Page 21 of Claimed By the Mothman
The hum didn’t stop that night. Nor the next day. Not after chasing down book requests for nearly a dozen humans and cryptids who couldn’t quite remember the title they wanted, or maybe they did? Not after copious amounts of tea and red wine, not after a hot bath, and not even after frantic journaling.
It juststayed,beneath her skin and behind her teeth, buzzing low like a power line ready to arc. It wasn’t painful or annoying, but it made the rest of the world seem off-key, somehow.
Eventually, one evening, she went up to the garden. Greymarket’s rooftop garden was a half-wild wonder of raised beds and planters and trellises climbing toward a sky that looked significantly closer than it had downstairs. Someone had built a miniature shrine in the corner with broken teacups and melted votives. Someone else had labeled all the herbs in three languages, one of which appeared to be sigils that shimmered if you squinted.
She didn’t know what she was expecting. A distraction? A breeze? Something to hold in her hands that wasn’t a notebook full of dream fragments? All she knew was that she neededout—out of the apartment, out of the buzz, out of her own head for five minutes.
The garden was already half-busy in the gentle, non-intrusive way the Greymarket tenants did most things. Someone had set out a folding table covered in seed trays and hand-labeled popsicle sticks. Another tenant was gently weeding a bed of primroses, humming what sounded like Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Nell drew a deep breath. The air up here smelled like rosemary, damp brick, and tomato leaves.
“Hi there!” called a voice from the far end.
A woman in a fadedCamp Crystal LakeT-shirt and sturdy jeans waved cheerfully from behind a tall stack of mint. She looked vaguely familiar: tall, broad-shouldered, with a fire-red braid down her back and a trowel tucked into her belt like a dagger.
“You’re Nell, right?” she said, wiping her hands on a rag and walking over. “I read about you in theGazette. Welcome!”
“Oh,” Nell laughed, startled and flattered all at once. “Yeah. That was—Thess got a little creative with the phrasing.”
“They always do,” the woman said, rolling her eyes fondly. “I’m Catalina. 10B. If you ever want fresh pie or weird ghost stories, I’m your girl.”
Nell smiled. There seemed something deeply grounding and solid about Catalina, in the way good soil was solid. The kind of person who made you believe, without saying it outright, that everything could be sorted with baked goods and practical advice.
“That sounds delightful,” she said. “I despair at making pies. I can never get the crust to sit right.”
“Oh, honey, come by and I’ll give you a lesson,” Catalina said breezily, waving one hand like it was already on the calendar. “You settling in okay?”
“I think so. The apartment’s amazing. The building’s definitely got personality.”
Catalina snorted. “It’s gotmultiplepersonalities, but they’re all mostly well-behaved.”
They talked for a few minutes about herbs, the ridiculousness of the monthly potlucks (Nell took mental notes), and the fact that Mr. Caracas hadopinionsabout tomato varietals but never helped water anything. Catalina offered her a handful of lemon balm clippings and a cryptid-approved compost tip involving crushed amethyst and overripe strawberries.
For a while, Nell felt steady. The hum didn’t leave, exactly, but it faded to the background like the murmur of a dishwasher. She could almost pretend it was just her pulse if she didn’t listen too hard.
Eventually, Catalina nodded toward the far corner. “That raised bed down there’s mostly untended. Feel free to claim it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nell said, and meant it. Even though she wasn’t sure what to grow that would actually, well,grow.Maybe some flowers. The garden was overflowing with produce—tomatoes, kale, squash the size of small boats—but short on flora. That immediately sent her mind spinning with thoughts of beautiful, hand-crafted flower bouquets in Ball jars, arranged artfully on the tables at the next community potluck. Maybe she’d finally get to use that stamp kit she impulse-bought during the pandemic.
She and Catalina parted with a wave and the promise of a recipe exchange. Nell turned down a row of raised beds, her shirt sticking to her back, feeling almost normal with the heat and the scent of lavender and lemon balm in her nostrils.
She rounded the corner too fast and slammed into someone solid.
A hand shot out. Cool fingers curled around her elbow, steadying her.
The hum in her chestroared. It tore through her like a struck gong, vibrating out from that single point of contact and washing through her limbs, her spine, her scalp. Like her molecules were being rearranged into a new shape that hummed at exactly his frequency.
…hisfrequency?
She gasped. The hand dropped.
Nell looked up—and up—straight into the gleaming, ruby eyes of Sig Samora.
He blinked once, slowly. His wings fluttered gently, soft at the edges with a layer of fine, plush fuzz that made her fingers ache.
Don’t touch,she thought very clearly. Not polite. No.
And he…was wearing a gardening apron.
