Page 8 of Monsters' Manor

“No, I don’t really need to rest. I mostly do it to make others more comfortable. I know it might be a bit unsettling to have a mass of shadows looming over your shoulder.”

“I don’t mind,” I assure him. “Whatever you prefer.”

A beat of silence before he responds. “Thank you, Rosemary. I appreciate that.”

His shadows unfurl slowly as he comes back to a standing, errhovering, position. As they do, I swear I can almost see him. There’s something a little more solid about him tonight. Every time I blink it shifts, and shifts again, but if I look hard enough there might almost be a face there.

Silas must notice how closely I’m watching him, because all his shadows pause as he lets out another soft laugh.

“Better?”

I’m about to apologize for gawking at him when I see it.

A face. Nearly human. Still a little distorted and hard to make out, but the idea is there.

So is the ghost of a smile, and I return it despite my lingering dark mood since the little incident in Mira’s booth.

“There you are,” I murmur, and the ghost of his smile grows even wider.

I still can’t tell exactly what he looks like, and there’s no detail in the swirl of his darkness that would let me know the color of his eyes or if the outline of slightly shaggy hair I can make out around the top of his head is blond or brown or black, but it’s still him.

“Here I am.”

The moment is still and strange, a charge of awareness passing between us. It breaks, though, when Silas shifts again. His features go hazy behind his shadows and he glides over to stand right next to me.

“What are you working on?”

“Nothing important,” I tell him with a shrug, going back to emptying the cash drawer. “Just closing things down for the evening.”

As soon as I finish sorting and stacking each bundle, it disappears, some enchantment over the booth whisking it away to wherever Odelia keeps her cash.

Silas watches silently as I finish the rest of it, and when I glance up he’s still again, that smile of his back on his face.

“And was the rest of your evening pleasant?”

Just like that, the small bubble of a good mood I’d been enjoying pops, and I let out a long, tired sigh.

“Not particularly.”

Between the scene with Mira and Renwick, Lara the harpy giving me all kinds of corrections on how I’m doing things in the booth—like taking tickets isthatcomplicated—and my growing certainty I’m not going to be able to dodge my aunt and her demands for much longer, I’m not having the best night.

Not that I need to dump all that on Silas. Here he is, being nice to me, just hanging out like he really does want to be my friend. The least I can do is suck it up and stop being such a bummer.

I’m about to say something else, backtrack, put on a happier face, when one of Silas’s shadows unfurls toward me. My breath hitches as it curls over my cheek, cups my jaw, whispering over my skin in a gentle caress.

“Your emotions seem turbulent tonight.” His shadow falls away and my breathing kicks back up.

“My emotions? You can… sense them?”

It’s not entirely unheard of. There are several species of monsters that can boast some sort of psychic or perceptive ability. I just didn’t know Silas was one.

“I can,” he says warily. “I’m sorry, I should have asked before I—”

“It’s alright. I mean, a little unexpected, but fine. Is it a shade thing?”

He lets out a low hum before he replies, thinking. “My kind—shades—we exist through our connection to the beings around us. In some ways it’s almost parasitic, I suppose, but the energy coming from you, from all the beings who work here at Edgar’s Acres and all the guests who come through, it keeps me tethered in absence of an anchor.”

“Tethered? An anchor?”

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