Page 51 of Pareidolia

“Not import… What the fuck are you going to do when the people in town realize people are missing?” I can’t tell if his worry is for me—which is completely irrelevant—or if he thinks they’ll accuse him of the murder when they realize what happened.

“No one knows who was here, and even if someone did, it won’t matter.” It’s a simple answer… an easy answer. It’s the reason this forest is mine, the reason I’ve been able to stay settled here for as long as I have. “It’s just going to be another story.” I look around at the empty cabin with a shrug. “People use this cabin, and for the most part I’ve left them alone… but now it’s mine. A part of my legend.” My eyes flick to the closed door behind us, and Aspen follows my gaze. “They’ll learn not to come here.”

His lips are turned down, the frown making a small crease between his brows.

“Tell me there aren’t dead bodies behind that door.”

I widen my eyes in mock innocence. “There aren’t dead bodies behind the door.”

He’s moving before I have a chance to finish speaking, shoving the door open with a low grunt. “What the fuck.” He whirls to throw the accusation.

“What?”

“There are dead bodies, Nox. You’re a liar.”

“I’m a monster.” I glance over his shoulder at the very dead man and woman on the ground. “They were alive when I left.”

Barely. But.

“They’re dead now.” He steps into the room and glances around. I was mostly clean with it—there’s only a little blood on the floor. I move past him and pick up one of their arms that lies a few feet from their bodies.

“It’s still mostly warm.”

For some reason, Aspen seems amused by my observation. The low laugh that tears from his chest is probably a strange reaction from a human. He’s unlike any creature I’ve ever met, and I find myself more and more enamored with the way he looks at me, the way he reacts…

The way that, even as he tries to run, somehow it’s always back to me.

CHAPTER 20

ASPEN

If I’m not mistaken, Nox was actually trying to be sweet when he killed the old couple who lived in this cabin to give it to me. Sweet or… romantic? Can a monster be romantic?

Whatever it is, I don’t know how to tell him it’s a completely wasted gesture. He doesn’t understand things like legalities and the law.

“Nox…” I’m not sure if I want to completely rebuke the gesture—I’m not sure if I won’t end up like the couple in the kitchen if I do. “Maybe you don’t understand how humans work, but I can’t just take a cabin that doesn’t belong to me because it’s unoccupied.”

“I understand humanity well enough. They signed papers before they died.” He gestures to the kitchen table, and I blow out a soft breath as I walk over. Sure enough, there’s a will, and there’s my name.

My fucking legal name. Alex Michaels.

And apparently the man and woman who owned the house were Teegan and Harlan Jones.

Great.

My mysterious and unwilling benefactors have names that go with their dead faces now. Somehow I feel like that makes me more liable to the crime.

“Nox, you can’t just make people sign papers and suddenly everything is fine. That’s not⁠—”

“Things work the way I want them to work, little monster,” he snarls in frustration. I freeze halfway to grabbing the papers. “I control emotions, manipulate them. I could take one of these tendrils…” One of the shadows slides from behind his back and slips forward and around my neck. “And wrap it around the throat of every human in the little shit stain of a town that borders my forest and tell them I was their God, and they’d bow down and worship me until their knees bled and they starved to death. Seeing me, knowing me, one touch usually drives a human to insanity if I leave them alive. If I say this house is yours, it’s yours.”

It’s almost cute that he’s so angry… or maybe it’s just proof of how fucked up I am that I find it cute, him half choking me while he insists that this little murder cabin he “acquired” for me is mine.

I drop my hands back to the table and sit—instead of choking me, he steps forward, though I notice that tendril doesn’t leave my neck.

“I still don’t understand what you are, Nox.” I raise my fingers, tracing them along the smoke and shadow wrapped around my throat. “You keep telling me, but I don’t get it.”

“It’s hard,” he growls. “Hard for a human mind, even one as fucked up as yours, to wrap around. Trust me when I say I’m nearly as old as Fate, as dangerous as Death. I existed as a shadow on this earth before humanity was a thought. I’ve consumed more human emotions, thoughts, desires, and wishes than you could fathom… so when I tell you that a touch of my shadows could make every wish you’ve ever had come true…” He squeezes it again around my neck, and I can feel it—the pulse of power that makes those black things in my chest squirm and try to break free to go back to him. “Believe me.”