Strange And Beautiful Monsters

iv ➴ when in Rome [✓]

When Addie wakes up the next morning, she wonders if Mae was just a bizarre dream. Then she looks around and recognizes the hotel room. She curses under her breath and rolls over, cheek pressing into soft carpet. Her back aches something fierce, and the taste of sour grapes is even stronger than yesterday.

She picks herself up off the floor and is surprised to find that, aside from the aftereffects of sleeping on the ground, her muscles basically don't hurt at all. She stretches experimentally and only feels minor twinges and soreness. She would be suspicious if she wasn't so relieved. Maybe the transformation went easy on her last night, stranger things have happened. The room isn't even that destroyed this time.

The thought gives her pause almost as soon as she accepts it. Why should the transformation go easy? The night before left her sore until breakfast, and there were only a few days to go before the full moon. Suspicion flares in her gut, and before she's even brushed her teeth she sets to work turning the whole room upside down. She even takes the generic canvas prints off the walls.

Nothing.

Nothing?

She rubs her temples, foggy brain struggling to connect the threads. After a few minutes of standing in the middle of her room, which now looks like a localized tornado ripped through it, she can actually feel her brain malfunctioning, and with a mental shrug sets about her morning routine.

She feels at least slightly better having freshened up, gotten dressed, and righted the room. The suspicion still nags at her though, despite creeping embarrassment for having torn up the place on mere paranoia. The feeling makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, like she's being watched. Just to put her mind at ease, she takes a slower, more deliberate survey of the room, even taking the time to run her fingertips over the surfaces and walls.

When she gets to the window, she jumps back as if bitten. Her fingers scream with pain, pain that makes all the joints in her arm ache. Circular white blisters are already starting to form one each fingertip. Only one substance in the whole world could cause that kind of reaction -- silver. Addie leans in close to the window and narrows her eyes against the sun glaring in. After a moment, her eyes pick out what she's looking for: Hair-thin threads of silver embedded into the wood frame.

She takes a few steps back, eyes unfocused as she processes this new information. There's silver in the windows -- and God knows where else in the room, or the entire building for all she knows. Is it coincidence? Or did Mae somehow figure her out? Is Mae a hunter?

Addie's stomach drops. If Mae is a hunter, she's a sitting duck. There might even be more in town. She'll have to get as far away from Edun as possible, blocked roads be damned, maybe change up her appearance to make her harder to identify. She swings her backpack onto her shoulder and has her hand on the doorknob before she has time to think about it, mind racing with a hundred different plans. She pulls the door open -- and the sight of the empty hallway makes her hesitate.

Could Mae be a hunter? If she is, why treat Addie to lunch and a free hotel room? Why call her pretty? Her face flushes at the memory. Mae is a lot of things -- enigmatic, cocky, confusing, forward -- but surely... Surely a hunter isn't one of them?

Questions swirling in her brain, Addie lets the door close again and wanders over the bed. The mattress is startlingly plush when she sits down, like she sat on an oversized marshmallow instead. She wishes she'd been able to enjoy it. Even the blankets are downy and smooth, light-years from the rough bedding she's used to. She realizes the bathroom is luxurious too, not that she noticed before. How the hell is Mae affording this place indefinitely?

She heaves a sigh. Chasing herself in circles is clearly getting her nowhere. She turns on the TV instead and finds the local news, hoping for a scrap of good luck. When the coverage switches over to the progress of the freak storm, she perks up.