intended her to. And my pressing of the piano note. That, too, had been another purposeful test, issued to see if I had yet infiltrated her mind enough to be perceived.

From there, I had followed her to the second floor and into Charlie’s bedroom with the goal of gauging what effects my tactics had thus far rendered. From there, I had meant to frighten her. But then. Then she had begun to sing. And the force, the power of her instrument had washed over me, weakening me into the unquestionable need of a chair.

The music she had woven for me on the piano, luring and lulling as it had been, was but noise next to that voice.

My very bones. They’d reverberated with her refrain. And how my hollow chest had ached from the beauty that had devastated my senses.

Rendered defenseless in her presence, incapable of departing or even moving, I had listened, transfixed. I’d not had sagacity enough even to discern that she had detected my presence. Neither had I possessed the power to shield myself in any way from the onslaught of her song. Or, for that matter, that damnable sheet!

What was I to do when she returned? After such an encounter, could I even hope she would come back?