Page 10 of Misfit Monsters
She’s been welcoming enough to me that I want to reassure her. I should do something kind for her too.
“You don’t need to worry,” I say. “They really do care what you think.”
Her attention snaps back to me. “What?”
I fumble under the sudden intensity of her stare. “I just mean, you’ve already impressed them. They want to listen to you. So you don’t need to worry.”
For a split-second, Gloss’s eyes narrow. A jolt of fury hits me right in the throat, searing like charred peppers.
Then it’s gone. She takes a step back with a crisp laugh, and my sense of her inner state dwindles to nothing.
“It sounds like the only one who’s worried is you.” She turns to Tansy, who’s just hurried back to join her.
The other woman dips her head. “Mica moved into room five. But there’s a bed in?—”
“In room twelve.” Gloss’s eyes glint at me as if nothing went wrong, but several of the beings around her stiffen.
“Twelve,” her other friend hisses. “Are you sure?—”
Gloss clasps her slender hands together. “I think room twelve would be perfect for Periwinkle. Exactly the atmosphere she needs. Unless someone else wanted to claim that spot?”
The hall has gone silent, broken by a brief chuckle from the icy man. The pine tree he was conjuring flits apart into a puff of snowflakes. “Brilliant as always, Gloss.”
Gloss’s face lights up. She gestures for me to move on. “You won’t have any trouble finding it. They’re all in order.”
I summon a smile that feels tighter than before. “Thank you.”
As I weave between my watching dormmates down the hall, no one speaks other than a few murmurs. A hum of edgy anticipation has come into the air.
What are they waiting for? What do they think is going to happen?
The room labeled twelve is right at the end of the hall on the right side. When I turn the handle, it opens easily.
There isn’t much point in locks when we can all slip through the shadows beneath the doors if we want.
I step inside.
The room appears empty—at least, of other beings. Two twin-sized beds with simple wooden bedframes stand at opposite ends, with even smaller desks just beyond their footboards. The walls are the same light blue as in the halls. A square rug in a darker shade covers most of the floor between the beds.
I’m not alone, though. My senses quiver with the awareness of another shadowkind nearby, merged with the patch of darkness around the lefthand bed.
A shadowkind that’s radiating outrage.
Before I can even turn toward the impression, he materializes out of the darkness. The huge man looms nearly as high as the ceiling, ropey muscles bulging across his limbs and chest, his tan face that might have been stunning otherwise set in a fierce expression. Thick brown hair gleams like buffed bronze as it bristles from the top of his head.
His badge shows a number one like mine… and a ten-pointed star with a ring around it. Pearl said that means he’s hurt shadowkind as well as mortals.
“What are you doing in here?” he growls.
My heart stutters. I hold up my hands appeasingly and step back toward the other bed. “I—they told me this is the room I should be in. With a free bed.”
I can hear my voice going squeaky. A smattering of light touches the walls as my hair flickers with a sickly yellow flare of fear.
The immense man bares his teeth. “This ismyroom. I don’t share. Get out!”
My pulse outright lurches. I back up, on the verge of fleeing, when a giggle reaches my ears from beyond the door.
My dormmates—and specifically Gloss—sent me into this situation on purpose. They knew the room’s current inhabitant would be furious.
