A/N: I'm surprised you guys haven't shot me yet. Really, I am. Once again, I'm sorry for the lack of updates. -weeps- You're allowed to kick my lazy procrastinating butt, if it'll make you feel better. -nods, and tosses Spearmint to all her reviewers- Actually, I have a really good excuse this time--all my creative energy has been spent on my novel for the past several months (I finished the first draft! ^_^ Whoopee! -dances around like an idiot-), which I would have online so y'all could read it, but it's original instead of fanfiction so of course nobody's interested. -sigh-

Okay, enough of me rambling. On with the story! -dramatic fanfare-

There was something chasing her, something large and dark and intent on hurting her. It was fast, too fast--no matter how hard she ran, trying to force herself to greater speed, it was constantly growing nearer. The forest around her was dark, supernaturally so; she couldn't have seen her hand in front of her face, and had no idea where she was running. Thorns slapped against her sides, breaking through the thin fabric of her clothes to pierce her skin, leaving a thousand bloody, stinging dots, but she didn't dare stop, for if she did, the beast behind her would catch up to her--

Her foot caught on a fallen bit of wood, and she went sprawling. She flung out her arms in a desperate attempt to stop her fall; one of them twisted awkwardly underneath her, and her chin hit the ground with a heavy thud. Sobbing from the force of her fear, she tried to scramble to her feet, but it was too late; the creature was on top of her, pulling at her shirt with thick claws that pierced her skin and left deep bloody trails in their wake--

Meg straight straight up in bed, damp with sweat and heart hammering in her chest. She had managed to become tangled in the sheets, and she shoved them aside. It wasn't difficult to figure out the source of the nightmare; there was only one thing it possibly could have been--Decousian.

Cursing under her breath, she grabbed the first thing her hand landed on--her hairbrush--turned in bed, and threw it without looking long enough to aim. It hit the wall with a thud, three inches to the side of the demon standing in her open doorway. Decousian smiled mockingly, and disappeared into thin air.

Dammit, that son of a bitch! This was the third time the demon had woken her up, just tonight; she hadn't gotten much sleep at all so far, and had no idea how the hell she was going to stay awake long enough to pay attention to her lessons tomorrow.

Glancing at her watch, she sighed. It was only 3:30 A.M.; there was no way she could get up yet. She'd just have to hope Decousian didn't come back and disturb her rest again--not that that was likely, but she could always hope.

Climbing out of bed, she went to her door, closed it, and locked it--not that having it locked had done any good the past three times, but you never knew. Pulling the blankets back up around herself, she thought vindictively towards the demon, And you can stay out, dammit!

Burying her head under her pillow, she closed her eyes and was asleep in an instant.

When she awoke the next morning, drowsy from lack of true sleep and having to fight to keep her eyes open, the first thing she saw was her dress draped over the back of the chair. She hadn't seen the gown since it had disappeared, her first night here; she'd hoped that, wherever it was, someone was repairing the tear in the knee.

She leapt out of bed at once and crossed the room to the chair, picking up her dress and examining it. Sure enough, the hole in the knee was now completely mended, without a single sign of a patch or stitches anywhere--almost as though the fabric had been magically fused back together.

Then again, how do I know? she thought, musingly. Maybe it was.

Badly wanting to wear it today and not really knowing why, she thought for a minute, then gave in and pulled the dress over her head. The golden cord had been left coiled on top of the dress; she looped it around her waist and tied it, then ran her brush through her hair and settled on the bed to eat breakfast.

By the time the meal was over, Jason still hadn't said anything to her--not even a good morning, much less anything about her magic lessons. She wasn't sure if he would hear her if she just spoke to thin air, either, so she left the room and set out to find him.

His bedroom was the first place she checked, only to find the door locked, and to recieve absolutely no answer when she knocked. She looked in the rest of the suites on the floor--no Jason. Most of the rest of the rooms that lay up the iron staircase were empty of him as well, but when she walked into the one on the left--the one that had been locked the first time she tried to open it--she found him sitting in a chair, evidently waiting for her.

The room was large and expansive, with bookshelves lining one wall--she'd never been in a house that had more bookshelves than this place did--and a variety of furniture, most of which was shoved out of the way along one wall and covered with dust. In the center of the room sat two chairs and a table, looking incredibly lonely in the middle of all that empty space. The table and one of the two chairs was spotless, without a speck of dust on them; the second chair looked as though it had been recently pulled out from the wall and hastily dusted off. It looked as though the duster hadn't done too good a job of dusting, either.

Jason sat in the dust-free chair, wearing a robe with a hood--one that disguised most of his monstrous form. She couldn't help but be glad; even though she was fairly sure he wasn't going to hurt her, it would still have been pretty easy to lose her nerve if she'd had to sit and stare at his face.

Of course, he was still undeniably much larger than she was, and the robe did nothing to hide the wickedly sharp claws on the end of furred hands.

Doing her best to ignore the claws, she stood just inside the doorway with her hands on her hips, ignoring the slight tingle she felt when she stepped over the threshold of the door. "I had to look all over the castle for you," she informed him tartly. "I 'spose it would've been way too much trouble for you to actually tell me where the hell I needed to go for my lessons, right?"

"I apologize for the inconvenience," he said, sounding amused rather than sorry. "I'm afraid it is something of a tradition."

"What, that you have to annoy the shit out of your student before you start teaching 'em?" She snorted, closing the door and flopping down in the seat across from him. "Not much of a tradition, if you ask me."

He was obviously trying hard not to laugh. "The tradition is that for the first lesson, the student must seek and find the teacher without outside aid." He shrugged. "I have no idea where it originated or if it has any true purpose, but I decided not to break it lest I inadvertently find out any negative consequences."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever, Mr. Mystic Sorcerer Dude. I--"

"Not a sorcerer," he interrupted sternly. "A mage."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "And what the hell's the difference?"

"There is quite a difference, I assure you. Mages achieve their magic by tapping into the resoirvoir of power within themselves, which is why only those born with power are able to become mages. Sorcerers and sorceresses obtain their magic from the power resoirvoirs of other people. Since this usually leaves the victim soul-dead--completely drained dry of any feeling or emotion they might possibly have had--no one agrees to it by choice, so the sorcerers and sorceresses usually take the power by force. Quite unethical, really.

"Witches and wizards, on the other hand, obtain their magic from outside sources as well, but in their case it is from resoirvoirs that occur in nature. This, obviously, leaves out the moral problems associated with sorcery. Occasionally someone will achieve Mastery in magick, witchcraft, and sorcerery, and they are simply called Adepts, transcending the labels for each particular brand of magic. And a magician is merely a term for a stage performer, who uses sleight-of-hand and has no true power."

She stared at him. "I probably have to remember all that, don't I?"

She thought he smiled. "Of course."

"Great." She slumped down in her seat. "Okay, so I'm sorry I called you a sorcerer. What I was going to say, before I got the lecture of the month, was that I still want to know why the hell you're a beast." She glared at him. "You still haven't explained that, y'know."

He remained silent for a moment, claws tapping idly on the arm of his chair. "You probably won't do anything else until I explain, will you?"

She grinned. "Nope."

He sighed. "Very well." There were a few moments more of silence, as though he was debating where to begin; just when she was about to say something, he spoke. "Before I was a beast, I was a prince. It was quite some time ago that I lived as a man--I haven't kept track of the passing years, so I can't honestly say how long ago, but...it was well over a century, I know."

"Was it around the Middle Ages or somethin'?" she asked, leaning forward in interest.

"During the 14th century."

She whistled under her breath. "Damn. You are an old fart."

He stared at her for a moment, then his shoulders shook with silent laughter. "I'm an--an old fart?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, it's the 21st century now, so that must have been--what, seven hundred years ago?"

The laughter died, replaced by silence. "I did not know it had been that long," he said at last, quietly; then he shook himself. "As I said, I used to be a prince. I was, I admit, quite a spoiled brat."

Meg was pretty sure she recognized this story. "And let me guess, an ugly old woman came along, offered you a rose in return for shelter, and when you turned her down 'cause she was butt-ugly she made you butt-ugly instead?"

He looked at her oddly. "No."

"Oh." She shrugged. "Well, that's the way it happened in Beauty and the Beast, so..."

He shook his head; she couldn't really see his expression, but she got the feeling he was somewhat amused and taken aback at the same time. "It was my twenty-first birthday when I was turned into a beast," he said, continuing with the story as though he hadn't been interrupted. "There was a sorceress who had come to visit my court--the same woman who imprisoned Decousian, as a matter of fact. As I said, it was likely the only decent thing she ever did in her life."

"She's the one that turned you into a beast?"

"Yes."

Meg tilted her head to one side. "Why? I mean, you obviously managed to piss her off, but how?"

"She and I had--" He paused for a moment, as though searching for words. "We had been involved," he finished at last, rather lamely.

She rolled her eyes at him. "You were screwing. That's just great, hurry up and tell the story."

"Yes, well," he said, sounding flustered; she wondered wickedly if he was blushing underneath the hood. "She became jealous when I got involved with another woman."

Meg, wondering idly how long he was going to continue to use "being involved" as synonymous with "sleeping together," nodded. "So she turned you into a beast, right?"

He eyed her. "Do you always insist on guessing everything that's going to happen when you hear a story?"

"But of course," she said, grinning. "That's half the fun of it, y'know."

He shook his head. "As I was saying...she became jealous, and began plotting her revenge. She led me out into the castle gardens, and pointed out a particularly beautiful rosebush--little did I know, it was the one she had magicked with the spell to transform me. I had always loved roses, and they were the most splendid roses I had ever seen. So I picked a red rose--and as soon as the flower was in my hand, I transformed."

He sank into silence, staring idly at the table. Meg watched him for a moment before speaking. "So how do you break the spell?"

He looked back up at her. "Assuming a bit much, aren't you? How do you even know there is a way to break it?"

She shrugged. "Well, there always is in fairy tales."

"Yes, but this is life, not a fairy tale." He stared back at the table, claws tapping idly on the arm of his chair. "Part of the curse was immortality--that I would not only have to live as a beast, but do so for far longer than a human would ever have lived. The spell will run out after a thousand years have passed since its casting--then, I will die."

"Three hundred years left," murmured Meg, under her breath.

Jason ignored her and continued. "However, if I should manage to break the spell, I would return as a twenty-one-year-old man and live out a normal lifetime, then die. And it is possible to break the spell."

"You have to find true love, right?"

He gave her a sardonic look. "Let me guess--that's the way it is in Beauty and the Beast."

She shrugged. "Yeah."

He sighed, leaning back in his seat. "For all I know, you're right. That--woman wouldn't tell me how to break it, only that it was possible. I begged--I actually got down on my knees and begged the bitch to tell me how to break the spell." A low growl lay under the words; she shifted position nervously. "All she gave me was a riddle."

"Okay, what was the riddle?"

He exhaled in a heavy sigh, and relaxed the clenched grip his hand had taken upon the edge of his chair; the claws left five heavy furrows, which he ignored.

"Fire burns water, in feminine form,
The girl with the rose, who isn't the norm.
Find the answer, for your own sake,
Even then, the curse may not break."

The poem he recited in a singsong, mocking voice; she couldn't see his face, but she had a feeling he was scowling. "I have been trying to figure out what it means for years--centuries. I've looked at every single possible nuance and I still haven't a clue, except that I need to look for a girl with a rose who isn't normal."

"Yeah, and there's probably a shitload of weird girls with bouquets of roses wandering around, right?"

"Oh, certainly. Anyone who's slightly odd and gets roses from a sweetheart could be the one the riddle refers to, for all I know."

"Hmm." She slumped further down in the chair, at last laying in it sideways with her head on one arm and her legs slung over the other. "How'd it go again?"

Obediently, he recited the poem again. She considered it, musing aloud. "Fire burns water...hmm. Well, I have no idea how the hell water can even get burned in the first place, so go figure. In feminine form--is that the fire or the water that's supposed to be in feminine form? Shit, why I am asking you, you don't know."

"If I did, I promise you, I would be human right now," Jason said dryly.

"Well, duh." She thought some more, stifling a yawn. "The girl with the rose...that bush the rose that changed you was from isn't still around, is it?"

"It's in the forest outside the castle. It couldn't grow without magic after what the sorceress had done to it, so I tied it into the spells protecting the castle, the ones that make it invisible to most." He was watching her intently, as though trying to guess her thoughts. "Unfortunately, that means no one without a flower from that particular rosebush can enter."

Well, that certainly explained a few things she'd been wondering about. "Maybe it has to be a girl with a rose from that rosebush. After all--the girl with the rose, who isn't the norm--maybe it's the rose and not the girl that has to not be the norm."

"Trust me, I've thought of that. So what exactly is this hypothetical girl with a rose supposed to do?"

"Shit, like I know." She considered for a moment. "Well, the rest of the poem is pretty obvious, right? Find the answer, for your own sake, Even then, the curse may not break--you have to answer the riddle to know how to break the curse, and even then it might not work." She shrugged. "So the rest of the answer has to be in the first line."

"Fire burns water, in feminine form," he answered. "Trust me, I've thought about it for centuries and I still haven't figured out what that is supposed to mean. I seriously doubt you'll be able to make any breakthroughs just in the space of one day."

"Yeah, but I still have to try," she said with a grin. "Unfortunately...I have no clue what the hell it means." She sighed, admitting defeat. "But if you see any burning water, you should probably run towards it."

"I'll keep that in mind," Jason said dryly. "Now, weren't we supposed to be having a magic lesson, before we got off-topic?"

By the end of the day, she was completely and totally worn out. She'd been exhausted anyway from her lack of sleep, and Jason had worked her relentlessly, beginning by showing her how to tap into her magic and build a shield around herself. He'd explained it as looking inside yourself--he said it helped to close your eyes, at least until you got the hang of it--and searching until you found the spot that glowed to your mind's eye. That was your power resoirvoir, and you had to imagine a mental hand dipping into it and drawing up a line of the glow; then to make a shield, you had to imagine that same hand pressing it, solidifying it into a solid wall around you.

It had taken her quite a few tries just to get the hang of tapping into the magic; she'd been so surprised the first time she'd succeeded that she'd promptly dropped the "line" and had to start all over again. Once she finally managed to put up a shield--she amused herself by envisioning it as a force field, like on Star Trek--Jason had launched a gentle attack at it with his magic, and it had come crashing down.

The spell he had tossed at it made her yelp; it felt like a bee had just stung her. With an amazing lack of sympathy, he'd merely told her to put her shield back up, and make it stronger this time.

It took her half the day just to get a shield up that could withstand the little bee sting attacks. When she finally did, he increased the strength of the attacks, and down her shield went once again. She lost her temper quite a few times over the course of the day.

"Why the hell do I just have to keep doing this shit?" she had yelled at one point, clenching the arms of the chair and glaring at Jason. "I'm obviously hopeless at this, so why can't I at least try something different? I am tired of putting up shields, dammit!"

"You are not hopeless," he had told her, perfectly calm in contrast to her flare of temper. "You are going to get the hang of this, and eventually you're going to make a shield that can not only keep you from being harmed when I throw everything I've got at you, but that can also either reflect it back at me, or absorb the power back into your resoirvoir. Normally I would be glad to take a break and do something else for a while, but I want you to be able to make a strong shield before we do anything else--because if you can, you'll be able to protect yourself from harm from Decousian, which is something only your pendant can do at the moment."

She looked down at the pendant Branwyn had given her--she hadn't taken it off since she'd gotten it, and had managed to totally forget about it. "What, you mean this piece of shit's actually magic?"

He frowned at her. "It is not a piece of shit. And yes, it is magic. Done by a witch, if I'm not mistaken, and perfectly capable of protecting you from anyone meaning you harm--which means Decousian can, as long as that pendant rests around your neck, do nothing but frighten you. However, with your own shields to add to it, you need not worry that Decousian might prove to be more powerful than the one that enspelled the necklace and break the protection."

She glared at him for a moment. "You're not going to let me do anything else magic until I make a good shield, are you?"

He smiled. "Certainly not."

She had almost stamped her foot in frustration, but had realized how childish that would look and decided against it. Instead, she'd gone back to shielding--and back to having her shields torn down as soon as she put them up.

He'd finally let her quit just after noon, with the excuse that they both needed lunch. She'd agreed rather grumpily, but had then been surprised when he had--rather shyly, she thought--asked if she would join him in the dining hall for lunch.

"It's just that--I've been very lonely," he'd explained sheepishly, "and I'd prefer not to have meals by myself if I have a choice. Of course, if you don't want to, I'd more than understand," he added hastily.

She stared at him for a moment, then had shrugged and accepted his invitation. After all, why not? She didn't have any reason to refuse--and she wasn't about to admit it, but she'd been rather lonely spending all her time by herself in her room, too.

And so she had gone up to her room to change, not wanting to eat in her dress and risk spilling food on it. Not that those invisible servants or whatever they were couldn't get any stains she made out--they probably could. Still, it was the principle of the thing.

Starting to walk out the doorway, she paused and turned, not knowing what she was looking for. As if on cue, Decousian appeared in the center of her room; she swore, then remembered Jason's words and slapped up the best shield she could. The demon eyed her warily, then turned to her dresser, picking up her discarded dress.

"No!" she yelped, leaping forward and grasping the hem in an attempt to pull it from the demon's arms. Dammit, she was not going to let this stupid asshole of a demon rip her dress when she'd just gotten it fixed--

It let go of the fabric suddenly; since she'd been yanking on it at the time, she stumbled and almost fell over backward with the force of her pull. Turning back to her dresser, it picked up the slender crystalline vase she'd found in which to put her good luck rose, and eyed the flower within with a grimace of distaste.

"That's my good luck charm," she informed the demon. "Don't you dare mess with it, you son of a bitch."

The demon turned its gaze onto hers, and cocked its head idly to one side--then threw the vase at her. She shrieked and threw her hands up to protect her face, but instead of the vase actually hitting her, it came to a screeching halt about half a foot away from her nose. It hung suspended in midair for a few moments, then fell to the ground, where it smashed.

Obviously, Jason was right; these shield things were going to come in handy. The demon snarled at her, and disappeared.

Shaken, she stood there and looked at the broken shards of glass for a moment before shaking herself. "Could--could you take care of that?" she said to the empty air, pointing at the broken vase.

Sure enough, the pieces began zipping back together; within a minute, the vase was fixed, back on the dresser with the rose back in place. Grinning, she skipped out of the door, trying to find her way back to the dining hall.

She almost got lost twice when she made wrong turns, but eventually she found it, and entered to find Jason waiting for her, sitting not at the head of the table but off to one side. Feeling rather awkward--which was ridiculous, considering that she'd just spent the entire morning in a magic lesson with the guy--she crossed the room and took a seat across the table from him.

"Hi," she said by way of greeting, glancing at the table, which was empty except for a folded sheet of paper laying in front of their two places. "So, when do we eat?"

A/N: I know that wasn't a good chapter ending, but I suddenly ran out of ideas. Oh well. ^_^ Everybody, let's mock my crappy attempt at poetry! -points at the riddle- Hey, it rhymes, and coming from me that's pretty good. ^_^ I suck at poetry (if you hadn't noticed).

So! Will Meg ever get good at magic? Will they ever reimprison Decousian? Will they ever figure out the riddle? Will I actually update before the lynch mob appears at my door?! All this and...I'm getting tired of Spearmint. All this and a free bar of Hershey's chocolate, on tomorrow's (or next year's) episode of Cursed Rose. Bwahahaha! -runs off-