Something Worth Keeping (Monsters Need Mates, Too #1)

Chapter One

“Actually, the provenance chain you’ve entered is incomplete.”

His supervisor, Patricia Holbrook, stopped mid-stride. Her heels clicked once more against the linoleum before silence stretched between them.

“I’m sorry?” Her tone suggested she wasn’t sorry at all.

Patricia’s jaw tightened. She smoothed her blazer, a navy blue monstrosity with shoulder pads that had gone out of style in the nineties and never returned. Julian knew this because he’d accidentally read an entire fashion history book while cross-referencing textile preservation techniques.

“Mr. Purdy, I’ve been running this archive for fifteen years.”

“Sixteen years and four months,” Julian corrected, then caught himself.

He forced a smile, the expression pulled tight across his face in what he hoped was a friendly expression.

His sister had told him that smiling helped his delivery.

It didn’t seem to be working, much like the maintenance department.

“Sorry. I just meant the personnel records indicate you started in August of 2008, so it’s actually sixteen years.

But that’s excellent. Very impressive tenure. ”

The smile clearly hadn’t helped. Patricia’s knuckles whitened around her clipboard. “The date is correct as entered.”

“But it isn’t.” Julian blinked, dropping his smile, confused by the disconnect between reality and her statement. “I can show you the documentation. It’ll only take a minute to pull the file. Well, forty-five seconds if I don’t have to move the stepstool.”

“My office. Now.”

Twenty minutes later, Julian pushed through the library’s side entrance into the November night, a cardboard box tucked under his arm.

He hadn’t been fired - Patricia had been very clear about that.

She was planning to discuss his “situation” with Mr. Pendergast, the library’s manager, at the earliest opportunity.

In the meantime, Julian had been “suspended pending a review of attitude and workplace conduct.”

Julian knew he couldn’t be fired, but discussions with management didn’t happen overnight.

He would be a week without pay, possibly two or more, and that would mean he’d have to take time adjusting his monthly income and expenditure sheets.

And that same suspension had come with the advice for him to “collect your things,” Julian assumed in case the outcome of the discussion wasn’t positive.

It’s not like he hadn’t shown her the documentation because he had. She’d turned an interesting shade of crimson - Pantone 185 C would be the closest approximation - and told him that being correct wasn’t the same as being right.

Which made absolutely no logical sense at all. But Julian had nodded anyway and gone to collect his things.

The box contained his spare sweater, three pens, a half-eaten bag of pretzels, and the small succulent plant his sister had given him for his birthday the previous year.

Unfortunately, the plant was dying, and Julian wasn’t going to leave it behind for that reason alone.

He still couldn’t work out what was wrong with the plant.

He’d followed the care instructions exactly, but it browned anyway, proving that even botanical specimens could be disappointingly imprecise.

Or is it possible that my water-to-soil ratio is incorrect?

Julian adjusted his glasses and headed home. Eighteen blocks was typically a twenty-three-minute walk at his average pace. The temperature had dropped to forty-two degrees, with the wind from the northwest at eight miles per hour. I should’ve grabbed a heavier jacket this morning.

The street stretched before him, halogen lights creating pools of sickly yellow every thirty feet.

Traffic had thinned to the occasional taxi and a bus that rattled past belching diesel exhaust. He could take his usual route along Kensington Avenue, well-lit and populated - although slightly less because of the time and weather - or cut through the warehouse district and shave seven minutes off his trip.

Considering his fingers were already going numb, the warehouse district route seemed more prudent.

The alley between Merchant Street and the old car parts factory had been closed to vehicle traffic since 2019, when the city council had voted to redirect commercial routes.

Julian knew this because he’d archived the city planning documents.

The path was wide enough for foot traffic, lined with dumpsters and the occasional loading dock that jutted out like broken teeth.

His footsteps echoed off brick walls. Somewhere ahead, metal scraped against pavement.

Julian rounded the corner and stopped, double-blinking and checking that his glasses were still in place. They were. I haven’t seen anything like that before.

The thing crouched in the center of the alley wasn’t entirely solid.

Shadows peeled off its form like smoke, curling and reforming, too dark for the ambient light.

It wore the shape of a man, the way Julian wore his cardigan - as a suggestion, not a commitment.

The being was tall, and it would appear it was broad-shouldered, although that could’ve been an illusion.

The edges of the being blurred and moved, making them difficult to track in the dim light, and there were too many angles where there should have been curves.

The darkness gathered thickest around its hands - hands that were currently gripping a man’s torso.

The man – victim would be a more apt term - didn’t scream.

Actually, Julian corrected himself, the victim couldn’t scream.

His mouth was open, yes, but his eyes were wide and unseeing.

The man’s skin was an unusual gray tone that suggested death rather than a skincare regimen gone wrong.

It looked, Julian realized, as if some form of energy was being pulled from the body.

It wasn’t blood, but something less tangible.

Not a vampire then.

The shadow-thing tilted its head, and Julian glimpsed what might have been a face - sharp features, severe, with eyes that swallowed light.

The victim’s body began to crumble, desiccating like time-lapse footage of decay. In thirty seconds, maybe less, the man went from solid to husk. The shadow-thing released him, and the corpse hit the pavement with a sound like kindling breaking.

Then those lightless eyes fixed on Julian.

Julian looked at the body, then at the dumpster three feet away. It was a green, municipal issue, with a lid hanging open, revealing it was already at full capacity. He glanced back at the shadow-thing, which had gone entirely still.

“You can’t leave that there.”

The shadows rippled as if surprised or confused.

Julian stepped closer, setting his cardboard box on a relatively clean section of a loading dock.

“The garbage truck comes at 5 a.m. on this route. Tuesdays and Fridays, without fail. They’ve had the same schedule since the city restructured waste management in 2021.

” He gestured at the overflowing dumpster.

“And that’s already over the weight limit.

The collectors won’t take it. They’ll report it, and then the property owner gets fined, and eventually someone will review the security footage at the end of the alley to determine who’s been filling the dumpster. ”

The thing - whatever it was - appeared to morph into…

something. The shadows pulled tighter, condensing into something more human-shaped.

The being was still tall, but Julian imagined that it was the being’s natural state, and now it was dressed in a very expensive suit.

The face resolved into sharp cheekbones and an equally sharp jaw.

Only the eyes in that face - just two of them this time - looked out of place.

They were completely black, leaving Julian with the impression he was looking into a void.

“You are not screaming.” The voice emerged low, resonant, with an odd formality that suggested English wasn’t its first language. Or maybe language itself was a recent acquisition.

“Why would I scream?” Julian frowned, studying the corpse.

“He’s already dead. Screaming won’t change that.

” He crouched, careful not to let his khakis touch the grimy pavement, and examined the visible skin on the victim’s forearm.

“I don’t usually like to speak ill of people, but based on that tattoo, he probably deserved it. ”

The shadow-man moved closer, silent as smoke. “You recognize the marking.”

“It’s the symbol of the Vane Syndicate.” Julian pointed at the stylized V wrapped around a coiled serpent, done in black ink that had faded to blue-green.

“They control most of the drug trafficking on the east side, and there have been indications in the past two years of them moving into human trafficking. At least according to the police reports I archived last month. Well, not ‘archived’ officially, since those records are technically still active investigations, but I processed the paperwork.”

He straightened, brushing his hands together even though he hadn’t touched anything. “So, statistically speaking, this man was involved in activities that caused measurable harm to the community. Your intervention likely prevented future damage.”

Silence stretched between them. The creature stared at him with an intensity that should have been uncomfortable, but instead felt oddly...focused. Julian wondered if that was how a bug felt being seen through a microscope.

“You are helping me.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m preventing you from making a logistical error.

” Julian checked his watch. It was 10:47 PM.

“The blue dumpster three streets over, behind the old Morrison building, has a broken lock and doesn’t get collected until Saturday.

That gives you sixty-three hours before anyone checks it.

Though honestly, you should probably dismember the body first. Doing that would reduce the volume and make it easier to conceal under other refuse. ”

The shadow-man tilted his head, and something that might have been fascination rippled across those impossible features. “You are remarkable.”

“I’m efficient.” Julian picked up his box again. “There’s a difference. Now, are you going to move the body, or should I go around?”

Those black eyes tracked his every movement, unblinking. “I will relocate the remains.”

“Good.” Julian started to step past, then paused. “Also, you’re leaking shadows onto the pavement. I don’t know if that’s trace evidence or not, but it seems inefficient.”

The darkness immediately contracted, pulled tight against the man’s form until he looked almost human. Almost.

“Better,” Julian said. He made it five steps before curiosity - his sister called it his “fatal flaw” - made him turn back. “Do you do this often? The killing?”

“I remove problems.” The creature lifted the corpse with one hand, effortlessly, as if the dead man weighed nothing. “I have done so for a very long time.”

“Hmm.” Julian adjusted his glasses, thinking.

“Well, if you’re going to continue, you should invest in a disposal method that doesn’t rely on municipal waste services.

Statistically, that’s where most criminals get caught, in the cleanup, rather than the act itself.

” He shifted the box to his other hip. “But you sound as if you’ve had plenty of experience, so it’s just a thought. ”

He walked away, footsteps echoing in the alley.

Behind him, something that might have been a laugh rippled through the darkness - low and rusty, as if the being had never laughed before.

Julian didn’t look back. He had seven more blocks to walk, his fingers were still numb, and his succulent was definitely dying.

The body disposal advice had taken three minutes and forty-five seconds, which meant he’d lost some of the advantage the route had initially offered.

But it was still close enough to being on schedule to make the deviation from his regular route worth it.

As he walked, Julian analyzed his own physiology.

His heart seemed overly active for a regular walk, and he appeared to have had an adrenaline spike for some reason.

It’s likely a normal physiological response to an abnormal situation - pure chemistry, in other words.

Julian was sure his bodily reaction had nothing to do with the way those black eyes had focused on him as if he were someone worth listening to. Nothing at all.