“Guess I was the last person to know.” I try to sound casual, but I’m still a tad pissed with Jax for giving me zero notice. Nothing unusual there.
“You settling in okay so far?” Silas asks politely.
I shrug airily. “Tiny little wobble yesterday, one of your creepy crawlies took me by surprise in the bathroom.” I can’t help thinking of the way Otis “comforted” me and how much I enjoyed it.
“Octomopede,” Otis murmurs.
“Ah, yes.” Silas smiles. He flicks back his thick, iridescent hair and I realize it is reminiscent of feathers. I wonder what he looks like in full raven mode.
Monster species are totally fascinating, but Otis is undoubtedly the one that has myfullattention.
Especially as he speaks in his throaty rumble, which manages to thrum delightfully between my legs. “It’s good that you’re here, Silas, because you’ll be better at giving Clem a rundown of the Vault.”
“Sure.” Silas inclines his head, pushes his glasses up his nose. “Why don’t I show you around and explain as we go.”
A few minutes later my mouth drops open as Silas unlocks a door that opens onto a vast room hewn out of the rocks.
Gentle light falls on glass showcases.
All manner of objects are on display. Beautiful pots that look very ancient, a painting of a smiling human woman with her hands crossed across her lap. Bits of canvas are falling off it in places. The painting looks really, really old.
“Who is she?” I ask, rapt by her enigmatic smile.
Silas gives a little shrug. “Nobody knows for sure. But we found a book about human artworks from before the apocalypse, and this painting is calledThe Mona Lisa.”
I move from case to case, gawking. There is jewelry and articles of clothing, there’s a statue with no head and only one arm. One cabinet contains all kinds of bent and twisted signs made from metal. I read the wording out. “Fifth Avenue.” Another says, “Broadway.”
“What was Broadway? Does anyone know?”
“We’re not sure, but we think it was a place where the humans went to be entertained. We’ve found old papers with pictures and information about events, called plays.”
“Oh, yeah, well, we’re still really good at the entertainment stuff. In fact, that’s all we do up in Sparkle. Work and get entertained,” I huff. “It’s totally boring, to be honest.”
In another cabinet are metal devices, I recognise as being similar to Otis’s computer things, all different sizes. Some are so small they would fit into your hand. “What are these?” I ask.
Silas takes one out and gives it to me. It fits into my palm, a spider’s web of cracks across the glass screen.
“They called these cell phones,” Silas says.
“Why cell?”
“From what we can gather, they divided the communication into different geographical areas, which they called cells, and shared information through towers,” Otis chips in. “They didn’t have proper telephones, just these things in their hands the whole time.”
“Why are there so many of them?” I ask.
“Before the apocalypse, we believe nearly everyone had one. As well as computers like I have at home.”
“Everyone?! Wow, they must have been very connected.”
“They were. So much so that when it all fell apart, they were completely fucked.”
I look up at Otis, full of admiration that he’s been able to work this out.
“Heck, that’s scary. Where were the monsters in those days?”
“We were hidden deep in mountain caves and wild remote places that no humans even knew existed. The apocalypse left us free to move around Earth. It also freed the warlocks and witches that had also been hiding for fear of discrimination.”
“So there really was magic, even then?”
