Page 27 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

“Dev and I have been together twenty-five years, and not one of them has felt in order,” Carol said casually, her shears snicking carefully. “Love doesn’t care about clean lines. It cares about intention.”

Intention. He had that in abundance, but it wasn’t the same as permission. It certainly wasn’t the same as being wanted.

“What if I have already ruined it by claiming too soon?”

His deepest fear. It was the first time he had said it aloud to another.

“Then,” Carol said thoughtfully. “Then that is her choice to make.”

He nodded once. The motion felt like it scraped something loose in his chest. He knew that truth, of course he had. But it landed differently here from someone who was human. Someone who had lived long enough in Greymarket to understand both love and monsters.

Sig’s thoughts began forming quiet, awful contingencies. If she says no. If she severs it. If I have to live without her for the rest of my life—

“But,” Carol said, and the word caught him mid-fall, “Nell is delightful.”

He looked over at her, startled. Carol did not look up from her rosemary. “She has that sharp-corner softness that takes real guts to carry around. I can tell she’s been shattered in some pretty painful ways, but last night, I saw a woman who hasn’t let that kill her joy for life and living.”

Sig swallowed.

“And you…” She glanced over and waved her shears at him in a lazy circle. “You’re listening, even if you don’t think you are. You’re trying. You’re giving her space to knit herself back together. That’s more than most humans would do. Certainly more than any Harbingers I’ve met.”

The bond pulsed low beneath his ribs.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Sig,” she said casually, “but if I were , I’d say to keep trying, thoughtfully.”

She snipped a final stem and examined it like a verdict.

“Based on what I saw last night, and what the building’s been whispering, you’re doing a damn fine job. So keep it up.”

They worked in silence for a while. Carol snipped and trimmed with her usual sharp efficiency. Sig turned his attention to the dill, pulling away the browned leaves with steady hands.

Her words had taken root in his sternum.

Nell is joyful. And she was. The way she lit up around her friends. The way her eyes crinkled when she teased. The way she had leaned into him—head on his chest, fingers brushing his wrist—as he walked her home.

“When Dev courted you,” Sig said haltingly, “were there offerings he presented that sang to your heart?”

Carol paused, one hand on her hip, shears resting against her shoulder.

“I know she enjoys tea,” Sig added quickly, humbly. “But I do not wish to be…a song of one note. I do not know much about her. Or about human courting rituals.” He turned toward her. “What would make a bond strengthen?”

Carol made a thoughtful noise and tilted her head. “Dev’s always had a knack for knowing what I want but the best gifts he ever gave me were the ones I never would’ve asked for, and didn’t know I needed until they were in my hands.”

She pulled her glasses down her nose and looked at Sig over them. “You like to carve wood, don’t you? Didn’t you make that little puzzle box at the white elephant exchange last Solstice that Orell ended up with?

Sig’s antennae twitched faintly. “She still has it?”

“In a place of honor,” Carol said, grinning. “I saw it the last time I visited. Center shelf, next to the egg sac terrarium and her first loom. She dusts it.”

Sig smiled. “Yes, I carve. The wood has memory. You do not force it into shape, but instead uncover what it wants to be.”

Carol nodded, satisfied. “Then carve something for her. Something useful, but pretty.”

He turned the idea over like a seed in his palm. A comb, he thought. For her hair, brown like a bird’s wing, soft and wild and sweetly untamed.

“Yes,” he murmured.

They kept working.

“Are you planning on coming to the community potluck next week?” Carol asked.

She didn’t look up from her pruning, but the tilt of her head said she already knew the answer.

“I…” He hesitated. The words caught somewhere behind his tongue.

Of course he wanted to. He was not a social creature by nature, but the potlucks were comforting.

There was something about the noise, the overlapping conversations, the being expected .

Community. Caring. Shared food and strange customs and belonging, even if Mr. Caracas was always grumbling in the corner about “the corruption of spice blends.”

But the thought of Nell being there and potentially not wanting to see him knotted something in his chest.

“She may not wish to see me,” he said finally.

“She might not,” Carol replied gently. “Or she might.”

She rested her shears against her shoulder. “But Sig—you have to choose for yourself, too. You can’t keep pulling yourself back just because you’re afraid she won’t meet you halfway. You’re part of this community. That was true before she arrived, and it’ll still be true no matter what happens.”

He glanced at her, surprised by the quiet certainty in her voice.

“There are many of us who care about you, you know,” she added, as if it were obvious. “Even if you do prune your mint like a barbarian.”

Then she winked. “Just don’t bring another salad like you did at the dinner party.”

Sig huffed, but something uncoiled in his chest.

He had been so focused on Nell. So consumed by the bond and the fear and the wanting that he hadn’t realized how far the rest of the building had slipped to the edges of his awareness.

The way Theo’s parents had slipped him a Tupperware of dumplings after a hard week without asking questions.

The time Thess had enchanted his gardening gloves to “help the echinacea feel heard.” Orell inviting him to test one of her experimental looms that responded to scent memory.

Even Mr. Lyle, who once silently left a replacement spade outside his apartment door after Sig snapped his in a fit of quiet frustration.

They had been there. They had always been there.

They are part of me as well, he thought.

Sig moved to the far box and crouched low. His claws curling around a branch he had tucked there days ago, one that had fallen from the nearby black locust tree.

He pulled it free. It was the right shape. Slightly curved. Pale where he’d peeled the bark away in idle moments. He ran one claw along the inner edge and thought of her hair, how it had gleamed in the soft light of Jem and Hollis’ apartment.

He would carve it tonight. Slowly. Carefully. It would be useful. Something she could hold. Something she might accept.

“I will attend the potluck,” he said finally, more to the branch than to Carol.

Carol smiled. “Good boy. Now, prune your sage. It’s sulking.”

—

The corner store had a basket near the register labeled SALE—50￠ OR BEST OFFER , which meant everything in it was cursed, expired, or mildly enchanted. Nell flipped through it with idle fingers while Goldie hunted down binder clips in the stationery aisle.

“Remind me again why we’re here buying supply closet refills when we need to finish sorting the archival manifests by sigh frequency?” Nell called over her shoulder.

Goldie’s voice floated back. “Because I find errands to be restorative. You’re welcome.”

Nell rolled her eyes and kept digging. A sticky deck of playing cards. A melted wax frog. A promotional pen that whispered tax advice. And then—no. It was terrible. It was perfect. She fished it from the basket, hardly believing her eyes.

It was a round, cheap magnet, designed for tourists who descended on Bellwether like it was the holy land of cryptid groupies. A stylized moth stretched across a crescent moon, complete with sparkles and embossed silver foil.

It was dumb. Truly dumb. Gloriously awful.

She turned it over in her hand, and the laughter sat warm in her chest, unexpected and real.

He was so sweet at the dinner party. He made a salad. He played charades with aggressive dignity.

“Oh gods, I’m doing this, aren’t I.” She drew a sharp, stunned breath. “Goldie!”

Her friend looked up and Nell waved the magnet in the air like a beacon. “I’m getting this. Thoughts?”

Goldie appeared at her elbow a moment later, holding a pack of envelopes and squinting at the magnet in Nell’s hand like it might be contagious.

“Oh no,” she said flatly. “No. Nell, no. Are you—wait—are you actually thinking of giving that to sexy Sig? Nell. Is this a passive-aggressive bond rejection? Because I swear to the minor gods, if you sabotage yourself with glitter foil —”

“Shut up and stick to your envelopes,” Nell muttered, elbowing her.

Goldie made a long, dramatic groaning sound, like a dying Victorian heroine with opinions. “It has sparkles , Nell. Sparkles!”

Yeah. It was perfect.

—

Back in her apartment, Nell set the magnet on her counter like she was afraid it might disappear in a poof of sparkle and shame.

It was horrible quality. The foil was flaking in one corner, and the detailing had been applied with the chaotic hand of a sugar-hyped toddler. But it made her smile. Every time she looked at it, she saw wings and stars and a kind of ridiculous sincerity that reminded her of… well. Him.

She hovered over it for a full minute before grabbing a pad of sticky notes.

She wrote something. Crumpled it up. Then started a second. Crumpled that too. Groaned and dropped her head in her hands. By the time she got to the third sticky note, she gave up trying to be clever and just wrote what her hands wanted to say.

Once she was finished, she slapped the note carefully on the back of the magnet and took a deep breath. Looked at the note again, reached for it, and then pulled her hand back quickly.

“Nope,” she muttered, “we are not overthinking this.”

She was going to overthink this forever.

The elevator was already waiting at the end of the hallway. As soon as she stepped inside, the doors closed almost all the way, paused, and then shut with the smug finality of someone saying mm-hmm.

She glared at the doors. “Keep your comments to yourself.”

It finally let her off on the fourteenth floor with a wheeze that sounded suspiciously like it was whispering good luck.

She strode down the hall with forced confidence, crouched low in front of Sig’s door, and placed the magnet gently on the doormat like it was a secret spell. Then she speed-walked back toward the elevator as fast as dignity would allow.

She made it back to her own floor in record time by threatening to pry the buttons off the elevator’s panel, then raced down the hall.

There, resting neatly in the center of her doormat like it had been placed by reverent hands, was something small and pale and smooth. She knelt carefully and picked it up.

It was a hand-carved wooden comb, gently curved, with fine teeth sanded to a satin finish. There was a slight asymmetry to it that yelled this has been made just for you.

Nell stared at it, breath caught somewhere behind her ribs.

“Of course you did,” she whispered.

She pressed the comb to her chest and traced the grain of the wood with her fingers. Her heart flared and she gave a gasping laugh.

Very gently, she turned the handle of her door and stepped inside.

—

Sig returned to his floor as the tower lights shifted toward dusk. The air smelled faintly of peppermint and old stone. The garden’s grounding hum still lingered in his limbs, softening the sharp places.

He reached his door and stopped. Something had been left there. A small object. Paper tucked beneath it. He crouched slowly, talons curling against the worn carpet.

The item was round, glittering, and ridiculous. A cheap magnet, emblazoned with a stylized moth stretching against an insulting approximation of a crescent moon. The wings sparkled with glitter.

Sig stared at it, then turned it to the back. A sticky note was plastered there, with messy, very human handwriting.

It made me think of you. That’s all.

You can throw it away if you want.

Oh, and here’s my number, in case you ever want to reach me in some way besides offerings. 555-354-2776.

—Nell Townsend

(the human)

He sank slowly onto his heels. She had written to him. She had offered something. A spark of shared absurdity tucked inside careful words.

He pressed the magnet to his heart, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Sig Samora truly smiled, like something beautiful and wonderful had broken open inside him to let the light shine in.