The coffeehouse was crammed full of people sitting knee-to-knee and talking loudly over the battery-powered boom box that played hip-hop. Tea lights flickered on every table and counter-top, and hurricane lanterns glowed from the corners of the room. Small camping stoves were set up on the counters, heating delicious-smelling drinks.
Ruby ordered for everyone: three hot chocolates with extra whipped cream and a plate full of pastries. The barista, a midtwenties guy with a ponytail and a patch over one eye, didn’t make her pay. He said they were trying to get rid of everything before things went rotten. The three girls wandered to the back of the place and found a small wooden table carved with decades of hearts and initials.
Ruby passed out pastries. Her spiky purple hair had fallen down in the rain and lay limply on her head. She swiped a finger through her whipped cream and licked it. “Shall we?” she asked Amber.
The other girl nodded and leaned toward Celia. “So. Once upon a time, people could be magicians, if they learned the right things, studied hard, and were smart. They could take magic from all living things and manipulate it.” Amber took a sip of her drink and gave herself a whipped-cream mustache. “Then, about a hundred and fifty years ago, humans stopped being able to use magic. We can still activate spells, if someone else makes them for us, but that’s all. We can’t take raw magic and do anything with it.”
Celia nodded slowly. “Okay. What changed?” she asked.
“No one knows what happened, but magic closed to us on the same day Littles and Bigs showed up.”
Celia dipped bits of cinnamon roll into her cocoa and licked the vanilla-scented icing that dripped onto her palm. With every sip, she felt more awake. She took a deep breath. “So what are Littles and Bigs?”
Amber leaned forward. “We call them that because it’s safer than saying what they really are. Some Bigs have really good hearing.”
Ruby’s hands curled into fists.
Amber’s eyes darted around the room. She leaned closer until Celia could smell the fruity scent of her shampoo. “What they really are is . . . monsters.”
Monsters? Celia rolled her eyes and looked from one girl to the other. Neither of them smiled.
They thought monsters were real, and had made the earthquake using magic, and that she was part of some prophecy having to do with . . . monsters? She almost started laughing, except . . . the word did something funny inside her. It made her breath catch and she found herself looking in all directions, as though there might be a monster in this café, which was ridiculous because there was no such thing as monsters. Everyone knew that.
“Breathe, Celia. Just breathe. If there’s anywhere safe in Youngstown right now, it’s here with us in a loud, crowded place.” Ruby grabbed hold of Celia’s cold hands.
Celia whispered, “Monsters aren’t real.”
“They shouldn’t be real,” Amber whispered back. “But they are.”
Celia shook her head.
“You’ve seen monsters. Kids can see them,” Ruby said. She ran her hand across the tea light’s flame, close enough to leave black marks on her fingertips. “Deep down, if you think about it, you know we’re telling the truth. Kids see Bigs and forget about them right away, because our minds refuse to believe it. We glimpse Littles and think they are just dressed funny, even though a part of us knows they aren’t real kids. Hunters see monsters and don’t forget like other kids, because monsters have hurt us. You’ll be able to see them too, now that we’ve told you about them, but you’ll have to work at it at first.”
Half memories of shadow-things flickered through Celia’s mind. That time she’d been camping in the Cascades and saw something huge and misshapen flapping above the trees. Or how once, at Washington Park, all the shadows had turned strange and it had felt like they were chasing her. And even though monster was just a normal word, a word people used all the time, she didn’t want to say it out loud, because what if Amber was right and something out there might notice?
Ruby pushed a stale chocolate croissant toward Celia. She touched a star-shaped scar on her neck. “You’re going to start seeing stranger and stranger things.”
Celia looked at the front door and wanted to run down a dozen streets until she made it home. But what if they were really out there, ready to attack her? She took a bite of pastry but didn’t taste it. “If all this is true, how come no one knows?” Her voice sounded faraway and small.
“Monsters own magic, so they’re good at hiding. They make spells to hide any proof that they exist. And even though no one knows they’re real, people can’t stop telling stories about them,” Amber said.
“Think about all the stories about things that go bump in the night,” Ruby said. “Think about how many horror movies there are about monsters. No one knows, but at the same time everyone is obsessed with them because deep down, people sense stuff.”
Celia opened her mouth and shook her head. Monsters weren’t real. She remembered a lullaby her dad used to sing to her about locking all the doors and lighting all the lanterns to keep safe. She thought about the rows and rows of monster masks at the Halloween store, and all the books about monsters she had read. Celia traced her finger over a carved skull-and-crossbones etched into the table and wondered, What if all this is real? “Tell me more,” she whispered, and filled her mouth with the bittersweet taste of cooling cocoa.
Amber took out a pen and started doodling on a paper napkin.
“First you have a Big. That’s what we call an adult monster.” She sketched a shaggy, gorilla-like creature. “Then you have a Little. A kid monster.” She drew a kid with devil horns. “Then you have us. Normal kids.” She made arrows between the pictures. “Every Big used to be a Little, and every Little used to be a normal kid.”
“What? Monsters are human?”
“Not even slightly. But they used to be,” Ruby said.
The tea light flickered. That meant . . . people could be turned into monsters? “How?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Amber said. “A Little can change a regular kid into a Little by touching them for a while. The second a Little changes someone, that Little turns into a Big. When a Little changes us, that makes them Big, get it? Littles can only change other kids, though: not grown-ups.” She redrew her arrows on the napkin.
Celia thought about viruses and how quickly they could spread. “How many millions and millions of them are there?” She looked around the room.
“Not that many.” Amber stared into the tea light. “First, because hunters hunt them. And second, Bigs enslave the Littles they make for years and years. But eventually, every sneaky Little finds a way to escape and attack a new kid, and the whole scruddy cycle starts all over again.”
“So hunters kill these . . . Littles and Bigs?” Celia hated killing anything, even mosquitoes.
Amber looked startled. “No. Just Bigs. And we mostly don’t kill them.”
“But you said Littles are the ones who attack kids, right?”
“Sure,” Amber said. “But before a Little attacks a kid, they haven’t done anything wrong. And some Littles try to be good. They aren’t that different than us. They—”
“No.” Ruby interrupted her. “However nice they act, Littles always destroy another kid eventually. They can’t help it. It’s who they are. When we catch a Little, we turn them over to the Council of Elders. They keep them locked up. That’s the only safe thing to do with Littles.”
“The Elders. They’re your bosses?” Celia drank the last of her hot chocolate.
“Sort of. They all used to be hunters. The best and brightest get to sit on the council. The Elders recruit us and train all the kids who’ve been hurt by monsters. Being a hunter is not”—Amber looked away—“it’s not a life anyone would want for a kid, so they only train those of us whose lives have already been ruined by them. Kids do the hunting, since we can see them, and the council does everything they can to help us and keep us safe.”
Something lurched into the café. Celia tensed but then saw it was just a guy wearing a thick down jacket and furry hood.
“This isn’t a joke, is it?” The word monster repeated over and over in Celia’s head. She felt like throwing up.
“It’s the opposite of a joke. Bigs hunt people and eat them. Or they drain them of their life forces until they lose their will to live. Or a million other terrible things, because they are super evil. Imagine being hurt or worse by something you can’t even see. Last night they figured out how to make a huge spell that shook all of Youngstown and trapped everyone here. We don’t know why, or what they are planning next, but people will get hurt. People will get killed by invisible things they can’t fight against. We have to figure out how to stop them. We need your help, Celia.”
“I’m good at writing book reports,” Celia said. “Riding a bike, being bored, making pizza as long as someone else does the dough. But you know what I’m not good at? Fighting anything, ever.” Her voice went higher and higher as she talked.
“We don’t know what the doom girl will have to do,” Amber said. “Maybe you won’t have to fight. There are other ways you can help. Maybe book reports will save the city.”
It’s time for me to go home, Celia almost said. But what was at home besides loneliness, broken glass, and being alone with way too many thoughts?
The world had monsters in it, maybe. And if that impossible thing was true, then maybe for some impossible reason she’d been chosen to stop whatever they were planning. If she did that, she’d have a whole group of intense hunter friends. They’d have secret handshakes, give her a nickname, and tell jokes that only made sense to each other. She’d be Celia the monster hunter. Celia the brave.
She knew it wouldn’t actually be like that, that real life was never how you imagined it, but then again, if there were monsters, maybe there were heroes too.
Celia drank the last of her hot chocolate and sat up straight. “You know you’re going to have to prove that monsters are real, right?”
Ruby grinned. She drummed her knuckles over the wooden table. “We thought you’d never ask.”
Amber and Ruby followed her as Celia led the way out of the café.