"Chris," Roshan said.
I stopped, frozen by the quiet gravity of his voice. "Yes?"
"I need to tell you something. Actually, it might be easier just to show you."
What else could he possibly show me? I'd already seen most of his amazing home and both gardens. "Sure, anything."
Roshan hesitated. "Maybe you should turn around."
I did as he asked, though I wondered what the point was. "I'm not peeking."
"Good," he said with a chuckle. "Just give me a moment..."
I heard a strange sound behind me, one I couldn't describe. Curiosity nagged me to look over my shoulder but I controlled it.
The hairs on the back of my neck tingled. Suddenly it felt like there was something big behind me. But that wasn't possible, unless Roshan had pulled a huge dog out of thin air. My curiosity intensified.
"Can I look?" I asked, unable to hold back.
"Yes."
It was definitely Roshan's voice, but it came out in a deep rumble that I felt in my bones. I shuddered. What was going on?
I turned around and came face-to-face with one of Roshan's manticore statues.
Except it wasn't a statue. It was a real living, breathing creature.
I sucked in a breath. The huge beast had a lion's head and mane, but with sharper teeth and a lot more of them. Bat-like wings sprouted from its powerful shoulder blades, their black leather catching the glow from the garden's floor lights. On the creature's back end was a curled segmented tail that ended in a bulbous barb, just like a scorpion.
Oh yeah, and Roshan had disappeared.
But when I took a closer look at the manticore's face, its eyes were intensely familiar. They were pitch-black and deep as pits. They werehiseyes.
I gasped. "Roshan?"
"You're looking at him."
Yup, that was definitely Roshan's voice coming out of the manticore, though it was rumbly and deep.
My brain realigned as it took in all this new information. A minute ago, I'd been standing on the rooftop garden with my friend-slash-employee-slash-something.And now he was gone, replaced by a mythical creature that, according to the whole world, wasn't even supposed to exist.
"Are you... a shifter?" I asked.
It was like asking someone if they were a fairy or a dragon or something equally made-up. Hell, if manticores were real, who was to say fairies and dragons weren't, either?
"Hit the nail on the head," Roshan growled happily. "You're not scared, are you?"
For some reason, I wasn't. Maybe my sense of self-preservation was broken. Or maybe I trusted Roshan too deeply to hurt me.
"No," I said honestly. "I'm a little surprised, sure, but not scared."
Roshan tilted his head and parted his jaws, revealing his rows of sharp teeth. "Not even a little bit?"
I gazed into his mouth and said, "Nope."
Roshan laughed, the sound somewhere between human laughter and a lion's roar with a snake hiss thrown in there for good measure.
"You really are special, Chris," Roshan said. He stepped closer, his claws scraping the tiles. Each one was as long as my hand. "You meet a man-eating, venomous beast and feel no fear."
