Page 40 of Nightmares and Numerology

“I can’t see anything,” I admitted, even as I watched myself settle into the driver’s side.

“It’s coming,” Taliyah said. “It took me a while to spot it.” Then she looked at Roland. “Was it the third or fourth viewing?”

“Fourth,” Roland answered. “And it’s pretty subtle. You have to be looking specifically to see.”

“See what?” I asked, unable to stop a little growl from seeping into my words. I wanted to know whose teeth I needed to knock loose. It seemed only fair since they’d bashed my head in, stolen my reserves, and put me in the doghouse where Lydia was concerned.

Rodney jabbed a finger at the screen. “There.”

I still didn’t spot what he was getting at. I winced when the bottle burst in a spray of glass and sticky liquid. It had been a pain to scrub all of it off. I was shown the attack another few times before I could see what they were pointing out. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the flicker of light as something hazy settled on top of the light pole. I had just a moment to see leathery wings fold against the back of a female figure before the shape blended once more with the night sky. Magic. A flying monster with enough power to shift its form and remainessentially invisible, even to the most observant of demons. Granted, I’d been preoccupied, but I’d known it hadn’t been a human that attacked me.

What looked like a gleaming rope of intestines flickered into being above my vehicle, swaying in the breeze. To a human eye, it wouldn’t have been visible. Even to Tally and my keen senses, it was barely noticeable.

“What is that?” Roland asked. “Rope?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was looking at grayish intestines. Some things were better left unsaid.

A second, longer appendage pooled next to the intestines that had lowered to the ground, coiling like snakes beneath the figure.

“That is a tongue,” I said, trying to keep my tone deadpan. I wasn’t sure I succeeded. “I was right. Whatever attacked me also fed. They probably cut me with glass and shoved the tongue in to take what it could.”

The thought made me vaguely ill. I’d taken energy from women through little touches: a brush of fingers, the caress of lips. No one I’d fed on had asked me to do so first. I’d certainly never knocked anyone unconscious and had my way with them. But that was exactly what the creature had done to me—shoved its tongue through my flesh and taken something important from inside me.

“Do you know what that is?” Taliyah asked, mercifully pausing the video before a tongue darted through the window to embed itself like a Capri Sun straw in my skin.

“No,” I admitted. “I’m not like Fifi—I don’t do the kind of research she does on monsters. She wants to make all of them feel welcome and see to their needs. I don’t really care. Although, after seeing that thing, it might not even meet the standard for being in a Hollow.”

“Standard?” Roland repeated.

I nodded at him. “There are dangers we have to consider that other Hollows don’t. Anything that views humans as prey and feeds in an involuntary or painful manner can’t come here.”

“Can you call your sister?” Taliyah asked me.

“And interrupt the celebratory sex she and Roy are no doubt having?” I responded, shaking my head. “No, thank you. I don’t need to hear the house-shaking routine they do every time. She’s engaged, and if our parents have anything to do with it, they’ll have her undergoing rituals back home to get her pregnant soon. I’ll let them have their fun before kids come along.”

Taliyah looked torn between amusement and irritation. “Is there anyone in town who might know more about predatory monsters than you do?”

I did. There was a witch’s son and prolific monster hunter in town. He lived only a few blocks from Lydia, in fact, he was always making moon eyes at her. Anthony Boline wanted Indigo, but that didn’t stop me from feeling irritated every time he glanced Lydia’s way. It was Lydia’s body, not Indigo’s. He had to accept that, or we were going to have problems.

I sighed and pulled my phone out of my pocket, putting it on speakerphone. I didn’t like having to turn to the arrogant son of a bitch, but I had his number, anyway. He was Lydia’s assigned protector. He’d take the call, just in case it had something to do with her.

Sure enough, he answered on the second ring with a crisp, “Anthony Boline speaking.”

“Angelo Stedham,” I shot back. “I need to ask you a question.”

He let out a mirthless chuckle. “And I doubt there’s any way I can prevent you. This ought to be good.”

“I was attacked yesterday. We’re reviewing the footage now, and we’re seeing a winged creature with an abnormally long tongue and... erm... intestines, I think. It’s hard to tell with thefootage being this grainy.”

Anthony sucked in air through his teeth, sounding more shocked than I’d ever heard him. As the bounty-hunting son of a high witch and monster killer, he’d witnessed some of the worst things our world had to offer. If he sounded shocked or distressed, it was my cue to wade in swinging. I wouldn’t like the results if I didn’t act proactively to defend myself from a threat he obviously feared. His voice was sharper, more urgent than it had been just a moment before.

“Where are you? Is Lydia there?” he asked.

“No. She ran into her useless ex, who had the gall to pass out on her. She called an ambulance. I would have slathered him in honey and rolled him into an anthill, personally.”

“What did he look like before he passed out?” Anthony pressed. “Sick? Unfocused? Confused? Too pale?”

“Exactly like that,” I answered. “Are you saying whatever attacked me also attacked Rodney?”

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