Page 19 of Pareidolia

“You felt something when you tried to kill that man,” I murmur, and he draws up short. Color floods along his neck, lighting his pale cheeks a soft pink. “I could feel you through the trees, could feel it clinging to his skin when I took him. You liked it. Mmm, no.” I follow him across the room, running my fingers through the air between us like I can feel it still, the taste that I’d been thinking about for eight years, the one that draws me to him now. “You loved it. Murder, pain, terror. You drank it down the same way I do, even if you didn’t understand it, little monster.”

“Stop calling me that.” This protest is a little softer than the last.

“It’s what you are. Look at how easily you took my essence beneath your skin—it would have driven most humans to insanity… but you…” I lean in, incapable of staying away, unwilling to curb the hunger I feel for the human standing in front of me. “My shadows found a home in your hollow.”

CHAPTER 7

ASPEN

A home in my hollow?

I don’t know if I like feeling this seen by something that I’m still half convinced is a dream.

I am hollow, through and through… but I’ve done my best my entire life to make sure that most people haven’t seen it.

Then again, he’s not a person.

He’s a monster.

Some kind of weird emotion-eating shadow monster, apparently.

And…

“Fuck off,” I finally say, then take a brief moment to relish the way his eyes go dark and dangerous.

Fuck, that’s a problem. Apparently my brain’s way of coping with something that should be impossible—an impossible thing that’s infected me if the glow of my skin is any evidence—is to think it’s…

What…

Attractive that he’s a monster?

Sexy that he’s big enough he could break me in half?

Hot that it could kill me.

Shit, that last one wasn’t a question.

I really am fucked up. I’ve fucked before because it was a biological need, and I’m attractive enough to get a man or woman easily enough, but I’ve never thought someone was desirable.

So why am I starting now?

With a giant moth monster that wants to suck me dry.

“You say you can’t feel fear, Aspen.” He says my name like it’s a fucking delicacy and he’s ready to feast. “I could put that to the test.”

I shake my head slowly, wondering whether he’ll pounce if I take another step away from him. He has to understand that I can’t do this. Logically, I can’t do this.

Hell, logically I need to convince myself that this is all a dream, even if I am too curious and enraptured by his damn wings to want to wake up.

It’s the wings—the wings and whatever the fuck they did when I touched them.

That’s the only reason my chest feels an echo of the hollow he accused me of. For the first time I really notice it and…

Want.

His lips lift in a grin that shows off sharp teeth.

“Longing… longing to know… Do you want to be afraid, Aspen?”