The afternoon sun in London was a pale, watery thing that did little to warm the drafty interior of 12 Blackwood Lane. Artie Penhaligon had spent the better part of his first full day out of the house, wandering the streets of Islington with a charcoal pencil and a heavy Moleskine sketchbook. He was chasing the shadows of Regency-era facades, but his mind kept drifting back to the floor plan of his new home. As an architect, he thought in terms of circulation and flow, and yet the flow of his new house felt fundamentally broken.
He had left at noon, passing Étienne's closed, reinforced door. He had returned briefly at three to find the kitchen smelling of rosemary and raw iron, with Rocco nowhere to be found. Now, as the clocks struck five and the city began its slow descent into the blue hour, Artie retreated once more to a nearby pub to finish his sketches, leaving the house empty.
Or so he thought.
Inside the house, the silence was not empty; it was heavy. As the front gate clicked shut behind Artie, the stillness in the hallway shifted. On the first floor, the heavy, steel-lined door of the rear bedroom opened without a sound.
Étienne stepped into the hall. He was no longer in his crisp hospital scrubs. He wore a silk dressing gown the color of dried blood, his movements fluid and soundless. He did not go to the kitchen; he went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up toward Artie's empty room. He stood perfectly still for three minutes, not even the rise and fall of a chest betraying his presence. Then, he turned his head toward the back door.
"He is gone," Étienne said, his voice a low vibration that carried easily through the floorboards.
The back door creaked open. Rocco stepped in from the garden, shaking droplets of rain from his wild mane of hair. He looked agitated. His broad chest heaved with a vitality that seemed to vibrate against Étienne's cold stillness. He carried a bundle of sage and a small, rusted iron trowel.
"He is a good boy, that one," Rocco said, his Italian accent thick and gravelly. "Polite. He smells like old paper and expensive soap. Better than the last one, who smelled of cheap gin and desperation."
"He is an architect, Rocco," Étienne replied, his eyes tracking a single spider crawling across the ceiling. "He looks at things. He measures things. He noticed the bolt on his door within twenty minutes of arrival. He is observant, which makes him a liability."
Rocco grunted, moving to the kitchen island and tossing his herbs onto the wood. "We need the rent, Étienne. The roof is leaking over the pantry, and I cannot fix it with charm alone. Besides, the house felt... stagnant. We need a pulse in here. It keeps us honest."
"It keeps you fed," Étienne countered, finally descending the stairs. He stopped three feet away from Rocco, a distance maintained by instinctual habit. "I do not require 'honesty.' I require a lack of questions. If he begins to wonder why my 'night shifts' at the hospital never result in a tan, or why you spend your 'camping trips' locked in the cellar when the moon is fat, our arrangement ends."
Rocco leaned over the counter, his large hands gripping the edge until the wood groaned. "He works afternoons. You work nights. I work the bistro. We are ships in the night. It is a perfect design! Even an architect cannot see what isn't there."
"He will see," Étienne whispered. "He has already begun to catalog the house. I saw him looking at the foundation. He noticed the cold. He is American; they are a curious people, unburdened by the European tradition of minding one's own business."
"Then we be careful," Rocco said, his voice softening but gaining a predatory edge. "I will cook for him. I will be the loud, happy Italian. You... you try to be less of a corpse. Smile once in a while. It won't kill you. Again."
Étienne's lip curled in a ghost of a sneer. "I am a doctor of medicine. My 'bedside manner' is sufficient. But we must set rules. No 'accidents' in the common areas. No raw meat left in the sink. And for the love of all that is holy, Rocco, keep your shedding to your own quarters. I found a coarse grey hair on the bathroom mat this morning."
Rocco let out a booming laugh that shook the copper pots hanging from the ceiling. "It is a natural process! You wouldn't understand, you frozen statue. You haven't changed a hair in a hundred years."
"Precisely," Étienne said. He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a small, delicate crystal glass. He didn't reach for the wine; he reached for a thermos he had brought home from the hospital, hidden behind a stack of dusty cookbooks. "We must maintain the facade. If he suspects, we do not lie—we distract. He is old money. He values decorum. We give him a home, and in return, he gives us the cover of a normal life."
Rocco watched Étienne pour a thick, dark crimson liquid into the glass. The smell hit the air—metallic and salt-heavy. Rocco's nostrils flared, his pupils dilating for a split second before he forced himself to look away, focusing on his basil.
"Forty chapters," Rocco muttered to himself, a private joke. "I give him forty days before he finds your 'juice' in the fridge, Frenchman."
"He won't," Étienne said, taking a measured sip. "Because he wants to believe in a normal life just as much as we do."
A floorboard creaked above them—not Artie, but the house settling. The two monsters stood in the kitchen of the Victorian terrace, a doctor and a chef, bound by a lease and a secret.
Outside, the streetlamps flickered to life. Artie was walking back from the pub, his sketchbook tucked under his arm, feeling a strange sense of excitement about his new roommates. He was thinking about the beautiful symmetry of the house, unaware that the two men inside were currently debating exactly how much of his "pulse" they could tolerate.
As Artie reached the front door, he lifted as he turned the key, just as Étienne had instructed. The bolt slid back smoothly. When he entered, the house was silent. The kitchen was dark, and Étienne was nowhere to be seen. But on the table sat a small wooden bowl, hand-carved, filled with fresh basil and a note in a sprawling, energetic hand: For the architect. Welcome home.
Artie smiled, touched by the gesture. He didn't notice the faint, lingering scent of antiseptic and wild animal that hung in the air like a warning.