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“Traffic.” Rook stepped inside, and his shadows immediately stretched toward Ethan like they’d been straining against a leash. “Also, I couldn’t decide between the breakfast sandwich and the burrito, so I got both.”
“That’s excessive.”
“You didn’t eat yesterday.” Rook set everything on Ethan’s small kitchen table. “We’re making up for it.”
Ethan’s apartment reflected his need for order - books organized by subject, dishes put away, nothing on the counters except a coffee maker and a precisely folded dish towel. Rook glanced around, and something in his expression softened.
“This is very you.”
“You don’t know me well enough to make that assessment.”
“Sure I do.” Rook pulled out a chair. “Sit. Eat first, then I’ll explain everything.”
“I have questions.” Ethan hovered, his fingers itching to reach for his laptop.
“I know you do, but food first.” Rook unpacked the bags quickly, revealing a breakfast sandwich, a burrito, four hash browns, a fruit cup, and two large coffees. “I didn’t know how you took your coffee, so I got cream and sugar on the side.”
Ethan sat because the food did smell good, and his stomach reminded him he’d skipped dinner too. He doctored his coffee - two sugars and a dash of cream because it was some version of a special occasion as such - and unwrapped the breakfast sandwich. Rook watched him take the first bite, as though checking to make sure Ethan liked it.
“Better?” Rook asked when Ethan didn’t say anything.
“It’s food. It’s serving its biological function.” But Ethan took another bite, and then another. The eggs were fluffy, the bacon crisp, and the English muffin was perfectly toasted. When he glanced up, Rook was eating the burrito and looking quietly pleased with himself.
They ate in comfortable silence. Rook’s shadows stayed mostly contained, but occasionally one would drift toward Ethan’s ankle or wrist. Each time, Rook seemed to pull it back with visible effort.
“You can stop doing that.” Ethan wiped his hands on a napkin. “They don’t bother me.”
“They’re being pushy.”
“I thought they were being affectionate, so they don’t bother me.”
Rook paused mid-bite. “You’re really not scared of me.”
“Should I be?”
“Most people would be.”
“I’m not most people.” Ethan finished his coffee. “Now explain,” he added as he put his cup on the table. “Starting with what you are.”
Rook set down his burrito and leaned back in the chair. “I’m what’s known as an Eldritch guardian. I have been for around nine hundred years.”
Ethan pulled out his phone and opened a new note. “Define Eldritch.”
“I’m really not sure what you want me to say. We’re ancient, definitely not human, and we feed from the negative energies that come from bad people. In our basic form, we’re made of shadows, hunger, and an energy that stems back to when time began.” Rook gestured at himself. “This form is just a camouflage - something we wear so we can move about in public. Underneath, I’m mostly shadows and teeth.”
Wondering what that might look like, Ethan quickly scribbled the description down. “Can I confirm you consume criminals? Is this like hacked-up bodies in a slow cooker situation or…” Ethan had no experience with eating humans, so it wasn’t as though he had a frame of reference for preparing them.
“No slow cookers, and when I bake, I use the same ingredients as anyone else, purchased from a store like a regular person. When it comes to feeding, specifically, I consume their corruption - the evil a person has done and the darkness they spread leaves a permanent mark in their life energy, and it is that energy that feeds me. Think of it like an energy vampire, if that helps.”
There are vampires, too? Ethan made a note to ask more about them later.
Rook’s voice dropped. “There are four of us in Madison, and we all hunt predators, traffickers, and murderers - basically anyone who corrupts the natural balance in a community. We remove them.”
Ethan wrote quickly. “So at the core of who you are, you’re basically vigilantes with a supernatural metabolism.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Why Madison specifically?”
