Page 125 of Pareidolia

“Do you think I’m something you could make up?” I tilt my head, still curious, still tempted to let my shadows unspool from my body so they can slip around his neck and feel his pulse quicken.

“I’m an author. I make up all sorts of things.” He shrugs. “But even I have to admit you’d be… a stretch.”

He drums his fingers against his thigh as he looks at me across the distance between us, the red glow slowly pulsing faster and faster as he does.

“Did you decide your little excursion with the ranger wasn’t to your taste?” I’m surprised it almost sounds like an accusation when I say it. I move forward, closing the distance between us in a few steps. “Does it leave a bitter taste on your tongue to mingle with humans when you’re hardly one yourself?”

“I’m human,” he protests, but there’s no conviction to it. “Human enough that I thought it was a good idea not to give in to a monster trying to lure me into the forest.” Aspen frowns. “They teach you not to do that when you’re little, you know?”

“They taught you about me when you were small, didn’t they?” I could break his legs to make sure he never left these trees again, so I could keep him for myself until I grew bored and tore him apart to try to get my shadow back.

“There were stories,” he says carefully. “The thing in the forest with wings. The thing that could lure you, could sound like your deepest wishes, your darkest desires…” I’m not even sure if he realizes when his voice drops a bit, that the rich deep tone nearly vibrates as he whispers. “A beast that would eat you whole and leave nothing behind.”

He talks about my legend like it’s a story he’s told himself to get off and not a thing parents use to scare their children away from the depths of the trees. I can’t stop myself when my wings fan out, can’t help but watch when his hand starts to pulse in time with the way they fan behind me. “If you know what I am, why didn’t you run far, far away, Aspen?”

“I’m not afraid of monsters.” It comes out almost faintly as he watches my wings, clenching and unclenching his fingers before holding his hand up between us. “And whatever you did to me, it felt like it was going to rip out of my skin if I didn’t come back.”

It’s almost like he doesn’t mean to give me the second confession, and he tries to jerk his hand back like it can unbreathe the syllables from the air. I reach out before he can, catching his wrist and feeling the truth in his words. Those shadows were squirming, wanting to return home. Now that they’re here, they’ve settled.

They like where they are.

Interesting.

“You shouldn’t have left with that human.” I can’t hide the distaste in my tone, and Aspen picks up on it this time.

“Why didn’t you kill Noah if you’re so mad about it?” I can’t tell if he’s curious or if it’s an accusation, and I don’t understand the twisted, ugly feeling in my chest at the way he says Noah like they’ve known one another their entire lives. I snarl, my wings flexing behind me for a moment as I pace back and forth in the clearing.

It’s easier here instead of in his little tower—there’s no space to move there, to breathe, to think. Here, I know the trees. I know every branch, the whisper of each leaf.

“I don’t shit where I eat.” The human saying rolls off my tongue easily, and I watch his eyes widen in shock. “It makes no sense to kill off important people in the town that borders my forest if I want to stay here."

Aspen’s head tilts, his eyes narrowing in something close to accusation. “Are you afraid?”

I laugh, a deep sound that’s almost foreign to me. “No. But if I slaughter an entire town, history will remember it. If I upset the balance so often that Death himself feels overcrowded, the very fabric of what you understand as your world might fray.”

He’s still staring at me like that isn’t enough, and I close the distance between us again, pressing against him until he’s forced to back himself against a tree.

“Why do you care?” he whispers, and I’m caught in the way his eyes are a strange shade of brown in the low lighting. Ochre and autumn leaves. I lean in so close I’m nearly drunk again on the taste of his apathy, flavored with my own shadows pulsing through him now.

“I don’t. But if the world ends because humans realize monsters are real and the balance is shattered, what will I eat?”

Aspen’s eyes darken when I say the word eat, and he lets out a shaking breath.

Not in fear.

Excitement.

“How do you eat, Nox?” The question comes out on a soft exhalation, and the satisfaction blooming in my chest that he asked is nearly enough to drown out the cool desire rippling off him.

“Is that what you really want to ask, little monster?”

Aspen stares at me like he’s trying to find logic in the next words he says, as if he’s trying to convince himself one more time that I’m not real, that he’s insane and this is simply his mind breaking.

Any other human would have reacted that way.

But not him.

“You said you could show me.” He bites his lower lip and glances up at me. “So show me.”