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Still, I don’t know how it got inside the house.

Straightening, I look around the hallway, then make my way downstairs, the cat on my heels. Nothing seems out of place. The front door is closed and we’re definitely alone. I rub at my tired eyes. It must have followed me in earlier when I came home, and I somehow missed it. Between my moping, caring for the farm animals, the mounds of emails about Pops’ estate, the ever-growing list of repairs this place needs and the bakery, I’m running on fumes. It’s possible I was too preoccupied to notice a cat on my heels.

Only you know you would have noticed.

I shake away the errand thought. There is no other way this little ball of fur could have got into the house. The cat stops at the kitchen door, hissing into the darkness, its hair standing on end. Tentatively, I step up behind it and flick on the lights. “There’s nothing there,” I say to the cat, who is still puffed up in a protective stance. The window is slightly ajar, which is how I guess it got in. I walk over and shut it firmly. “I’ll call the vet tomorrow and see if we can find your owner.” The cat refuses to step further into the kitchen, so I walk over to it and scoop it up. It nudges my chin with the top of its head.

I carry it into the lounge, stopping to look out of the front window to where the barn is. The night is dark, but the moon is high and I can see that the barn doors are closed and everything outside is still, as it should be.

To my left, stands the lighthouse – stark and imposing against a dark blue sky. I move my eyes over it – from its weather battered base, to the old wooden door facing the farmhouse. And then further up to the window of the small bedroom.

I freeze, my breath catching and my arm tightening around the cat, who moans and claws at me. There is something green glowing in the old empty bedroom. I haven’t been in there since Pops died and I know he’d locked it up for the summer, the week before the accident. It’s not my favourite place on the farm – ever since I started visiting Newbridge when I was ten, I’ve been a little creeped out by it. It’s dark and cold, and sounds echo inside. Now that Pops is gone though, I know I’ll have to go in eventually, but for now, it’s locked and secure. Or at least I thought it was.

Resting my forehead on the cool glass, I narrow my eyes to get a better look, but I’m too far away to make out the source. I stare at it, not blinking, watching as the strange glow moves like a candle flickering in a breeze.

“What’s going on out there?” I mutter, looking to the right of the lighthouse and searching for some sign that there’s someone here. A car or a bike, maybe. But I find nothing out of place and when I look back up, the room is once again in darkness.

“Urgh,” I groan. First something in the shadows, now strange dancing lights? “I’m so fucking tired.” I put the cat down, then flop onto the sofa, rubbing a hand over my face. My eyes are gritty, and my throat is dry. I haven’t slept well in the two weeks since Pops died and I think it’s finally all getting to me.

FIVE

STERLING

Pacing the small room, back and forth, I stretch out my human limbs. I haven’t spent much time in this form, so the sensations take me a while to get used to, the shift much slower than it should be. I’ve lived around humans for hundreds of years, picking up their speech and their behaviours and building an understanding of how they think, and act, but I’ve preferred to do it from a distance and out of sight.

I’ve swum oceans and seas, and walked fields, forests and shorelines of the United Kingdom, but not usually looking like this.

I glimpse myself in the long, dusty mirror on the wall of the room located halfway up the lighthouse. I’m wearing a pair of jeans I ‘borrowed’ from someone’s washing line, but my chest is bare, my scales hidden beneath human flesh and hair. My eyes glow, green and bright, like precious gems, and when I run my tongue over my teeth, I feel the sharp edge of my pointed canines. They’ll have to shift too if I plan to engage with the humans in Newbridge.

Which I am planning to do. If only so I can get closer to my human – the boy who consumes my every waking thought.

Not that I haven’t been close to him. I have, but I’ve kept to the shadows. Watching, listening, scenting his delicious aroma as he moves from one part of the farm to another. Or as he sleeps restlessly in his bed, his shirt riding up to reveal smooth, pale flesh that I am aching to mark the way I did his palm that day on the beach.

The reminder makes me purr – the way he’d reeked of fear, the way he bled so easily when I pulled my claw over his delicate skin. I couldn’t resist. The pull to him was too strong, my primal instinct to take and keep overwhelming in intensity.

I’d pulled him from the water and laid him on the sand, and nothing could stop me from tasting his intoxicating scent. Pressing my nose to his skin and just breathing. The cut on his palm had been instinctual, a small reminder that he is mine. And now, I feast on him from the shadows, watching him sleep, following him around the farm, waiting for the right time to make myself known.

He nearly caught me earlier tonight when I crept into the house. I should have waited for the lights to go out, for Caspian to fall asleep, but I was impatient, wanting to sniff him, to run my nose along the expanse of his neck and feel the heat of his body against my scales.

But as I climbed the stairs and made my way down the corridor, I sensed him shift, my movements not as silent as I’d hoped. His fear had been so potent and I could barely breathe with how thick my desire was.

There were other scents in the house too though – a feline creature and then something I didn’t recognise. Earthy and rich like rain on hot soil, but I couldn’t see anything that looked like it didn’t belong. Then Caspian started descending the stairs and I darted into the kitchen and out the back door before he could catch me.

Now it’s morning, and soon he will wake and make his way to work, and then tonight I’ll see him again. My hand twitches at my side and I extend my claw, digging it into my palm, the same way I dug it into his the night of the accident. I wonder if he thinks of me when he sees the scar. Does he think of how I saved him? I wonder if he closes his eyes and I’m there in his dreams, like he is in mine.

A shadow falls across the room, and I flick my attention out the window to the sky. There’s a dark cloud hovering above the farm – only it looks more like a swarm of locusts than a cloud. Opening the window, I sniff the air, trying to discern its scent. It’s not human, but earthy. Unusual and foreign. Interesting.

Shifting my eyes into my wolf-form, I get a closer look, frowning when it fades in and out before it swiftly glides away from the farm and towards the village. Not for the first time, I get this feeling that I’m not the only supernatural being in Newbridge Cove, and quite possibly, not the only one watching the boy.

SIX

CASPIAN

I’m exhausted when I wake up a few hours later, my neck aching from the awkward way I fell asleep sprawled on the sofa. The room is silent save for the purr of the stray cat curled up on my lap.

I rub its back, and it stretches out, its front claws kneading my stomach.

“Ouch,” I grumble, then gently nudge it off my lap. I stand and stretch, then trudge to the back door where I pull on my wellies.