“To see you standing among them, though,” he went on without seeming to noitce my confusion, “it now leads me to wonder if the beauty is, in truth, all mine to behold.”

I blinked, uncertain for an instant that I could have heard him right.

“Erik, what are you talking about?” I asked him. Because I wanted to know if the blush that rushed to my cheeks truly had any business being there. Or if this was all just part of his . . . Victorian-ness?

“You returned home yesterday with roses,” he said, still way over in the left field of Wait, What Is Happening? Stadium. “They . . . were a gift, no doubt.”

“I got them from the florist.”

“You bought them?”

What was he getting at? “You’re stalling.”

“I am,” he admitted, keeping his back to me, the response giving me zero comfort.

“Why?”

“Because now that you’re here, with me, I find the words that I had resolved to say to you suddenly more difficult to summon than anticipated.”

Talk about non-answers. “Just spit it out.”

He glanced over his shoulder at me, his scowl returning. “Spit . . . it out?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It means—”

“I can deduce what it means,” he said, cutting me off.

“Then why can’t you just say it?”

“Because I fear what you might think,” he raced to say. A blunter answer for sure, but still useless.

“Are we in trouble now?” I asked, cutting to the chase because one of us needed to. “Me and Dad. Charlie. Is it too late?”

He spun to face me, his cloak whirling with the motion. “No. Of course not. I don’t think I would be here now if it was.”

“I don’t understand.” I opened my arms, then let them flop to my sides. “If you’re stuck here because of the curse, then where else would you be? Why won’t you tell me why, specifically, we have to leave? More importantly, why won’t you let me help you?”

“I’ll thank you not to berate me when the very reason I have come is to tell you everything,” he said, that familiar chill in his tone returning, his words silencing me. He paused and, seeming to check himself, he began again. “You’ll forgive me for prolonging the moment. How can I help it when I know that, as soon as I finish telling you all I’ve come to say, you will go?”

His voice, one of the surest things about him, all but died on that last word. As if, after trying so hard to convince me to scram, he’d suddenly changed his mind.

“You’re . . . different,” I said, scanning his attire that had changed along with his demeanor. Still garbed in mostly black, he now wore a royal blue embroidered waistcoat. A silken black cravat replaced the white one he’d worn before. A spotless ebony dress coat accompanied matching slacks, while his shoes shone in the moonlight that streamed through whatever scant patches of window the roses failed to blot out.