He laughed. The teeth caught in Cash’s memory—small, rounded, and creamy white. Baby teeth in a grown thing’s mouth. His flicker of disquiet came from his mom, and the bogeyman’s aura rustled in response. Tendrils of pallid gray shuffled toward him and picked at his… aura, although he couldn’t see his own.
Cash poked the monster out of its sleep. It reluctantly uncurled, and the dull ache of its hunger came with it. He’d need to grab someone real to eat, not just drink a full bottle of lust and hope it solved anything.
The bogeyman’s aura sagged in disappointment as it realized the mistake.
“Civility is one word for it,” he said. “Ellie’s doing well at camp. She missed her friends—”
That made the bogeyman’s eyes widen. Probably? That was Cash’s take, but he couldn’t pin down the actual expression.
“Human friends? She’s… popular?” he asked as he leaned in. “My boy couldn’t make a friend out of a corpse, popsicle sticks, and a free plug socket. Is there atrickto it?”
“I don’t know,” Cash said uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to being the one spoken to. Usually he was either behind a camera lens or, back when he’d come to these more often, at Arkady’s heels. One step up from a servant, one step down from someone who mattered. “I think she’s just a cool kid. She’s fun to be around.”
The bogeyman sighed and took a drink of whiskey. “That’s not going to work for Grub…. Greg.” He made a face. “Apologies. Your mother’s hospitality takes us all back to the old days. Sometimes it is hard to remember the new rules.”
It was. Donna had been known to use that to her advantage.
“If you keep them, no need to remember them,” Arkady said. His tone was mild, his words weren’t. “The Prodigium’s edict on names is not new.”
Despite the general impression of pallor, the bogey managed to blanch. “Of course,” he said. “It’s just a pet name for the boy. Not one the humans would understand, is all.”
“Not exactly wise,” Arkady remarked.
“Maybe he can come over for a playdate with Ellie sometime,” Cash said, before the bogeyman said anything worse. “I’d like her to have some friends who aren’t human, even if they can’t cut loose like they do at camp.”
The bogeyman’s spine straightened. “Oh yes, that would be… good for them both,” he said. “I’ll get my assistant to email you the boy’s schedule, but we can make it work whenever the child—Ellie—is free. So important for them, isn’t it, to make the right connections at this age?”
“She’ll mostly want to talk about horses and K-Pop, on past experience,” Cash said.
The bogeyman probably winked at him. “Thanks for the tip,” he said. “I’ll set him some homework on that tonight. Excuse me.”
He ducked away, and a faint dimness to the air and the smell of mold trailed behind him. Arkady snorted.
“Look at him,” he said. “He thinks his Grub is going to marry into the family now, thanks to you.”
Cash moved his plate out of reach of Arkady’s fingers. He wanted to eat some of it, and there would be plenty of bones for Arkady to crunch once the party got into full swing.
“Most monsters in Roanoke think she’s a liability.”
“Then they’re stupid,” Arkady said calmly. “Mother can’t use Ellie, so it’s possible to just love her. As much as she’s able, at least. If someone made Ellie happy, they would have Donna’s support in life.”
He plucked the plate out of Cash’s grip and handed it off to a servant on the way past.
“Hey,” Cash protested as he grabbed for the yakitori skewer on the way by. “I was going to eat that.”
Arkady tipped his head down and pressed a toothy kiss against Cash’s ear. “And once this is over, I’m going to eat you,” he said, his voice low with the sort of promise that could be dangerous. Just because he probably didn’t mean it literally, didn’t mean he couldn’tdoit literally. “Until then, we’ll both have to go hungry. Come on. The Hunt starts soon, and I want a dance.”
For a second, Cash resisted the tug of Arkady’s hand, old excuses and reasons tart on his tongue. Servants don’t dance with their masters, after all, but it had been years since he’d had a paycheck from them, so he supposed he could do what he wanted.
And that, more than he wanted to admit, was to follow Arkady out into the dizzy reel of velvet and scale that spun on the time-worn stone.
Let it be, he told his monster as he laced his fingers through Arkady’s.I know it’s pretend, so let it be.
For once, it listened to him, the sour little voice that refused to let him lie to himself quiet as they threw themselves into the crush. He clung onto Arkady, his freshly pierced nipple tender as it was pressed against the rich red brocade of Arkady’s frock coat, and he struggled against the feverish throb of the music.
It wanted him to spin and dip, breathless and mindless, until his feet were bloody and his heart ready to burst. To dance until the music stopped or he dropped, whichever came first, was fun at one of the monster-run clubs, when you were soaked with sweat and running on adrenaline until the musicians fumbled and faltered to a stop with bloody fingers and raw throats. In the halls of the Abascal, the musicians were made of bone and sinew, strung together by Donna’s will, and they’d play until she said stop.
There was already blood on the floor, a long smear of it where someone had been dragged out of the way. It stuck to the soles of the other dancers and picked out their footwork in damp, sticky prints on the stone.
