Page 9 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

S ig moved through the hallway in silence. His feet didn’t echo. The floor didn’t creak. Shadows blurred slightly as he passed. Light dimmed politely. Even the air parted with gentle reluctance.

She wore a ring of tangled light.

He’d known bondstones before, the resonant links shared by Harbingers and their mates. But the opal did not sing to him, strangely. Instead, it sang to the building, and the building was answering.

Most humans struck him as unfinished. Brash and beautiful in their unhinged, loud way. They burned hot and left ashes, collapsing in strange and sudden ways. Lovely in the way fireworks were lovely: short-lived, too loud, and always fading quickly away from the sky they’d come from.

He had been trying not to notice any of them. He had been very intentional about that.

And still, he’d let her enter the elevator.

She had stepped in just before the doors could close, and had felt a tremor in the air. Not Doom, but something adjacent to it.

He told himself it was observation, the same ritual he’d performed one hundred and forty-seven times. Because that’s what this was, was it not? The beginning of the ending.

He had felt this before. He’d felt it in the hollow-eyed child in Apartment 7D who had dreamed in duplicate and vanished without a trace.

In the breathless quiet before Margaret wandered into the Lustrum and returned days later, rimed with frost and missing her name.

In the silence before Seven Pines fell. In all the other half-forgotten, mournful songs that had become the soundtrack of his too-long life.

Always the same pattern: They were chosen. He witnessed.

You cannot stop a thing meant to happen, the Elders had told him. Let them fall. That is the order of things. To stop one Doom is to trade for another.

And yet, this one didn’t move like the others had.

She didn’t feel thin the way the doomed did, like they were shadows that were stretching too long on the ground. Her presence was chaotic, awake, and loud. He chirred quietly, a low harmonic click behind his teeth. She is different. Gods help me, she might actually fight.

He pressed open the door to the community room. The scent hit him first: dust, burnt popcorn, and something faintly metallic that wasn’t from this plane of existence.

The room itself was large, open, and only slightly lopsided, with mismatched couches arranged in conversation clumps.

Two teenagers—one human, one clearly half-dragon from the glittering scales on her neck—were locked in a fierce foosball match.

A cluster of children buzzed around the play nook, building an elaborate tower of blocks and solemnly naming it Doomtown.

On the far wall, a community bulletin board fluttered gently under the AC vent. Notices were tacked over one another in layers:

● Moonlight Yoga, Monday Nights, Atrium, 7 p.m. ● “So You’ve Been Summoned,” a support group for newly manifested familiars ● Bake Sale for the Elevator’s Birthday—donations accepted through Theo Bolden in 6C

Two elderly residents, human or close enough, were deep in an animated discussion by the fireplace.

One of them had brought a slide rule and was fiddling with it furiously.

The other looked up, noticed Sig, and waved.

He returned it gravely. Another child, this one made of mist, appeared and ghosted through Sig’s legs with a giggle, vanishing into the book nook.

No one reacted. After all, this was Greymarket.

In the corner, overseeing the chaos, Mr. Caracas hulked in his favorite armchair in front of the television, shell gleaming dully in the lamplight. His massive, ridged back rose and fell with every irritated breath.

“You’re late,” he grumbled, not looking away from the screen.

Sig folded himself neatly into the couch. “Am I?”

“You’ve missed the first murder,” Caracas said, claws tapping the chair arm. “A local historian, bludgeoned with a cheese press. Honestly, I expected better.”

Sig tilted his head. “That seems oddly specific.”

“That’s Midsomer for you. I’ve no idea why anyone still lives there. You’d think the property values alone would drive them out.”

They watched in silence for a few minutes. On screen, a vicar whispered something ominous to a wide-eyed bartender while the camera panned slowly to a suspicious wheel of Stilton.

“You’ve been brooding more than usual,” Caracas said without looking up from the paper bag he was trying to open. “Haven’t seen you this agitated since that family in 7B. What was it, three years ago?”

Sig didn’t answer. The community room’s lights flickered once. A purely coincidental shiver of the building’s mood, but it made Caracas grunt.

“Don’t get snippy,” he muttered. “I’m just saying.”

“They were kind people,” Sig whispered.

“They all are,” Caracas replied. “That’s what makes it worse.”

An uncomfortable silence settled. Caracas finally got the bag open, pulled out a sandwich wrapped in two types of foil and a napkin, and took a bite, foil and napkin and all.

“You pacing again?” he asked around a bite. “I heard you on the roof last night. Heavy steps.”

“The building is stirring,” Sig murmured.

“Building’s always stirring. Question is why you’re feeling it more than usual.” The ancient cryptid tilted his head. “Is it the new girl?”

Sig didn’t respond.

“Yeah,” Caracas nodded slowly. “Figured. I can smell it on you.”

Sig’s gaze flicked toward him.

“Not her. You.” Caracas took another bite. “You smell like you're hoping again. That’s not like you, neighbor.”

Sig closed his eyes for a moment. A tremor passed through his wings. “She’s not like the others,” he said finally.

“None of them are, until they are.” Caracas grunted. “When will you learn? Humans come and go. They’re mayflies with bank accounts.” He paused. “Don’t you ever get tired of being the bad omen?”

Sig didn’t flinch. “It is not a choice.”

Caracas huffed, a cross between a laugh and a wheeze. “Nothing here ever is.” He smacked his tusks together with finality and turned the TV volume up.

Sig let it happen and closed his eyes. He wasn’t supposed to interfere.

But still.

Still.

—

Midsomer Murders’ closing credits faded into the opening fanfare of Antiques Roadshow , and Sig caught the beginnings of a rant about over-restored sideboards as the door eased shut behind him.

The old cryptid’s grumbling companionship had become a surprisingly enjoyable part of Sig’s routine. He used to need less of this, but the longer he lived in Greymarket, the more these little human patterns crept into him.

The elevator waited for him. It quivered like a dog barely resisting the urge to wag its tail.

Sig stepped in. The brass paneling reflected his shape in warped halos, with too many limbs if you looked too quickly. He pressed the button for his floor. The lights flickered in seeming defiance.

Sig sighed. “Please.”

The elevator gave a low, mechanical groan and began to ascend.

Once, it had refused to take him anywhere at all. When he first arrived at Greymarket, the elevator had locked its doors and sat idle for more than an hour, ignoring every button he pressed. Only when he had folded his hands and let it decide, the car had creaked into motion.

The doors eventually opened with a soft sigh. Floor fourteen was quiet, as always. Too high for traffic noise, too far from the trash chute to pick up the gossip of pipes.

Sig walked the hallway, trailing his fingers along the wallpaper. Close enough to feel the vibrations tucked in the fibers. The faint memory of old tenants. The echo of something that had once laughed here.

He unlocked his apartment door and stepped inside. A faint breeze moved within, drawn from the window that always cracked open an inch when he returned, even if he had closed it before leaving.

The walls curved subtly, bent like the inner surface of a cocoon. Every surface was soft-edged and warm-hued: dark wood, shadowed stone, textured fabric stretching across the ceiling in subtle arcs.

One corner of the room sloped into a cushioned alcove lined with textured moss-green fabric, pillowed in layers, designed for rest without pressure.

It was something the Broodhaven had taught him, long ago, when his wings were still soft and his instincts hadn’t yet calcified.

That sleep was a pause in the song; a moment of silence that made the rest of the melody matter.

A shelf in the corner held a sparse collection of items: a hollowed bone flute, a carved wooden flower, three stones that sang at different frequencies, and one book with a cracked spine and water-warped pages.

He passed through the space with familiar ease and moved to the balcony. The door opened and the wind met him like an old friend. He stepped out into the open air and closed his eyes. The city exhaled beneath him.

Slowly, Sig opened his wings and stretched them wide, letting the wind catch in the fine hairs and stiff vanes. His antennae lifted, curled forward to taste the air, and the scents and feel of the city poured in.

Curry and asphalt. The hum of microwave dinners and the sticky-sweet echo of childhood giggles. Dogs barking. Lovers fighting. A violin, off-key, practicing somewhere.

Greymarket breathed. The building was at peace tonight. It was practically purring, a soothing hum that all tenants could feel, even if they didn’t know it. It was the building saying: All is well. We are whole. We are complete.

Sig breathed in, his senses twitching as the Greymarket residents moved beneath him. He could see, feel, hear, taste them now:

Mrs. Delwyn in Apartment 3B was watching a cooking show, the volume turned up to judgment levels. “ THAT’S NOT HOW YOU WHIP MERINGUE! ” she yelled, her lizard tail thumping against the floor with righteous irritation.

In 7D, Thess hovered just above their armchair. They were drafting the next issue of the Greymarket Gazette , sending harp-like tones through the air with each edit.

Carol and Dev Sharma in 6G, were dancing in their kitchen. Carol’s laugh rang out mid-spin as Fleetwood Mac drifted through the open window. Something on the stove sizzled like applause.

Benji and his Boston terrier, Rocco, were arguing again in 2D. “No, you chewed the left one,” Benji said, holding up a half-destroyed sock. Rocco responded with a low growl and an expressive side-eye.

In 12A, Orell the Weaver hummed as she worked, her eight long limbs moving in precise, elegant arcs.

Uncle Henry in 9A was recording again. His voice spilled through the cracked windows in bursts of righteous certainty. “I’m not saying it was aliens. I’m just saying it was Tuesday. ”

The kids from 1E were once again turning the stairwell into a battlefield. A rubber ball bounced down the steps while voices yelled about plasma shields and alien invasions. One wore a cape. Another wore two. Leadership remained unclear.

Then… he sensed her .

Nell. Apartment 4C. He heard her voice before he caught her scent: soft, unsure singing. The stereo played something nostalgic and human. She didn’t know all the words, but that somehow made it better.

He smelled garlic. Tomato. Boiling water. The comfort of a meal being made with hands and a mending heart.

Underneath it he felt it. That hum . The Doom was drawing closer now, curling toward her like smoke under a door.

Sig bowed his head slightly. His wings lowered. For a moment—a single, stolen moment—he let himself believe she would stay. That the building could be whole for more than a month, a week, a night.

That was something the humans had taught him. Even fleeting joy matters.

But still…

Still.