Page 11 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

She turned back toward the doors, but they were gone. Just a hallway now, with the radiator and wallpaper curling at the seam.

Nell stood there for another moment, the trash bag still clutched in one hand. Then, slowly, she backed away. Returned to her apartment. Shut the door. Locked it. Leaned against the wood, hand pressed to her sternum.

The ring on her finger was cool now. But a hum was buzzing in her chest.

—

The hum didn’t stop that night. Nor the next day.

Not after chasing down book requests for nearly a dozen humans and cryptids who couldn’t quite remember the title they wanted, or maybe they did?

Not after copious amounts of tea and red wine, not after a hot bath, and not even after frantic journaling.

It just stayed, beneath her skin and behind her teeth, buzzing low like a power line ready to arc. It wasn’t painful or annoying, but it made the rest of the world seem off-key, somehow.

Eventually, one evening, she went up to the garden.

Greymarket’s rooftop garden was a half-wild wonder of raised beds and planters and trellises climbing toward a sky that looked significantly closer than it had downstairs.

Someone had built a miniature shrine in the corner with broken teacups and melted votives.

Someone else had labeled all the herbs in three languages, one of which appeared to be sigils that shimmered if you squinted.

She didn’t know what she was expecting. A distraction? A breeze? Something to hold in her hands that wasn’t a notebook full of dream fragments? All she knew was that she needed out —out of the apartment, out of the buzz, out of her own head for five minutes.

The garden was already half-busy in the gentle, non-intrusive way the Greymarket tenants did most things.

Someone had set out a folding table covered in seed trays and hand-labeled popsicle sticks.

Another tenant was gently weeding a bed of primroses, humming what sounded like Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Nell drew a deep breath. The air up here smelled like rosemary, damp brick, and tomato leaves.

“Hi there!” called a voice from the far end.

A woman in a faded Camp Crystal Lake T-shirt and sturdy jeans waved cheerfully from behind a tall stack of mint. She looked vaguely familiar: tall, broad-shouldered, with a fire-red braid down her back and a trowel tucked into her belt like a dagger.

“You’re Nell, right?” she said, wiping her hands on a rag and walking over. “I read about you in the Gazette . Welcome!”

“Oh,” Nell laughed, startled and flattered all at once. “Yeah. That was—Thess got a little creative with the phrasing.”

“They always do,” the woman said, rolling her eyes fondly. “I’m Catalina. 10B. If you ever want fresh pie or weird ghost stories, I’m your girl.”

Nell smiled. There seemed something deeply grounding and solid about Catalina, in the way good soil was solid. The kind of person who made you believe, without saying it outright, that everything could be sorted with baked goods and practical advice.

“That sounds delightful,” she said. “I despair at making pies. I can never get the crust to sit right.”

“Oh, honey, come by and I’ll give you a lesson,” Catalina said breezily, waving one hand like it was already on the calendar. “You settling in okay?”

“I think so. The apartment’s amazing. The building’s definitely got personality.”

Catalina snorted. “It’s got multiple personalities, but they’re all mostly well-behaved.”

They talked for a few minutes about herbs, the ridiculousness of the monthly potlucks (Nell took mental notes), and the fact that Mr. Caracas had opinions about tomato varietals but never helped water anything.

Catalina offered her a handful of lemon balm clippings and a cryptid-approved compost tip involving crushed amethyst and overripe strawberries.

For a while, Nell felt steady. The hum didn’t leave, exactly, but it faded to the background like the murmur of a dishwasher. She could almost pretend it was just her pulse if she didn’t listen too hard.

Eventually, Catalina nodded toward the far corner. “That raised bed down there’s mostly untended. Feel free to claim it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nell said, and meant it.

Even though she wasn’t sure what to grow that would actually, well, grow.

Maybe some flowers. The garden was overflowing with produce—tomatoes, kale, squash the size of small boats—but short on flora.

That immediately sent her mind spinning with thoughts of beautiful, hand-crafted flower bouquets in Ball jars, arranged artfully on the tables at the next community potluck.

Maybe she’d finally get to use that stamp kit she impulse-bought during the pandemic.

She and Catalina parted with a wave and the promise of a recipe exchange. Nell turned down a row of raised beds, her shirt sticking to her back, feeling almost normal with the heat and the scent of lavender and lemon balm in her nostrils.

She rounded the corner too fast and slammed into someone solid.

A hand shot out. Cool fingers curled around her elbow, steadying her.

The hum in her chest roared . It tore through her like a struck gong, vibrating out from that single point of contact and washing through her limbs, her spine, her scalp. Like her molecules were being rearranged into a new shape that hummed at exactly his frequency.

…his frequency?

She gasped. The hand dropped.

Nell looked up—and up—straight into the gleaming, ruby eyes of Sig Samora.

He blinked once, slowly. His wings fluttered gently, soft at the edges with a layer of fine, plush fuzz that made her fingers ache.

Don’t touch, she thought very clearly . Not polite. No.

And he…was wearing a gardening apron.

Slate-gray canvas. A single smudge of dirt on the hem. The ties wrapped around his narrow waist with precision, cinching the look somewhere between domestic menace and Victorian fever dream.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t see you—uh—there.”

Sig tilted his head slightly in an insectile motion. His red eyes blinked, and she suddenly felt seen, in a way that peeled her open like a fruit, making her remember all the things she’d tried to bury under thrift store sweaters and new routines.

“Sorry.” Nell took a step back like she’d been burned.

Sig remained still, the trowel in his hand gleaming in the sun like a talisman.

Nell turned and fled, running down the stairs like she was fleeing the scene of a crime.

Her apartment door shut behind her with a satisfying thunk .

Shakily, Nell peeled herself out of her garden clothes, strode to the bathroom, and turned the shower to the hottest setting she could achieve.

She showered in silence, standing there her fingers went pruney.

By the time she pulled herself out, toweled dry, threw on a nightgown and crawled under the covers, the sky outside had gone dark.

That night, she dreamed of red doors opening onto endless corridors. In the dream, she wasn’t afraid. She was going home . She woke with the taste of copper in her mouth— and the certainty that something had been calling her name.

—

She had fled, and the garden didn’t breathe again until she was gone.

One clawed hand still wrapped loosely around the trowel. The other hung at his side, fingers twitching where they’d touched her.

He had touched many humans. Anchored them. Steadied them. Witnessed the end written into their thread. But this—this had not been tethered to The Doom.

The moment he had touched her, something shifted. Like a compass needle finally swinging toward its mark.

Belatedly, he realized his wings had flared open, and he quickly forced them to fold before anyone noticed.

He turned quickly and strode toward his plot in the northeast corner. Gardening gave him peace. There was rhythm in it, a structure he could trust. He pressed his fingers into the loam and closed his eyes.

Yes. There. The roots were singing. A chorus of green voices—hushed, upward-reaching, full of ancient yearning. He had always loved the way seedlings sounded when they broke open their casings, their tiny sighs of hope.

He let the rhythm of the garden settle into him. The soft, faithful labor of care. The blessed ordinariness of life unfurling in silence.

A soft, deliberate footstep caught his ears as dusk began to settle.

Mr. Lyle stood at the edge of the path, hands folded neatly behind his back, gaze as calm and unsettling as ever. His silhouette was framed by trellised green and shadow. There was a faint crease between his brows that hadn’t been there yesterday.

“Eventful evening?” Mr. Lyle asked mildly, as though commenting on the weather.

Sig didn’t answer.

Mr. Lyle walked forward slowly, his shoes making no sound on the brick path. “She is more attuned than we expected,” he said. “It is unusual, even for Greymarket.”

“She hums,” Sig murmured. The words came from somewhere behind his sternum, low and raw. “She walked into the building, and the walls sang.”

“Ah.” Mr. Lyle inclined his head. “They did. And now the resonance is persistent.”

Sig curled his claws into the soil.

“She touched the threshold,” Mr. Lyle added after a moment. “A few days ago. Briefly.”

“The Lustrum called to her?” Sig’s voice came out too sharp. Something in his chest yanked as if a thread had been pulled taut without warning. Why did that hurt?

“Unsuccessfully. Theo intervened.”

Sig’s mouth twitched. The youngling was made of mischief and fierce loyalty in equal measure. “Of course he did.”

A long silence stretched between them, heavy with the scent of soil and still-warm bricks. The kind of silence that stretched back to the foundation of the building and forward to the moment when Nell would vanish into its memory.

“You are drawn to her,” Mr. Lyle said suddenly.

Sig looked over at the apartment manager and that feeling rose again—like a thread buried deep in his chest had been tugged hard, sudden and unwelcome.

For a moment, Mr. Lyle’s expression shifted. “I wish it did not have to be this way,” he said. “But you know the pattern.”

Sig closed his eyes. “The Lustrum chooses.” The words tasted bitter. Not because they were untrue, but because he had watched what they meant too many times.

Mr. Lyle nodded. “And it changes. Not all who enter are lost. Some are rewritten. Some are freed. You know this.”

Sig did not respond.

The apartment manager inclined his head respectfully. “Good evening, Sig.” He turned and walked back the way he came, leaving Sig alone beneath the moonlit vines and trembling trellises.

—

Back in his apartment, Sig threw open the balcony doors and walked into the evening air. He curled his claws against the railing, trying to ground himself in the sounds, the scents, the feel of Greymarket Towers.

The others—Margaret, the child in 7D, the family in 7B—they had all carried the scent of endings. Resignation clung to them like wet wool. They moved like echoes long before the Lustrum took them.

But Nell…Nell was fighting. Even unconsciously, even while drifting toward the Lustrum, some part of her still reached for life. Still believed she deserved to be saved.

He shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t want. Shouldn’t feel. But gods above and below—he did.

Dusk settled in slowly. The sky turned watercolor blue, then violet, then deeper still. The streetlights blinked on, one by one, soft amber glows holding back the darkness.

“I would save you if I could,” he whispered, the words carried off by the night air like a secret too soft to keep.

Beneath his hand, the iron railing warmed slightly. The vines at the edge of the balcony shifted, curling inward as if to listen. Greymarket had heard him.

And somewhere deep below—beneath floor and root and stone—a draft of cold air unfurled from a long-sealed door.

The Lustrum was listening, too.