Then the woman opened her mouth, but all that came out was a pitiful squeak.
Heaving a sigh, I took a step back. I wasn’t used to humans that hadn’t been around monsters.
It had been twenty years since I settled into Port Haven, and all the humans here hardly even blinked at the supes they lived with.
“Effie,” I bellowed over my shoulder again as the tree nymph finally breezed down the stairs and into the room.
“Stop all your yelling,” she scolded, her green eyes flashing at me as she finished tying up her light green hair.
To the naked eye, Euphemia “Effie” Finch looked human. Thanks to her father being a warlock, she had human features that seemed to immediately put the strange woman in front of me at ease.
What the woman couldn’t see, though, was the bundled vines under the back of Effie’s shirt or the fact that the dark green freckles all over her arms and legs were actually sprouts that Effie systematically cut off every day. Those came from her tree nymph lineage on her mom’s side.
“How can I help you?” Effie asked, turning her full attention to the woman.
The woman’s mouth opened, and then closed again, like she was at a loss for words. Finally, she held up the flier we’d posted everywhere a few weeks ago.
“You’re looking for a job?” I rumbled with disbelief. How could a human who was so clearly scared of monsters get a job in a monster tattoo shop? It was fucking ridiculous.
Whiskey eyes shifted to my face again and she just nodded wordlessly.
Effie stepped forward, linking her arm through the woman’s. “You are my actual savior,” the nymph gushed, offering the woman her trademark megawatt smile.
It was clear that, in Effie’s book, anyone applying was a godsend. Especially seeing how much of a fucking disaster the desk was right now.
“What’s your name, sugar?” Effie asked, steering the woman down the hallway to the office.
I followed, more curious than anything, and was just close enough to hear the woman’s whispered “Daphne,” to Effie.
Just as I was about to follow them into the office when Effie whirled around to face me. “Not allowed,” she said, holding up a hand.
“Why not?” I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest. “Shouldn’t a second person sit in on the interview?”
Effie shook her head, her eyes narrowing at me. “Not when you look like a fucking thundercloud, Cash. Get your face in order and maybe I’ll let you talk to her.”
With that the door was slammed in my face, leaving me standing alone in the hallway.
I stood outside of the door for longer than I should have, feeling conflicted. It had been a long time since anyone was scared of me.
The last time had been before I settled in Port Haven fifty years ago.
It was easy to forget everything when you lived in a place like this, where monsters were free to be themselves and the humans living here had seen it all.
Shaking off my morose thoughts, I left the office behind and returned to my sketching. Unfortunately, all of my earlier inspiration seemed to have evaporated thanks to the arrival of the human.
With a frustrated growl, I tossed my iPad back down and decided to start working my way through some of my invoices instead. I’d been working on growing a social media following over the past year or so, selling rights to some of my art pieces and showing off my work.
Even though social media had been around for over twenty years, it still baffled me sometimes. Dallan loved it, relishing in doing lives and streaming his tattooing process.
I wasn’t there yet. I hated being on camera, the same age-old fear that the wrong eyes would see what I was always filling me.
My back ached at the mere thought of another gargoyle seeing that their favorite stone-skin tattoo artist was a Wingless.
No, I didn’t want that. So the only thing that was ever visible in my pictures or short videos were my hands and forearms.
Time may have made the human’s grow tolerant of monsters, but it had done nothing for me or any other Wingless. We were still just as shunned and ostracized as we had been when my father tore my wings from my back two hundred and fifty years ago.
The local gargoyle clan barely tolerated my presence as it was, though they rarely came into town anyway. They preferred to overlook my status in favor of what I could do for them.
