“Sofia.”
He crouches down, and I look at his dark head as he takes Sofia from my hand to study her.
“She looks thirsty, too,” he says, smiling that not-real smile again. I decide I don’t like how he’s holding Sofia by her ears in his damaged hand.
He straightens, adjusts the jacket of his suit, and returns her to me.
“Let’s go get you a glass of water so you can go back to bed.”
“What’s happening inside?”
He studies me thoughtfully with his strange almost silvery eyes. Eyes like a wolf. He bows his head a little and exhales.
“Nothing for little girls to see.”
We stare at each other for a minute, and there’s a flicker of something almost gentle in his voice. Almost like pity.
I know pity because it’s how all the teachers at school look at me ever since the accident. I hate that look, but with him, it’s just a flicker. It’s replaced almost instantly by something hard and cold.
“What happened to your hand?” I ask him.
“Fire,” he says curtly. “Let’s go.”
I place my hand inside his because I don’t know what else to do. When he closes it around mine, it swallows mine up. I can feel the bumps on his skin and try to pull away, but he tightens his grip and doesn’t let go.
We walk toward the kitchen, and I’m not sure if he’s leading me or I’m leading him.
“Sofia isn’t thirsty. She’s a stuffed animal,” I tell him.
He glances down at me and nods, face closed off like he’s distracted.
Once we’re in the kitchen, I point at a high cabinet I can’t reach. “Glasses are in there.”
He opens it, takes out a tall glass, and fills it with water from the tap. He hands it to me.
I take a sip and hand it back.
Wordlessly, he sets it on the counter, then takes my hand again and begins to lead me out of the kitchen, but I stop him.
“Did it hurt? Your hand?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it hurt.”
“You have no idea how much.” He begins to walk me out of the kitchen and away from my father’s study, away from the noise there and up the stairs to my room. He seems to know exactly where that is, too, just like the kitchen.
Lightning strikes, and I jump.
He squeezes my hand with his burned one. “The lightning won’t hurt you, Cristina.”
“How do you know my name?” I ask as he opens my bedroom door, and I step inside.
He looks down at me and what I can see of his expression from the streetlamp is cold. “I know everything about you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. “What’s your name?” I finally ask.
“My name is Damian. Damian Di Santo. Now get into bed. And don’t come out until it’s morning. Do you understand?”
I nod because he’s not asking, he’s telling. I climb into my bed.
He follows me and pulls the blanket up to my throat, but stops short of tucking me in. “Good girl.” He walks to the door as I watch him go. When lightning next electrifies the sky, I can’t help my gasp.
“I’m afraid of the dark,” I blurt out. I don’t know why. “My nightlight…” I trail off, only realizing then that the lights outside are on. It’s only those inside that are out.
He stops and turns to me, his face hidden by shadows so I only see the glint of his eyes.
“You don’t need to be afraid of the dark. Monsters don’t lurk there. They don’t hide under beds or inside closets. They’re right out in the open where you can see them as clear as day. Where you can look into their eyes and see their evil. Don’t you know that?”
“Are you a monster?”
8 Years later
2
Cristina
“Last one again,” Matteo says, startling me.
I look up, hand over my heart. “You’re going to give me a heart attack!”
He shrugs a shoulder and slides into the empty chair beside mine. “You’re too young to have a heart attack,” he says, setting his elbow on the leather-topped table in the library. “Since you won’t come out for a celebratory drink, maybe at least don’t spend the night before your birthday alone in the school library.” He closes my textbook.
I met Matteo at the start of the year and he’s become a good friend. He’s an exchange student from Italy, and since I’m half Italian, I sort of took him under my wing when he got to New York City. Not that he needed anyone to do that for him. I think he’s shown me more of the city than I could have shown him.
“I just have to look up one last thing. I can’t check the book out.” It’s an old tome that the library won’t let off property.
He glances over his shoulder, looking for library staff. “So, borrow it accidentally.”
I smile in spite of myself. Matteo and I are complete opposites. I follow every rule while he learns them so he can break them. “I can’t do that.”
He rolls his eyes. “Chicken. I’m heading out.”
As if on cue, thunder rolls in the distance.
I shift my gaze out the windows and to the momentarily bright sky over the city. It’s beautiful and eerie at once.
The lights inside the library flicker twice.
“It’s a sign,” Matteo says. “Go home.” He kisses me on the cheek and hops out of his seat, making a point of checking the time. “Happy birthday.” His sneakers don’t make a sound on the cracked tile floor as he disappears around the corner.
I’m sitting in one of the study rooms, a quieter room with only a half dozen tables that are usually full during the day and on most weeknights. But as it’s Friday night, most students are out celebrating the start of the weekend.
Turning the page in the dusty old book, I jot down some notes. The tip of my pencil breaks just as thunder, that sounds entirely too close, shatters the silence. The lights flicker again, and this time, they don’t turn back on.
Footsteps sound in the distance. Barbara is the library’s evening manager and usually the last to leave. “Barbara?” I call out, although the sound is heavier than that of her delicate high heels clicking along.
She doesn’t answer.
I stand, closing the books. I won’t get any work done in the dark. And besides, tonight, I’m anxious.
At moments like this, I wonder if I look normal on the outside. Like any other first-year college student. Because inside, I’m not. My heart is racing, and it’s taking all I have not to shove everything into my backpack and run out of here.
Once I zip up the backpack, I sling one strap over my shoulder, pick up the heavy tome too old to be removed from the library, and walk it toward the front desk using the dim emergency lighting to guide me. Although I know this place like the back of my hand, in the dark, everything is different. Everything feels more sinister.
I hear the footsteps again a little more distant but inside the library.
“Hello?” I call out. The steps are heavy like a man’s. “Matteo?”
No, Matteo was wearing sneakers. His didn’t make noise as he left just a few minutes ago.