If she was upset or fearful, she only had to think of him and he would come to her. It didn’t matter that he didn’t exist beyond the outer reaches of her vision, or that when she blinked he was gone. He was as real to her as any of her foster carers or teachers.
Stella had been three when her parents were killed in a car crash. When she pictured that day it was as a sharp turn in the road, a change in the path of her life. Behind her was a meandering, sweet-smelling country lane, lined with flowers. Ahead there was a gray concrete highway with nothing on either side to alleviate the monotonous view.
Every attempt had been made to find adoptive parents for her. “She has no other family and—I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because she’s such a fey child or always lurching into mischief—but she doesn’t seem to take, if you know what I mean. And she should have grown out of the imaginary-friend phase long ago.”
Stella had overheard that fractious comment one day as she sat outside the matron’s office in the children’s home waiting to take her punishment for her latest transgression. It had set the tone for a childhood spent alternating between kindly foster homes and a series of trying-too-hard-to-be-homely institutions. It didn’t matter. She always had him.
No one else listened when Stella talked about the monster that lived under her bed. It didn’t matter where she slept, the monster would be there awaiting her arrival. Although its eyes were dark, sometimes they burned ember bright. In the dark reaches of the night, it whispered Stella’s name in a low, scratchy voice. The monster wanted Stella. Not just any little girl. Her. She would squeeze her eyes shut and her lips would form a silent plea for the monster to leave her alone. Her protector always came in answer to those appeals.
If she didn’t look directly at him, she could see the protector’s tall shadow on the edge of her vision. Somehow it was easier in the dark. Once, in the children’s home, the curtains had not been fully closed and a sliver of moonlight from the streetlight outside had sneaked through. Briefly, it had illuminated his face, allowing her eager gaze to drink in his square, determined jaw, fine mouth and silver-gray eyes. She had been startled into turning her head to stare directly at him, and he had instantly disappeared. From then on, he had taken care not to allow her any further close-up glimpses.
He spoke to the monster in a guttural language Stella didn’t recognize. Not aloud, of course. Instead the whispered words seeped into her subconscious. The monster would whine and attempt to cling to the floorboards in response. As her heart pounded out a rhythm of relief, Stella would sense the monster’s defeat and hear its slithering departure. Over the years, Stella came to understand how it worked. Even to accept it. The monster would always be there. It would always want her. But she would be safe...so long as her protector was near.
Now, for the first time in her life, the monster was gone. She had been so tired the first night after her arrival that she’d tumbled into bed in the strange room on the casa’s upper floor and not given it a thought. After five nights in Moncoya’s Barcelona mansion, she felt she could officially say her bedroom was a monster-free zone. And all it had taken to bring about this purge was a two-and-a-half-hour international flight. Maybe monsters didn’t have passports.
Stella sometimes wondered if her monochrome childhood was responsible for her neon-color imagination. Whatever the cause, her mind was a constant whirl of ideas. When she was young, color, shape, music and poetry all vied for her attention. As she grew up and became more discerning, she had become more focused. Honing her natural artistic skills in college, she had pursued her ultimate dream by completing a master’s degree in computer games design. She had left school twelve months ago to seek a job in London. In the most competitive field imaginable, slap in the middle of a recession.
The question was always the same. “What have you done?”
The answer never varied. “Nothing yet.”
Her awesome, hard-won qualifications counted for nothing. It was a vicious circle. Give me a job so I can prove myself. Prove yourself and we might give you a job. She took a routine office job to pay the bills on her tiny studio and spent her evenings dreaming up new ideas for games. She met up with a few university friends for drinks one weekend, and they had discussed their various ideas. The subject of crowd funding came up. It was how “Supernova Deliverance,” an online survival game with a supernatural theme, had been born. In its turn, it had led Stella to this job.
The email from Moncoya’s personal assistant had come on a cold, miserable day. One on which her job had seemed more boring than ever. It was fate, she decided, her heart skipping several beats as she read and reread it. Senor Moncoya had followed the progress of the crowd funding project with interest. He was particularly impressed with the way she had laid out the conceptual framework and her graphics development skills. There was a temporary internship at Moncoya Enterprises in Barcelona. Would she be interested?
“I have to reply today!” Realizing she had spoken aloud, she had retreated back behind her computer screen, her mind whirling with possibilities.
There was a brief job description. Ability to visualize compelling social games. Knowledge and insight of game balance. Strong design and drafting skills. Key phrases danced around her mind as she typed her resignation letter. Fluency in Spanish an advantage. Must sign a confidentiality contract. Good thing she’d chosen to take Spanish at school.
“Muchas gracias, Senor Moncoya. Te amo mucho.”
Since she had joined his company, Moncoya had given her no reason to withdraw that declaration of undying love. Okay, so he had some very odd friends and they liked to party hard. But if Moncoya wanted to hang out with a group of people who looked like stylish punk rockers that was his business. She caught occasional glimpses of his friends and was struck by two things that they had in common. They were all stunningly beautiful, and she wondered if that was a deliberate choice of Moncoya’s. Being so striking himself, did he choose to surround himself with others who were similarly good-looking?
The other thing they shared was a style idiosyncrasy. Each of them wore the same contact lenses. They all had the same curious ring of fire around their iris as Moncoya. Was it a statement? A tribute to Moncoya? Or was Moncoya’s own yellow burst of fire also the result of contact lenses? Out of interest, Stella had searched the internet for it. She had found something called “central heterochromia” that apparently would have got you an automatic burning as a witch in the Middle Ages, but even that didn’t come close to the blaze of color exhibited by Moncoya and his party people. She had shrugged it off. As a fashion statement it was extreme, but Moncoya was extreme. It was part of his charm.
There had been a horrible misunderstanding a few nights ago when some of Moncoya’s friends had taken a shine to Stella and seemed to feel she was an important guest rather than realizing she was just a very junior employee. They had wanted her to join the party, and she’d been forced to make a hurried exit. Somehow she didn’t think the amused tolerance Moncoya had so far demonstrated toward her would survive any attempts to gate-crash into his social sphere.
Stella was aware of the occasional exchange of looks between the other game design employees. She had overheard one or two barbed comments. She suspected she was meant to hear them.
“Why is el jefe still around? Never known him to hang around la casa for more than a day. Two at most.”
“Could it have anything to do with his new pet? The little crowd funder protégé? He calls her his star.”
“She’s a bit young for Moncoya, surely? Although, come to think of it, she does have that elven look he likes so much.”
Diego had chimed into the conversation
