Page 60 of Pareidolia

Toward me.

“Sorry, Janine, I shouldn’t have just run out like that.”

“I didn’t see what happened, but it looked like Mr. Jones was bothering you. I get it,” she giggles. “He’s the town drunk. He’s tried to put his hand up my skirt more times than I can count. But you…” She holds a brown bag toward Aspen. “You seemed nice.”

“I am nice,” he answers faintly, gesturing for her to bring the bag to him. It draws her deeper into the shadows, and she comes so willingly. A fly to a spider.

“Why are you out in the woods?” she asks as she hands him the bag, and he shrugs, glancing around.

“I live here.”

“No one lives in Duskfen.” She laughs again. “Haven’t you heard… there’s a monster in the woods.”

Something in Aspen twists, a sharp flavor of pride on my tongue.

“I’ve heard.” He takes her hand and drags her deeper into the trees, and the pretty flush on her cheeks tells me she doesn’t know the danger she’s in as he turns her back to me. “I’ve seen it.” He smiles then, and the first trickle of apprehension scents the air. It isn’t a kind smile.

It isn’t a human smile.

Aspen’s eyes glow like moonlight as he takes his hand out of his pocket, holding out red and black fingers to her.

“What?”

“A beast with wings, a thing with teeth. I’ve seen him, I’ve felt him…” His eyes drift over her shoulder to look at me. “My monster lives in the woods, in my chest…” Aspen trails his fingers along her cheek, and the black tendrils beneath his skin slip from the cuts on his arm and caress her face. “Under my skin.”

The low sound that spills from her chest isn’t quite a scream—confusion and terror war with the desire she’d felt only a few minutes ago, and it seems to steal away her ability to process what’s happening.

“Please…”

It’s always just one word.

Please.

Stop.

God.

Help.

And…

“Nox.”

I step forward and let my wings spill out behind me. Her scream cuts off when she sees them, and her body goes limp as the tendrils I’d snaked across the clearing slide along her legs, wrapping around her torso. Her eyes go wide as one slides around her throat—it squeezes, but not tight enough to kill.

Just enough to make her go limp as her lashes flutter and her gaze drifts far away. I want to make a feast for Aspen, to fill him with every emotion he could possibly desire.

And I want to know what she feels, what she craves—how a human mind that’s seen him, wanted him, thinks.

“I always wanted to leave this town,” she whispers. “Wanted to be something else. Someone else, far away. When I saw you in the diner, I thought you could take me.”

She sways with my shadow wrapped around her throat, and I see the way Aspen reacts to the confession and longing spilling across his skin. I can see it, and I can feel it when he wants more. When he realizes he could drink down every wish the woman has, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Aspen isn’t satisfied with desire and longing—the monster in his chest is shaped around who he’s been his entire life.

“Take her, then, little monster. Take all of us,” I urge, and my body clenches in desire and delight when he pulls his knife from his pocket.

He holds it between their bodies, and I watch in fascination as his fingers tremble with want, but he manages to hold back.