Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury

Author:Liselle Sambury
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE DAISY

Already almost a month had passed since we moved, and while October in Toronto was a slightly chilled version of September, in Timmins, it was the signal to begin winter. Snow fell intermittently in soft flakes that coated the ground in a thin dusting, and melted shortly after. Some people continued to stubbornly wear short sleeves as if it weren’t happening.

I stepped on damp leaves as I made my way through the bush to King’s place. The air was empty of predatory insects and instead developed a silence that was so crisp I could almost taste it. Like a fresh spray of ice-cold water onto your tongue. Chilled but refreshing.

Despite my declaration that he and Ivy stay away from me, I needed King for rides, and he was either gracious or pitying enough to continue offering them. Our drives were quiet and awkward. But his family never restarted their campaign against us running the Airbnb. I guess that despite everything, he wasn’t mad enough at me to go back on his promise to keep them away.

Ivy, I had successfully avoided. Since the Ted-and-Mary incident, we’d had four more weekends of guests, each of them awarding Mom with five stars. One woman, a Black lady who came up from the city with her boyfriend, even claimed that she felt like an entirely new person after staying. That she was going to write a book about it. Toronto people could be so dramatic.

But it delighted Mom all the same. She was thriving—her own words.

Meanwhile, I kept finding myself awake in the middle of the night. Up suddenly and shifting, restless. And Mom would be just outside my door, shuffling and then stopping. One night I called out to her, but she didn’t say anything. The next day I asked her about it, and she denied it.

I knew that I should be going into the house. Trying to do something about a situation that was clearly wrong. But I dealt with the dead, not with houses who fed on the living. King had basically told me it was too late. It was probably going to get worse.

Based on what King and Ivy said, the normal function of the house was that it called in the dead and forced them to pass on by consuming them. Now, for some reason, it was ignoring them and going after the living, leaving the house to fill with ghosts who couldn’t leave. And I had no idea how to fix it.

There were more butcherbirds than ever now. They coated the trees in dashes of salt and pepper, but the mansion had become their true home. The guests loved them, taking photos and videos. One of them, some sort of bird-watcher guy, insisted that they should have already moved on from the area by now. It was too cold for them. Besides, they weren’t even native to this region.

And yet they stayed.

I pulled my coat tighter around my body and walked faster.

It was darker in the mornings now, and the shadows that bounced off the trees and bushes made me uneasy.

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