“But other than that, yeah, you’re pretty much right. Once you become a supernatural being or creature, and you accept that’s what you are, you will see things humans either won’t or can’t. And that will either be because certain stuff will now just be visible to you, or other beings and creatures will drop their wards and hiding methods now that they know you’re safe.”
“So that’s why things didn’t appear to me before. Because I hadn’t accepted it,” she said, almost to herself. Though, bless him, he answered anyway.
“Pretty much, yeah. Though I think you were already starting to see, once you were back in this house. You must have been, because usually things don’t go the way they did in the basement around humans. It can happen. I can turn—but it’s never clear to them what’s really going on. I just look sick and maybe stuff gets destroyed and then in the paper the next day someone says I must have hulked out on some new super drug. Or maybe they forget entirely, and blame massive, rabid raccoons,” he said, after which she tried not to gape.
“So supernatural events can, like, warp someone’s perception?”
“They can warp a human’s perception, yeah. Anything else—cobble, witch, being, creature—no.”
“And this isn’t just because Hollow Brook is on some kind ofStranger Thingsupside-down kind of deal, right? Like, it’s everywhere. All over the world. This whole time everything just living alongside humans and looking like something other than what it is?” she asked, then regretted putting it so ridiculously. She sounded ridiculous, she was sure.
But he just nodded. Henodded.
Jesus, she thought.That is some next-level power. Though she couldn’t focus on that right at this moment. She had to focus on the other issue with all of this. “And now I’m going to get it full in the face. All the time. Constantly.”
“Probably. Though you don’t have to be scared. Most things aren’t going to chase you up the stairs and then try to eat your foot,” he said—a little sheepishly, it seemed to her. Like he thought that was the thing that had troubled her. Instead of everything else being the actual culprit.
“Okay. Okay, but could you maybe list the things that might possibly?”
“Well, I guess trolls can be kind of aggressive. But only if you cross the bridges they live under without their permission. They might, like, make you answer a riddle if they catch you. Oh, and I know gargoyles don’t really like witches. I think at one point there was some kind of feud between them—but even that you don’t really have to worry about. They mostly make themselves stone ornaments on buildings and then stay like that for centuries. They aren’t likely to be around Hollow Brook,” he explained, slow enough that she could scribble the main points down.
Might need to learn the answers to some riddles, she wrote. Then she jotted down the thing about gargoyles, with an instruction to stay away from old, fancy buildings. In fact, she went further. She started noting down other questions she wanted to ask, and things she wanted to google, and had almost filled a page and started on a new one when she realized.…
He had gone quiet. Very quiet. Like in the middle of his rambling, he’d run up against something he thought it might be a bad idea to say. So she cocked an eyebrow at him. “Anything else?” she asked. And he quite obviously squirmed in response.
“Um, not that I can think of.”
“Okay, but you’re totally lying.”
“Honestly, I’m not. That’s truly it.”
“If I get murdered by whatever it is, you’re gonna really regret saying that.”
That got him. She could see it did the second she said “murder.” He sort of went all stiff, like he was thinking about such a thing happening. Before he finally shook his head, as if he’d reassured himself it wouldn’t. Then went to reassure her about it, too. “Demons don’t murder anyone. They just maybe try to drag you to hell,” he said.
Only there was absolutely nothing reassuring about thatat all.
“Yeah, but that’s massively worse. You see that this is worse, right?”
“I do, but in my defense they almost never come to this plane of reality.”
“Seth, I don’t care how often they visit. I care that hell is apparentlyreal.”
“Well, yeah, of course it is. I mean, I don’t think it’s like in re ligious fables with the pits of fire and the red devil-looking things pricking your butt with pitchforks. But you know. It does exist in some form,” he said. And had the nerve to do it in this scoffing, why on earth are you so shocked about it kind of way. As ifshewere being the weird one here.
When obviously it was him.
Did he not know it was him?
“Right,” she said. “And you get what that means.”
“Yes, sure, absolutely I do.”
“But you’re still calm about that.”
“Well, why wouldn’t I be?” he said, laughing.
As if he genuinely did not get it. He didn’t know.
