The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1)

by Casey Matthews

  There was also the fact that it wasn’t generally regarded as possible for Ryn to have thrown a grown man through drywall, insulation, a wooden beam, and out the other side.

  The hearing came at month’s end, the judge saying plenty of angry things to Albert Birch before dismissing the case against Ryn. The Rabble and Susan were divided, sent to different homes. Susan got one with all girls.

  Kessler and Ms. Cross both insisted Ryn find a school and live with Kessler, but she was legally allowed to drop out and live on her own, so she did. When they asked about supporting herself, she fetched one of Saxby’s gold bars, thumping it onto the table in Kessler’s apartment next to the butter dish.

  Ms. Cross folded her arms over her chest, eyes narrowed. “I want to know where you got that.”

  “You really don’t,” Kessler said.

  He exchanged the bar for a large sum of money, though Ms. Cross warned they wouldn’t exchange another for her unless she continued therapy. That rankled, but if someone had to sway her life, Ryn preferred it to be Ms. Cross. She was at least formidable.

  Her new home was near Dock Street in a 150-year-old structure called the Fairchild Building. Her top-floor room was a long, narrow chamber with towering ceilings, the space voluminous enough to echo. It had once housed a clothing factory and tall windows let in all the wonderful nighttime cold. Bathroom aside, it was a single, unpartitioned room with a balconied platform at one end overlooking the rest.

  It was infested with bed bugs, sporadic gunshots sounded from the neighborhood, holes opened the windows to whistling air, and the pipes leaked rust-red water. Ryn chose it over everyone’s objections, even the building owner’s, and it kept her busy: tossing out furniture, installing a steel door, replacing pipes and windows. At her presence, the bed bugs and other pests fled except for a single, gray rat.

  Since the rat was dust-colored, shy, and unobnoxious, she named it Susan II. It deserved the room, having lived there before Ryn, and it didn’t complain when she fed it crumbs or slivers of radish, often wedging itself into a cardboard toilet-paper roll beneath the radiator. Ryn imagined it kept the rat warm in the way its old colony had before its exile.

  While Ryn guessed Susan II missed its old home, she wondered if it could be lonely. Were cardboard and radiator good enough for a rat? They probably were. Envying Susan II, sometimes Ryn lay next to the radiator too and tried to feel as warm as she had when Naomi embraced her.

  Ms. Cross hated her space because she had to sit on the floor. Ticking off demands on her first visit, she made Ryn buy chairs, carpet, and a bed and kitchen table. “A bed is psychologically necessary, even if you never sleep,” the human explained. “It’s not just about sleep—it’s your private space; refuge, comfort, all those things. The kitchen table’s the opposite: it’s your public forum. You need a sanctum and a gathering place for loved ones. You understand?”

  “Yes.” Ryn waited to see if she was better at lying yet.

  “No,” Ms. Cross sighed. “You don’t. But buy them before my next visit anyway. I know you can afford them.” Patrolling the space with hands on hips, her brow furrowed. “What do you do in here all night and day?”

  “Watch the sun move.” At night, she guarded Naomi.

  “You need a hobby. A television. Books, maybe.”

  Humans were like this. Their short lives compelled them to fill every second or they despaired.

  She nonetheless obeyed Ms. Cross’s dictums, filling her room’s corners with stacks of books she found attractive in look, feel, or smell, positioning the kitchen table at an edge, always keeping floor space as wide open as possible. She bought a laptop but never used it—it kept Ms. Cross’s criticisms at bay, which was its only purpose. The bed had curtains, Ryn having taken to heart the words about privacy, and it was the only thing about her furnished room she liked.

  In May, Ryn moved from pipes and windows to the wall, smoothing its patches with stucco and replacing panels. The room felt more whole, and she appreciated the great, hollow, intact chamber.

  “You’re going to wallpaper, right?” Ms. Cross asked during their mid-May checkup.

  “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  Why would she?

  “The blankness doesn’t bother you? It’s so sterile.” When Ryn didn’t answer, Ms. Cross sighed. “You were making progress. Now, it’s like you’ve stopped trying. You don’t express yourself. Is it because of the fight with your friend?”

  “She was a mistake.”

  “Because she’s not interested in you?”

  “Because,” Ryn growled.

  Ms. Cross paused in her circuit around the room.

  Ryn’s hackles rose, sensing something was coming.

  “You’re afraid you’ll hurt her?” Ms. Cross asked at last.

  Trying to stare her down, Ryn wound up glaring at Ms. Cross’s back. “I fear nothing.”

  “Avoidance implies fear, Ryn. What do you fear?”

  Anger rising, Ryn spun and strode for the door.

  Without raising her voice, Ms. Cross spoke, somehow aware Ryn could hear her at any volume from any point in the apartment. “Have you apologized?”

  Turning back, Ryn bared her fangs. “Why?” Why do they insist I stoop and scrape like a mortal?

  “Do you want to know what I think?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.” Ms. Cross took a seat facing her, smiling now. “Naomi is the first thing you’ve loved and you hurt her. Badly. You did it by being true to your nature, but you’re guilty—and you’re afraid of guilt. You’re afraid she won’t forgive you, that she’ll reject you, but most of all, you’re afraid she can change you.”

  Ryn sneered at the blasphemous charges. “I am no more mutable than the constellations.”

  “Stars don’t feel. You never did either; not until this. You’re not in the unfeeling heavens anymore, poor girl.” It was hard to be sure, but Ms. Cross’s eyes seemed softer. “You’re trapped down here with us. That’s what you don’t see. Naomi? She’s already changed you.”

  The accusation rocked her. “Get out.”

  Ms. Cross lifted an eyebrow, but she stood and made her way out the door. Whispering from the other side—Ryn could still hear—she said, “You love her, you idiot.”

  Ryn activated her computer for the first time. A day later, she still couldn’t send messages on the damned thing, so she tracked Denise and strode up behind her when she was alone after school. “I will go camping with you. But,” she warned, “only because I wish to. And I will not grovel.” She gave her hardest stare and stalked away, burning from even that much.

  Denise made it no better by shouting after her, “Okay, pussycat.”

  The hot days of late May and early June burned off the calendar one by one, and she lay on Naomi’s hot rooftop never listening or scenting, just waiting for that fearful trip. It felt like the end of an era. She, a goddess, had to go before a mortal and beg forgiveness.

  Yet it spiked her pulse, sweetened her blood, because though she couldn’t imagine what would happen, she knew Naomi would be there.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Summer Storms

  Denise’s father brought them to Cold Spring Highlands, a half-day’s drive from New Petersburg in the heart of Appalachia. It was a campground nested in steep hillsides of dense pine and deciduous trees, interspersed with buildings, a basketball court, soccer field, and pool. Structures stood on any surface flat enough to build on.

  Ryn fought the buttons in the car until she found the one that made windows disappear, then jammed her head out and sucked in a breath of the minty-sweet pine.

  They parked and Denise carried a box of her father’s cookies, so Ryn took her bags, having only brought a duffel for herself—filled mostly with a loaned bedroll. They registered, waiting around in front of an outdoor stage facing log seats.

  Campers clustered into their assigned groups all around, Ryn silently hoping hers stayed small.

  When she tu
rned, Naomi stood ten feet away and Ryn heard the thump of her bag on the ground without remembering letting go. Having transformed the girl into a living ghost, she’d had no way to hear Naomi’s approach, and now ten short feet separated her from the thing she craved and feared more than any other. Everyone can hear my heart. She was certain of it.

  Releasing the barrier that had locked out her friend, Naomi was suddenly all she could smell: the fragrance of rain and sunlight crushed her senses. The auburn-haired girl wore jean shorts and a too-long T-shirt accentuating her height and casual athleticism, and Ryn wanted to touch the shirt’s hem just to ensure she was real.

  “Elli, let’s find the counselor,” Denise said, but it didn’t matter because she and Elli weren’t actually there anyway. It was just her and Naomi, gazes locked.

  Naomi’s was fragile and she took tentative steps closer, arms folded around her middle.

  Now they both stared at their own feet.

  “Guess we should talk,” Naomi said.

  “Yes.”

  Except neither did.

  A pressure built in Ryn’s chest and she wheeled, searching for escape. I don’t want to do this. She’d never done anything like it, so her mouth opened and moved without producing sound. Trying a second time, she made words happen: “I… I am sorry.” It was done. Her chin tucked against her chest and she felt as though Naomi could smite her with a word.

  Naomi’s hesitation stretched the moment painfully. “I didn’t tell anyone,” she whispered. “About what you did to Walter Banich. Or those others.”

  “…that is not what I’m sorry for.”

  “How can you not be? You were ruthless. My father told me Banich still can’t walk. It might be years.”

  “I’m adept at breaking things.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Then what are you sorry for?”

  “For hurting you. Terrifying you.” More words rose to the threshold of her mouth and she swallowed them, afraid of the tremor in the ones she’d already spoken.

  Naomi bit her lip and shifted a step nearer to whisper softer still. “That night I thought you were going to kill me.”

  “I know.”

  “Did it ever cross your mind?”

  Ryn shook her head briskly. “Never.”

  “You seemed so angry. Your voice… changed. Everything about you changed.”

  Sealing her eyes, Ryn could only nod. She hadn’t even known that, but didn’t doubt it. “I wasn’t angry at you.”

  “Who?”

  She shrugged, inspecting her shoes.

  “Yourself?”

  Another shrug.

  “Why?”

  “Because it was my fault. The nightmares were about me.” The pressure in her chest burst, the words all gushing out at once. “I don’t like your fear, Naomi, I don’t like it at all, it doesn’t taste right. I only want you to be safe, to sleep, to not scream at night. But how can I hurt what haunts you when it’s me?”

  Naomi stepped closer, both hands making push-down motions. “Shh, shh, I get it.” Setting her finger to the deva’s jaw, she raised it like she was raising all of Ryn with it. “You’re not a nightmare.”

  “I am.”

  She smiled, eyes gleaming strangely bright as she tilted her head to the side. “You are, aren’t you? But I’m not afraid of you now; I’m never afraid when I look right at you.”

  “Maybe you don’t see deep enough.” Ryn’s throat was dreadfully tight.

  “I don’t always understand you. But I’ll look at anything you show me, and I’ll try.”

  Ryn shook her head in disbelief. “You still… wish to see me?”

  “Naturally,” she said with a wink. “But you have to apologize.”

  “Yes.” Anything.

  “Say you’re sorry for running away. For scaring me and disappearing without any explanation. And then never do it again—it’s not how friends act.”

  Friends. “I’m sorry for leaving you in the snow.” It felt good to say, like a vise on her insides had released. It was a singing relief she’d never had before—relief from pain she’d lived with so long it had started to feel normal. It made her lighter; made her stone mouth smile.

  “Don’t do it again,” Naomi repeated, touching Ryn’s face once more, and the deva wondered if she was allowed to touch back. The auburn-haired girl’s scent had turned dark and lovely.

  “Hey!” Denise shouted.

  Naomi straightened and jumped to face her.

  “Guys, meet our counselor.” Denise guided over a college-aged brunette in jeans, a T-shirt, and multi-pocketed vest with dark sunglasses, ponytail hanging out the back of her ball cap.

  “Ladies, I’m Counselor Jane. Welcome to Adventure Camp. Let’s see.” She checked a clipboard. “Ryn, Denise, Elli, and Naomi are here. We have two more girls and we’ll meet the rest of our family group at the cabin.”

  “Family group?” Naomi asked.

  “The boys are the other half of our family group,” Denise said.

  “Yes, there is a cabin of young men who join us for most activities.” Jane scanned them all. “They have their own counselor and quarters, the interior of which you won’t be touring, particularly after hours. Everyone copy that?”

  “Yes,” they all agreed, though Ryn noticed the way Denise crossed two fingers behind her back.

  Their group included a pair of sisters, Phoebe and Cara. They hiked a winding forest path that opened to a firepit flanked by two cabins, one belonging to the girls. “Cabin’s built for twenty, but this week we only have seven, myself included,” Jane said. “Plenty of space to sprawl.”

  “How many boys?” Elli asked.

  “Closer to ten.”

  Elli pumped her fist. “Ka-ching.”

  The cabin had concrete floors and bunk beds, the restrooms in a separate building through two hundred yards of hilly forest. A breeze passed through screen windows and Ryn could hear scurrying rodents in wet branches outside. Everything would come alive by night, and she ached to hear rain pattering through the leaves.

  She set up near the door, but Jane summoned her to the midst of the pack in one corner, ordering her to “be social.”

  The boys arrived at the firepit, another noisy Rabble except ten strong. Most were younger, disappointing Elli, but an older one caught her eye immediately. “They call him Patrick,” she whispered, returning from her reconnaissance. “He’s got to be a senior.”

  Indeed, Patrick was tall, graceful, and strong, with dusty-blond locks and a broad jaw raspy with stubble. He wore ragged shorts, a T-shirt and a hemp necklace.

  Elli, Naomi, and Denise all glanced out the window at him and spoke at once: “Look at his shoulders.” “Wow, he’s tall.” “I hate his stupid necklace.”

  They all looked at Denise. “What? I do. Kind of want to light it on fire.”

  “Check out his tan,” Elli cooed. “I heard him say he’s from the West Coast. I’ll bet he surfs.” She glanced back at Denise. “Since you hate his necklace, you can’t have him.”

  “Don’t look at me.” Denise shook her head. “After the Nine Lives, I’m taking Mom’s advice and only dating well-trained males. Less work, emotionally simple, good cooks. That boy looks… needlessly complicated.”

  “Yeah,” Elli sighed happily. “What do you think, Naomi? Since Horatio’s done, we could flip for him. You want to let Patrick fill the hole in your heart?” Under her breath she added, “If not, he can fill the hole in mine.”

  “It’s your heart you’re talking about him filling, right?” Denise grinned.

  “I’m talking about whatever he wants to talk about. Unless Naomi wants him—she’s got free Saturday nights, and I’d have to put my Craig-related plans on hiatus.” She considered the male again. “Long, long-term hiatus.”

  “Leave Naomi out of your web of sin, dork,” Denise said. “Let her heart mend however it likes.” She cast a look Ryn’s way the others didn’t catch.

  Ryn felt a prick of something in how they fa
wned over Patrick. He was tall, certainly, but his face was dumb. And Denise was right: so was his necklace.

  Outside, they joined the boys and played an introductory game with a ball. Whoever caught it had to share something—the first circuit, a name; the second, a single word describing themselves. Ryn lost track of every new name.

  Denise caught the ball and said her word: “Loyal.” She underhanded it to Elli.

  “Fun-loving.” Elli glanced with meaning at another boy and sent the ball to Naomi.

  Naomi looked right at Ryn, her smile sending electric currents through the deva. “Joyful.”

  Then Patrick caught it, and his gaze also held meaning, directed at Naomi. It rankled. “Single.” Cara—she was only thirteen—blushed in his direction.

  Patrick underhanded it to a boy beside Ryn, but she snatched it from the air and held the tall male’s gaze, narrowing her eyes behind her blue-tinted sunglasses.

  “Ryn?” Jane asked. “What’s one word that describes you?”

  She kept her stare level on Patrick. “Territorial.”

  They broke for dinner, crowding outside a dining hall as scant drops of rain fell from the darkening clouds. A storm rolled steadily over them, Ryn dragging it closer so she could taste the rain. Before it started in earnest, though, everyone around her did something terrifying.

  They sang.

  Counselors led the songs. It was a human game. Naomi sang avidly, of course; it was brilliant to watch her find a melody and laugh at the childish rhymes. It soured when Patrick glommed onto her enthusiasm and joined her.

  Denise elbowed Ryn. “I’m with you. I never sing for my supper.”

  “Come on,” Elli whispered. “It’s camp. Go ahead and be stupid, no one cares. It’s fun!”

  “You can have my fun,” Denise scoffed. “I’m about topped off watching this actually happen.”

  Ryn despised the very idea of singing, or talking in crowds, or crowds generally. This activity rolled it all together in one. Worse, Patrick and Naomi whispered about having so much fun.