“I said something’s wrong,” Wrath says the moment I turn around. He hunches down from the landing on the second floor looking down at me. When did he move up there?

  “Everything’s fine,” I say dreamily. Nico. That’s a nice name. Even if he heard me tell him he’s pretty — and that will certainly mortify me later — for now the only thing I know is that I just had a successful conversation with a boy. I shiver, apparently so proud of myself that I have goose bumps running up and down my arms. It doesn’t go away after a moment, and I realize it’s more about the temperature than the boy.

  I head up the stairs, bypassing Wrath and heading for my room in search of a sweater. It’s close to fall and not nearly sweater weather, but Morecroft Manor has its own climate.

  “No,” Wrath says slowly, following me, “something’s definitely… off.”

  My room feels even ten degrees colder than the downstairs. In addition to the sweater, I put on another pair of socks. “Did you do something to anger the furnace?”

  “The furnace knows it’s place. Besides, it’s summer. It’s supposed to be cool inside. Don’t tell me you’re going to start complaining about that, now. This is like that first winter all over again! Besides, I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you, Theo!”

  Wrath jokes, but that first winter after my mom left, the Manor flew into a rage. The furnace shut down. It was just in time for a blizzard that brought a wave of sub-zero temperatures through the valley. I was six years old, it’s not like I could build a fire. Or even knew how to start one. That’s not the point.

  That first night, Wrath kept me bundled in blankets and made himself hotter in order to keep me warm. Eventually, he stalked down into the basement in a rage and screamed at the furnace in a long dead language. The house lights flickered, slow at first but then faster and faster, threatening to go out the longer he yelled. The furnace finally relented and the heat returned.

  “Humans can get hypothermia,” I explain again for the thousandth time. “Just because demons can’t doesn’t mean I’m making it up.”

  He snorts derisively, but after a moment his voice is softer. “You really don’t feel that?”

  “I feel cold,” I say, as yet another fresh blast of arctic air shoots through the house from somewhere. It cuts right through my sweater, pebbling my skin, and I dive into bed and swaddle myself under the covers.

  Wrath appears in the doorway, poking his head in. “I’ll go have a word with the Downstairs. If the furnace is throwing a snit, I’ll figure out why.” He cocks a grin at me. “Maybe they don’t like your new boyfriend.”

  I just glare at him, because my teeth chatter too much to formulate a retort.

  The house grows colder and colder until I can see frost forming a thick rime against the window. Snowflake patterns thicken across the glass, then twist into snow talons that claw their way onto the walls.

  “Wrath…” I try to call, but the iciness in the house steals into my mouth and from there into my lungs, and I burrow deeper into the blankets. My breath is a crystal cloud in front of me, hanging there for only a moment before it dissipates like an All Souls Night visitor as dawn breaks.

  I lose track of time until a great shuddering in the walls pulls my attention awake again, and when I open my eyes, the frost on the windows and walls has dripped away, leaving moisture lines running down the surfaces. Wrath appears in the hallway, and then climbs into bed next to me, snuggling close. His body radiates warmth, and it chases away the lingering cold until I’m sweltering inside the blanket burrito I’ve made for myself.

  “Something made the furnace panic. He’s all skittish now, and threw open the Gates that let the frost in. I think I managed to scare him enough to get it together. But I wasn’t wrong. Something’s going on. You don’t think there’s something… off with your afternoon delight, do you?”

  Wrath frames his words so carefully that at first I don’t understand what he’s talking about, but as soon as I do, I can feel myself flushing for an entirely different reason.

  “He’s not… it’s not…”

  “Oh, calm down. Stop being a repressed little mortal. There’s nothing about sex you should be embarrassed about.”

  I shudder in disgust. Demons should not be allowed to give The Talk. “You made me think humans had praying mantis sex, and that the woman bite the man’s head off afterwards. Then you confused vaginas with Venus fly-traps and said they’d bite it off.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Luckily you came out and you never had to worry about it,” Wrath says blithely. “Straight people sex is still weird.”

  “I know you think you’re funny, but you’re really not.” I try struggling out of my bundle, but Wrath has wrapped himself around me in a way that has pinned at the blankets between us.

  “Let me out.”

  “Five more minutes,” he whines.

  But the feeling of confinement stops feeling comforting and starts becoming claustrophobic. “Wrath!” I start to struggle harder, but the harder I struggle the less progress getting free I make and it feels more and more terrifying. All of a sudden I think about the sarcophagus Isaac found and being trapped inside…

  Wrath says something but his words are muted and I can’t make them out. My breath grows fast, and I can’t seem to get any air, and I struggle, my heartbeat pounds against my ribcage so hard it’s going to explode and there are tears forming and I can feel sobs as I strain and fight and—

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Wrath says quickly, shredding through my blankets with his claws to free me faster than I ever could. He cuts through the fabric easily, but also manages not to so much as scratch me. A handful of seconds later, and he’s pulled me from the cocoon and into an upright position. His hands massage my back, slow and steady as I hiccup through my breaths.

  It takes a lot longer to come down this time, and I bury my face against his chest, though I stop crying almost immediately. My shudders, though, are the last to fade away, but he never lets me go. And he never stops murmuring comforting words.

  “I’ll change your sheets before you get ready for bed tonight,” Wrath promises once I’m calm again. It’s the closest he gets to an apology. The room temperature settles back to normal with barely a trace of frost. If anything now it’s almost balmy - like the furnace is trying to make amends.

  “Okay,” I nod, just as I hear the flap in the front door slam closed. “Mail’s here,” I say and rush from the room as an excuse to just put some space between us for a moment. In lieu of a mailbox, Morecroft Manor just has a slot in the door that the mailman slips the mail into. Or at least that’s what I assume. Unlike the delivery people, I’ve never actually spotted the mailman. He always seems to show up when I’m otherwise occupied.

  At the front door, I bend down and pick up the day’s mail, and peer through the glass in the door for a glimpse of Nico, but he must be inside with the flashlight still.

  The first thing I notice is a colorful postcard with my name scrawled across the back. Oversized compared to a normal postcard yet barely big enough for all the writing on the back. Just like all of the postcards I receive from Uncle Doom this one is a colorful, but non-descriptive location that could be anywhere.

  The colors are so saturated they could bleed through the card stock onto my fingers and I would not be surprised. This one shows a beach with people sunbathing, playing in the water, and shapes that look strangely like shark fins in the distance. The more I study it, the more details that pop out at me. The people frolicking, aren’t they screaming? Those sunbathers… aren’t those corpses?

  Uncle Doom’s art style is unmistakable - macabre but cozy, with a morbid attention to detail.

  Theo my boy,

  I miss you with an unholy fervor. Say hello to your dear Wrath for me. Tell him how delighted I was with the rib bone he sent me for Solstice. Miss you both horrifically!

  Yesterday, I thought I ran into a member of The Order, but it turned out to be a cockroach with an inferiority complex. Worry not, they are still looking, but I am excellent at hiding from consequences.

  Speaking of your parents, if they turn up I will be certain to shriek the old hymns on your behalf.

  From beneath the floorboards,

  Uncle D

  “Huh.” I drop the rest of the mail on the kitchen table and then head into the drawing room and drop down onto one of the fainting couches that are original to the house.

  Wrath comes in a bit later to find me studying the postcard again. He’s got on an apron with an anime demon on it, and underneath it the words I’m a demon in the kitchen he found on Oubliettesy that he just had to have. I show him the postcard and refuse to comment on the apron. I’ve found it’s better not to give Wrath too much attention.

  “The Order, huh?”

  I nod. There’s something weird about his expression, which is normally hard to read. Wrath doesn’t exactly wear his emotions on his face. “Do you know what that means?”

  A timer goes off in the kitchen and he disappears, which feels intentional. He returns a few minutes later with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk like I’m still a five year old. I don’t argue, though, because they’re fresh out of the oven and still hot. “What do you remember about your parents coming here?” he asks, lifting up my legs and then sitting down on the other end of the couch. He pulls my legs onto his lap and rests his hands to be sure they’re warm enough.

  “Mostly just what you’ve told me. I don’t remember much from back then. I was still too little.”

  Another thing that demons question is the idea that adults don’t remember things that happened to them when they were babies. I can tell he wants to argue, but he manages to swallow it down.

  “Remember I told you that your parents had an organization they worked with? It was The Order. And they left under… less than ideal circumstances.”

  That’s vague enough that it sounds like it’s deliberately trying not to tell me anything. I frown at him, and Wrath actually squirms.

  “They… may have stolen a few things on their way out the door. I doubt The Order was very happy. They had a particularly large collection of…” he mumbles something.

  “What?”

  “Some people collect things out of habits. Beanie Babies, Funko Pops...”

  “And what about The Order?”

  “Well… they collected apocalypses.”