Every wall was covered in old paintings of every style that my dad had tried to master. He was a lover of any and all kinds of art, whether it be oil on canvas, charcoal sketches, clay sculpting, watercolor, or mosaics. He did it all in this room as a testament to his talents. As I shut the door behind me, watching as both of my shadows slipped right through the wooden door as if it weren’t there at all, I had to swallow the thick lump in my throat, remembering all the hours that I would sit in this room, painting with my dad and listening to his dad rock music or horror podcasts.
I didn't have an eye for painting like he did, or an ear for music like my mom, but I still showed up every weekend to paint with him because it was our thing, something that only the two of us enjoyed with no one around to bother us. Tears welled up in my eyes as the memories flooded back—laughing over spilled paint brushes, debating about color choices for hours on end. Then one day, he was gone. No warning, no goodbye, just…gone.
“Sometimes, humans do surprise me,” Cilas said from across the room. Blinking out of my nostalgic daydream, I watched him make his way around the studio, inspecting each and every piece of art on the walls, tendrils of black smoke trailing behind him.
“How so?” I joined him next to the tall bay window that I used to nap on. I sat on the old dusty cushion with my back to the wall.
He cocked his head at one of the largest canvasses. This one was a simple white canvas splattered with grays and blacks until it formed the shape of an abstract face. The mouth was open in a silent scream. “This one’s my favorite, I think.”
I snorted, shaking my head. “Of course it is. My dad went through a small depressive episode after grandpa passed away when I was twelve. He painted that on the day of the funeral. Mom never liked it and told him he should have put it away in the attic, but he wouldn't listen.”
“Good. He was right to be proud of it. A masterpiece like this deserves to be seen.” Cyn joined his brother, both of them admiring the painting.
My heart sank again, and I sighed, leaning back against the window. “Not much good it’ll do now. Nobody ever comes here anymore, so who’s going to see it, ghosts?”
Both of them chuckled as they turned, coming towards me with their movements totally in sync with each other. “Ghosts aren’t real, silly girl.” Cyn crawled up the wall like he was a freaking spider, using all four of his arms to creep up slowly as I followed him with my eyes.
I frowned. “What the fuck do you mean ghosts aren’t real? I live in a house full of monsters…” If any house in the world was going to be haunted, it was definitely this one, so obviously, he was wrong. Only I probably would have preferred for it to be haunted by the ghosts of the ones who’d actually died here.
Cilas placed a finger under my chin and guided my eyes up to his as he knelt before me. “We’re not ghosts though, are we? We might be shadows, but we have flesh and bone. I’m alive as much as you are.”
“I thought you were some kind of demon or something.” My cheeks heated. I didn’t even know if I actually believed in demons, not in the biblical sense anyway. I wasn’t religious, not in the slightest, so I supposed I’d never really thought about it.
He shrugged, which was so human-like. “Not quite, but you’re not far off. We are what we are, I suppose. You’re a mortal human because you were born to another mortal human. Kazimir is a creature of the waters because that is how he was created. Cyn and I are the same, two souls bound forever as one, who wander the world in search of sustenance, but it doesn't make us any less real, does it?”
After crawling off of the wall, Cyn scooted in behind me until he was sinking down to the cushion and pulling me into his lap.Sneaky bastard.I shook my head with a small smile. The tickle of his shadows felt nice on my skin, but there was warmth there under the touch of his palms as he skimmed them up and down my arms. He was as solid as I was.
“So no ghosts, huh?” I was surprised, honestly. “I wish I could say it was a relief, but it just made me realize how much danger I’m actually in right now.”
“Oh, but you like danger, don’t you?” Cyn asked. He ran his claws through my hair gently, brushing out my tangled strands. When he touched me this softly, it definitely gave me some mixed emotions. For a creature that was one hundred percent going to kill me in the near future, he was very careful with me.
I grinned to myself, and when I looked up, I found Cilas' eyes drinking me in as he, too, lounged against the wall of the bay windows. The position was such a casual humanlike thing to do that I wanted to laugh at the absurdity.
“Sometimes, danger is the only thing that gets me going.” I sighed deeply, letting my eyes fall closed at the feel of his nails scratching lightly down my skull. “It’s why I came back here after all these years. When I got the call that my aunt Sarah was dead and the house was mine, I got the craziest urge to come back and fucking destroy it.”
“We noticed,” Cyn murmured into my hair with a small laugh. “You’ve done a marvelous job on the sitting room already. I think your human friends agreed.”
I snorted, my cheeks heating at the memory. “That was shitty of me. I mean, I'd do it again in a fucking heartbeat, but still, poor Ashley probably went back to the office, gossiping to the whole town about the crazy lady in the Cooper house.”
“We could have eaten her and saved you the trouble,” Cilas suggested casually.
I glanced at him with a raised brow, knowing full well he was completely serious. “And then have a murder investigation at my doorstep? Yeah, no thanks.”
“We could eat the townspeople too. It wouldn’t be any trouble,” said Cyn, just as serious as his brother. In fact, Cilas’ eyes were wide with excitement at the prospect, and he licked his lips slowly. My eyes dipped to his tongue, and something in my belly flipped.
He leaned forward and cupped my cheek. My breath caught in my throat as his lips pressed to mine so sensually that I groaned. “Let me take your suffering, sad one. I won't take it all, but I promise you’ll feel much better in the morning.”
I blinked at him, my gaze bouncing between his eyes and his lips, wanting more and more. I wanted to pounce on him and beg him to fuck me. I wanted him to make me hurt so that I could forget about the pain of this room and the memories it held.
“Don’t think about it, just let us take it,” said Cilas. They both converged on me, Cyn wrapping his four arms around me and pulling me against his chest until I was nestled comfortably against his shadows.
Cilas was on his knees now, crawling over the top of me until I was staring directly into his eyes. He cupped my face again, running a claw down my cheek. “Close those eyes, sad one. It’ll be over soon.”
Something wet hit my cheek a second later, and I realized that I was crying again. Shame swept through me—shame and embarrassment. So instead of arguing, I did what he said and closed my eyes, just as his mouth full of sharp teeth began to open wide, and a tendril of undulating white mist began to flow from me to him.
* * *
My eyes wereheavy as I tried to blink away the sleep from them. It was odd, because I didn’t remember falling asleep. The last thing I could recall was sitting on the window seat in the studio while Cyn ran his fingers through my hair.