"Your invitation," Julian said, placing a heavy hand on Elias’s shoulder. "It wasn’t for your patronage, Elias. It was for your hands. You have the finest grip for a charcoal pencil I’ve ever seen."

When she returned, her expression had shifted from curiosity to something approaching sympathy.

I thanked her and said I would think about it. But as I walked out into the bracing spring air, I already knew I wouldn't place that order. The name was wrong. The scent would be wrong. What I was looking for wasn't something that could be ordered from a database or delivered in a cardboard box. It was something that existed only in the space between what is real and what is imagined.

It was in this latter category that the sales assistant had located "Transfixed." But what of the Muses? What of the exclusivity?