1
CATHY
"Every dateyou've sent me on has been with a literal monster, hasn’t it?" I couldn't help my voice being loud and shrill. Anne Fortuna had matched me with monsters!
Two days ago, I was a normal, relatively happy freelance artist. I'd joined up with a dating service, which to that point in my life, to my knowledge,had been the most daring thing I'd ever done.
Now I'd realized the most daring thing I'd ever done was going on a date with a werewolf last month. That was one step too many if I was being entirely honest.
Anne sighed and nodded, her lips a thin line of disapproval as she worked her way through the files on her laptop. She was clearly still paying attention to me, but the fact that she wasn’t looking at me while she did it suggested she wasn’t happy with me. What, like it was my fault the men her algorithm selected for me weren’t human? "May I ask how you figured this out?"
I wasn't sure how deep my best friend Roma was into this monster stuff. At this point, with the knowledge I had at my disposal, I didn't want to get her involved or implicate her if I didn't have to. "Let's just say I encountered some, ah, paranormal activity at a friend's place recently. It made me take a closer look at my life and the first thing that popped to mind was my recent date with a werewolf."
Anne nodded, obviously understanding a little more than I'd said, but she didn't press for details. "Yes, the men I've sent you out with are all monsters of some kind or another. But that doesn't make them bad people, Cathy, really it doesn't. Just misunderstood."
"Maxwell nibbled my fingers, Anne. My fingers. And he kept looking at my throat." I shuddered delicately. "And I like a guy with chest hair as much as the next gal, but there were tufts of hair poking out of his neckline and his sleeves." At that point, I would've shaved it. I mean, come on. That was a little over the top. Though his gorgeous dark blue eyes had almost made up for it…
With a sympathetic smile, Anne nodded again. Her silver hair shone in the overhead light. "Yes, I know it can be rather alarming. But these men are just like you and me. They put their pants on one leg at a time."
I snorted. "One paw at a time."
How had we gotten here? Roma had been at her apartment with the guy Anne had set her up with. Bran. I hadn't been able to get a hold of her, so I'd gone to check and make sure she wasn't having one of her debilitating headaches.
And I'd seen Bran as he was. Hot, but not human- gray skin, silver hair like a mane, the facial proportions subtly off- his eyes too large, his jaw too heavy.
I’d sketched more than enough faces to know how they were structured. And I’d known his face wasn’t human, not by a long shot.
It'd all gone downhill after that revelation. I was now a woman obsessed with the paranormal. For two days, I'd combed the internet looking for proof of whatever Bran had been. Some kind of troll was the best I'd been able to come up with.
As much as I wanted to ask Anne what in the world Bran was, that would bring Roma into it. I had to go talk to my bestie next. I hadn't wanted to bring this to her until I was sure. Now that I had a real confession from Anne Fortuna, I could go to Roma and talk to her about her troll boyfriend.
"Were the others monsters too?" I rubbed my temple, beyond freaking out. This was going to give me some sort of mental break, I was sure of it.
Anne nodded, her lips in a tight line as she worked on the laptop. "They're all different kinds of monsters. Monsters wasn't the right word for them, though. It has such a negative connotation. They're people. They just look a little different."
"And act different. What was up with my second date, Nathan Cosby? I can't figure him out. He was very smooth. Handsome, put together. Suave, even, but it was all too much. He was a good listener and seemed captivated by me." I thought about the attention the man had given me and grimaced. "Too perfect. I wasn't a hundred percent sure he was a monster at all, but then the third date was off, too, so I figured it was likely all three of them. And Maxwell Green was definitely some sort of werecreature. Werewolf?"
Anne stacked papers on her desk and neatened already neat piles. It wasn’t hard to figure out that she was doing her best not to look at me. "Yes, Maxwell was a werewolf. They can be a little hairy, and they use their olfactory senses frequently."
"Ew, yeah, he kept sniffing me. What about the third guy, Louis? He was stocky and had a long beard. He gave me a freaking diamond necklace he said he'd mined himself. Who does that?"
"Ah." Anne pulled at her collar, clearly uncomfortable with me having figured all this out. "Louis is a dwarf. They—"
"I knew it!" I exclaimed. "The only reason I didn't ask you if he was a dwarf was because he was tall, taller than me, even. What about Rico Suave, number two? Nathan? Is he a vampire?"
"Nathan is a muse." She sniffed and arched an eyebrow. "Very human-like. I thought you'd get on with him, truly."
"A muse. What does that mean, should he have inspired me since I'm an artist?"
"Well, muses don't work the way the stories say, but I suppose he could inspire people. He has the ability to charm."
I leaned back in my chair. "How do muses work, then?"
"Muses, for a lack of a better verb, suck creativity out of people. Think of them as creative vampires. Instead of sucking your blood, they absorb your creativity. It feeds them."
My annoyance morphed into white-hot rage. "You set me up, an artist who depends on selling my paintings and other art to make a living, with a man who would take my creativity?"
She blinked several times, a chagrined expression flitting over her narrow face before saying, "Well, yes. That does seem to be a suboptimal pairing, doesn’t it? I wonder why the software didn't catch it."
