Page 1 of Monsters' Manor

1

The sound of screaming fills the October night.

Up the sloped lawn leading to a forbidding three-story Gothic manor, wending its way around the colorful tents of the night market, weaving in and out of the largest corn maze west of the Mississippi.

Luckily, it’s the fun kind of screaming.

Peals of thrilled laughter, shrieks of delighted fright, and shouts of surprise echo all around the grounds of Edgar’s Acres.

In the pink and orange twilight, most of the night’s guests are just beginning to file in. The crowd is thick as I dart around groups of friends and couples on dates, dodging solo thrill seekers and teenagers pretending to be braver than they are.

And this is still early in the season.

By Samhain, the crowds will have doubled, if not tripled. Guests from hundreds or thousands of miles away will flock to one of the country’s most notorious full-service haunted experiences.

The magick in the air is contagious—dark and stirring and edged with an effervescent thrill. It’s no wonder why so many come so far to see it for themselves.

Not that I have the time or inclination to appreciate it. I’ve got five minutes until I’m supposed to be at work, and one supremely irritating demon hellbent on making me late.

“Wait up, Rosie.”

No one calls me Rosie. It’s Rose. Or Rosemary. I don’t do cutesy nicknames.

“No,” I snap at him without breaking my stride. “I don’t have time to talk.”

At five minutes to six, the line of waiting guests is starting to really stack up, and I’m sure the harpy I work with in the ticket booth is already annoyed I’m not there.

“Yes, you do,” Renwick—the supremely irritating demon—tells me, smug as shit. “You’ve got a few minutes before your shift, and Odelia wanted me to talk to you.”

I fight a flinch and keep walking. Of course she did.

“She wants you to train with me.”

Of course she does.

“Not interested.”

It’s been my answer for the last two weeks, since the day I arrived on my aunt Odelia’s doorstep. At some point I know she’s going to stop asking and start demanding, but I hope today isn’t that day.

“Come on, Rosie,” Renwick goads. “I’d be gentle with you. We’d take it nice and easy, warm up all that magick you’ve been neglecting before we—”

Just the mention of my magick is enough to send a wave of icy fear down my spine.

I whirl around to face him, only to find myself a few short inches away from a very firm, very bare chest.

Renwick’s maroon skin stretches taut over bulging pecs, broad shoulders, and biceps the size of tree trunks. He’s got abs on abs on abs that dip into a deep vee of muscle straining over the top of the skin-tight black leather pants he’s wearing.

It’s just one more thing I can’t stand about this demon. He’s attractive as hell, and he knows it.

When I drag my attention away from all that skin and meet his gaze again, Renwick’s crimson eyes are glowing with laughter.

Those satanic eyes aren’t even the most monstrous part of him. His head is crowned with a pair of huge, ram-like horns that curl over the back of his skull, and his face is all chiseled angles and strong jaw and sinfully full lips, more brutally beautiful than any human man I’ve ever met.

He’s also got a tail, and honest-to-Goddesstail, flicking back and forth behind him.

But no matter how handsome he is, I’m not about to back down and give him what he wants.

“I said no.”

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