I hear the creak of the door swinging open a moment before Maikel calls out for me. “Arjen? Are you here?”
“I’m here,” I answer him, hastily wrapping the item in my hands back up in its parchment. “Just a minute.” My heart beats a little faster as I glanced at the door, hoping he wouldn’t come to greet me himself. Not until I’ve gotten his gift wrapped up again and tucked away out of sight.
I knew it was risky when I pulled it out, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. I spent weeks fretting over what to get Maikel for Christmas. What do you get the man who has everything he wants, who buys anything he desires without a thought for the price? For a while, I’d despaired that I’d ever find anything for him.
And then, as though by miracle, not a week before Christmas, I’d been walking through De Wallen to pay a visit to Elise and there’d been an artist set up on the side of the street. But the scenes on his easels were not paintings, and the strange sight of them made me hesitate, and my steps slow.
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I wake alone on the last night of the year. Our apartment is quiet, empty. Nye has already woken and left, gone somewhere I don’t know. He’s much older than me, and can rise at twilight, while I’m still young enough that I do not wake until night has fully settled upon the city. Still, usually he waits for me. I’ve grown accustomed to waking to his warmth in bed. There’s a sharp ache beneath my breast to find myself alone now.
I rise and dress. He’s left no indication of where he’s gone or when I might expect his return. I shouldn’t be surprised. In the first months of our relationship, before I learned what he truly was, it was not uncommon for him to disappear for hours at a stretch. I would go walk through the city, or buy a pastry at a patisserie and sit at a table for a while to eat it, watching the people who passed me by.
I cannot go out, now. The day is forbidden to me, and I fear to go out alone at night.
I don’t fear monsters in the dark. Not anymore. I am the monster that lurks in the shadows, now, and what I fear is what might happen if I do not have Nye to watch over me, and keep the hunger from taking control.
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