“The left one curves slightly more than the right,” he says.
I look closer.He’s right.He’s always right about the symmetry.I make a note.“Good catch.”
“You’ll fix it tonight?”
“Tomorrow.”I save the file and swivel my chair to face him properly.
He looks the way he always looks in my apartment: slightly too large for the furniture, slightly too vivid for ordinary light, like a painting hung in the wrong room.Before the bond, he couldn’t have been here at all and would have dissolved the moment he crossed the veil.Now he follows me between worlds as easily as breathing.It still feels like a miracle how this ancient creature from the deep is actually here.
I grin.“The pre-orders for the new Kraken line are up forty percent this quarter.”
He looks amused.“Is that so?”
“Forty percent, Theron.I’ve had to take on two new manufacturers.”
“Mm.”He reaches out, and one tentacle curls loosely around my wrist.“No need to be surprised.You’re talented, Lilith.”
“Maybe, but I find it extraordinary.”I turn my hand over so he can see the blue light still tracing my veins, steady and permanent now, like it was always part of me.“I spent years designing toys without knowing monsters were real.Now I know, and somehow the sales just keep going up.”
“Your customers have excellent taste.”
“They really do.”
I turn back to my laptop to send one more email but find something else waiting in my inbox.A customer message forwarded from theMonstrous Designscontact form.The subject line reads:You probably won’t believe this, but…
I open it.The email is from a girl named Margot.She boughtThe Kraken’s Claim,which is one of my older designs and one of my favorites.She says she met a creature named Abyrion and spent a night with him that changed everything.Margot lets me know that the toy is shockingly, uncannily, impossibly accurate, and she wonders how I pulled it off.She also writes that I’ll probably think she’s insane and realizes how weird it sounds, but she wanted to tell me anyway.
I don’t doubt her for one second.I’m living proof that monsters are real.
“What is it?”Theron asks, reading over my shoulder the way he always does, and which I have entirely given up objecting to.
“A customer.”I tilt the screen toward him.“She met a Kraken.”
“Abyrion,” he says, with the tone of someone who is not remotely surprised.“He’s been restless for decades.”
“You know him?”
“On some level.You should write back.”
“I will tomorrow.I want tonight to be about us, Theron.”
I close the email, already composing my reply in my head.I’ll tell her I believe every word because I do.
I’m about to get up when my phone buzzes on the desk.It’s May.
Random question.Do you think Minotaurs are real?
I immediately type back.
I do.So are bars that appear out of nowhere.Go back there!
A few seconds later, she texts back.
Maybe I will, but the horns are enormous.
I grin.
Imagine what his dick will be like then!
