1. LEOPOLD
one
S t. Auguste was a beautiful school. Seriously, being sent to take mandatory classes there felt far less like a punishment and more like a continuation of my university days, and there was nothing wrong with that. Our classroom was light and airy, the chairs new and comfortable, and the Wi-Fi was good. Each table had a power outlet.
About the punishment aspect of this whole thing, I had been assured by my Hawthorne case worker that this wasn’t about punishment at all but about welcoming me into the world of the supernatural and educating me about all its many wonders. But we were expected to take notes and there were tests, so obviously it was to punish us.
Our class was currently about fifteen people, but the numbers changed. As I understood it, it was generally rolling enrollment to accommodate people such as myself who opened a cab door to investigate a rumor and found themselves face to face with tentacles and an erect cock.
Really, nothing wrong with either, but the combination had been quite a bit more than I had bargained for. Of course St. Auguste was the closest thing to solving the mystery I had found since I had set out to look, so I wasn’t complaining.
Most of the students were already present and on their phone, some even looking through their notes in case there was a quiz. I’d quickly made friends with Tate, a TA at the local university. Tate had a supernatural roomie, and he was eager to dive into this strange new world, more eager even than I was.
Today, Tate was, as ever, excited for class to start and skipped across the floor on his way to his seat to my right. That it was too hot for hanging out in the bowels of St. Auguste until 8 pm or that our instructor had two heads, if anything, only fanned the flames of Tate’s excitement.
He dropped his messenger bag on the desk and grinned.
“I think I finally figured out who that guy was.”
“What guy?” I asked. Tate had an uncanny talent for dropping a conversation one week and then picking it up exactly where he left it the week after. It was annoying as fuck.
“That guy. I told you. With the guyliner? The goth. I think that maybe he was a new vampire, and he was trying to understand how that would make me feel. Maybe he was trying to come out as a vampire to someone human in his life and used me as a sounding board.”
I groaned and sagged back in my chair. Ever since June of last year, it had been this, the mysterious stranger who’d had dinner with Tate, had had a weird interaction with one of the kids going here and with the guy at the cafeteria counter, had promised to show up to class only to then disappear into thin air like some specter.
“Can we talk about something else? Or can we get a drink? I don’t think I can do your red thread theories sober, Tate.”
His grin deepened. “There is this bar—”
The classroom door fell shut.
“Good evening,” Instructor Arick said from two heads, one human, the other not. It had horns and a canine-like snout with eyes like that of a goat. If I was being honest, that chimera head was kind of cute.
Arick, taller and broader than anyone I’d ever met, slowly walked to his desk while the class quieted. He put his bag on the desk, and both sets of eyes looked at me.
“Mr. Hill, please report to the principal’s office right away. You may leave your things here and rejoin us when he is done with you.”
I had no idea what that was about. Tate gave me an open-mouthed look, and some of the others stared as well. There was nothing I could do but report to the principal’s office like a high school student who’d cheated on his test.
***
The principal was a vampire named Farrow. I didn’t know if it was his first or last name. I only knew him by Principal Farrow, given I had been brought into this office by someone from the Hawthorne legal department the very night I had opened the stupid cab door and caught the driver with a tentacle down his pants.
“Ah, Leopold! How have you been?” Farrow asked the moment I stepped into the office. “Would you like some tea? The kitchen sent up scones. They assure me they are very fresh. Please sit.”
Farrow had light blond hair and an easy smile. He motioned me to sit in one of his too-flowery armchairs. On the coffee table, something that looked a lot like afternoon tea had been set out.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked before sitting. “I swear, I didn’t do anything.”
Farrow pouted and poured me some tea. “Is it that I am the headmaster here? I swear, it is the title that makes everyone think they have done something bad and are in for a punishment when they come here. As if I would take a ruler to your undoubtedly tender behind, Leopold. Those days of corporal punishment are far behind us. These days, we are nice to miscreants and show them how to hold the spoon with which they shall dig themselves out of their mountain of trouble.”
I cocked my head. “So I’m in trouble? Am I being punished?”
“Not at all, I was just ruminating. Do you take sugar or cream?”
I looked at the spread. “Both.”
Farrow gasped. “My, aren’t you a delight?” He topped off the cup with a cube of sugar and thick cream from a tiny pitcher before handing it over to me. “As I said, this is not punishment. Instructor Arick, both of them, are delighted with your progress, and our Hawthorne liaison was very happy to hear that. Your case worker there too. In fact, they were wondering whether you’d be interested in working for them. You are a paralegal, no?”
I nodded. “Yeah because I dropped out of law school.”
“But you haven’t been working?”
“I was looking for you all.”
Farrow nodded and filled a teacup for himself. “Working makes the centuries go by, but I suppose if one is driven enough, one does not need a job. Unless one wants to pay for food and shelter.”
Farrow sipped his tea and gave me an expectant look.
I shrugged. “My grandma left me the house and some money, and my dad left me some as well. It’s not like living off that is wrong.”
“It certainly isn’t—ah, I like a frugal man. But wouldn’t you be more fulfilled if you did something? Now that you have found us all and no longer need to look.”
I drank down my tea in one go and put the delicate china cup back on its saucer. “It’s a stipulation, isn’t it? That I work where someone can keep an eye on me. So that I don’t post Arick’s notes on the message boards.”
“It’s Instructor Arick for you, and it’s more of a guideline. Really, Hawthorne wants you to thrive in our society. And why wouldn’t they? Instructor Arick agrees that you have potential, and he expects great things from you.”
I could actually believe that. I had expected…I wasn’t sure. Something a little more Supernatural and less Suits meets Gilmore Girls , but the supernatural world I had sought and found by tentacle fellatio was all in all just very…bureaucratic.
“I’m not working as a paralegal. I’m done with all of the law stuff, and I only got certified because my grandma insisted. How about this—I find my own job with a non-human individual, and you give the paralegal job to someone who actually wants it. Will that get you off my back?”
“Please, the cook was insistent that you must try the scones. And it is not I who is on your back, although that is certainly a fantasy one might indulge. I will suggest it to Hawthorne, not the fantasy but your suggestion of finding gainful employment that suits you. They tend to be accommodating, so I see no issues there. And certainly, you taking the initiative will go over very well with their team I imagine.”
“What’s this?”
Farrow leaned forward. “Apricot marmalade? Or jam. Is that not to your taste? I always tell them not to serve anything red because of the headmaster fear and me being a vampire. I don’t want to remind anyone of blood, you see.”
Some supernaturals were just really, really weird.
***
“You’re getting a job?” Tate was walking next to me, still busy sending me photos of the notes he’d taken while I’d had afternoon tea with Principal Farrow. We had been discussing taxes, and it was about as dry as any topic, but apparently, Arick had strongly hinted at a test.
I groaned. “I guess. Had to happen at some point.”
“Of course! But this is perfect. I mean, the supernatural world has all this opportunity. It’s the land of opportunity all over again, spirit of discovery and all that. I’m really considering it for myself as well. They will generally pay you well and give you bonuses and everything.”
“Or it’s nine to five, but your boss has horns.”
Tate snorted. “You are a misanthrope.”
“I’m a realist.”
“That’s what all the misanthropes say.”
We’d made our way to the foyer, the exit just a short walk across the marble floor. Everyone else had left already, but Tate, of course, had stayed to ask something about whether someone’s mate—not guy friend, but as in mated to someone—had the same standing as someone married to them. This had come up with the taxes apparently. I’d done my best to zone out, but from what I’d inadvertently heard, Instructor Arick’s demon head despised the institution of marriage deeply.
Despite us being the last members of our class, the foyer ahead of us wasn’t empty.
“That’s a tall glass of water,” I mumbled, then recalled that supernaturals, a lot of them, had unnecessarily good hearing. “Fuck.”
“That’s Ezra, and yes, he is! Ez! Come here and meet Leo. I’ve been trying to get you two together for too long already.”
The tall glass of Ezra approached. I’d heard the name, of course I had. He was Tate’s roomie, worked at the university like him, and an avid swimmer.
“Hi.” Ezra shook my hand, blue eyes hard, smile forced. Well, jealous, anyone?
“Uhm. Hello. Tate talks about you all the time.”
Ezra released my hand and looked at Tate, who blushed. “You do?”
“All the time,” I repeated. Tate’s blush deepened. Call me fucking Cupid.
“I—well. That’s only natural. But let’s not stand here. Ez, can we finally go to that place now? That cocktail bar, the one you promised you’d show me. I want to celebrate you two finally meeting.”
Ezra heaved a sigh and crossed his arms. Boy was muscular, and if he was into that, Tate was lucky.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, please?” Tate sounded like he wanted a cookie, or—my mind was diving into the gutter headfirst seeing him plead.
These two looked like they needed fanfic, because if Tate had left nothing out, they’d lived together as friends for going on three years, and clearly they wanted more.
But that was none of my business. “I could drink,” I said.
Well, maybe I could get them drunk just a little bit, help them to confess their feelings. I enjoyed living vicariously. My own love life had been and was a waterless desert in which nothing grew because that was just how deserts were.
Tate reached for Ezra’s hand. “See? Leo wants to go too. Please take us? We are just helpless little humans in need of a strong—”
“Fine,” Ezra said. “Fine. But I’m buying the first round.”
I, for one, could live with that.
***
St. Auguste had hosted a Summer Spectacular on campus at the end of June. That had been our outing for the season. We had not yet, but had been promised to, visited the secret underground.
I had been a pretty small kid when I learned about how many microbes lived in my gut. Millions and millions, too many for childhood me to make sense of the number. But the idea that there was something—a colony of somethings—living inside of me had haunted me and made me feel weird about just existing.
Then I had caught one of the Alien movies late one night, and that combined with the microbes had led to me wondering what would happen if my gut microbes mutated. The nightmares that followed were an entirely different chapter of my early childhood development, and I liked to think they’d played a significant role in shaping me as an adult. I loved horror movie marathons and often scoured the Internet for monster and human fanfics. Monster-slash-human fics. The tentacles in the back of the cab hadn’t really shocked me that much.
At any rate, to see a whole-ass other city alive and well in the bowels of Newstaten created a deep sense of unmooring inside of me. How had I not known? How had no one known? And how was it that there were so many monsters—so many supernaturals—here without anyone noticing?
It helped that I had always looked for something, that was my limited excuse for my own ignorance, but I’d not known that I was searching for this.
“This is the Center Hub. Some of these stores are really old,” Ezra explained.
He and Tate had to walk shoulder to shoulder, pressing close, because these abandoned subway tunnels were not the wide shopping streets I was used to from above ground. Behind Ezra and Tate, I was the third wheel, enjoying that I could stare without having to pay too much attention to where I was going while they cleared the path for our small group.
A lot of the stores were wooden structures. Not frail or shoddily thrown together but built like something made to last. The wooden facades were carved and painted in bright colors. Signs reminded me of something you’d see in some old European town time had passed by. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some Victorian lady walk out of a shop with one of those feathery hats and a frilly umbrella.
Other structures were stone or brick, fitting in just as well as the wooden facades. The entire place could have been a stage set, and if I’d seen a camera pointing at me all of a sudden, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Wow! Leo, do you see this?” Tate slowed, his attention caught by a secondhand bookstore. He picked up a collection of ratty pages that had been stapled together rather than properly bound.
“Ugh, Dream Tentacled ? I’m not sure that’s anything I’m interested in. But thanks for thinking of me, Tate.”
Ezra frowned at me, but in such a way that Tate didn’t see it. “Please don’t take this, Tate. Tentacles aren’t all they’re made out to be.”
“But look! Oh, someone annotated this. Uh. How to seduce a human and take him to a wedding with you ? Come on guys, let’s go inside. I want to know what this is.”
Ezra cleared his throat. “How about we do that after? The Dazzle can fill up pretty quickly, and if we’re three people, we’re going to need a table.”
Tate looked from the pseudo-book to Ezra. “This is the eggplants at the farmer’s market all over again, but fine. I’ll just go inside and buy this. Would it be rude to haggle? Or rude not to?”
Ezra crossed his arms, one balled fist hidden behind his elbow where Tate couldn’t see. “How about I go in and buy it for you?”
“No, I think I can handle buying a book. Back in a jiff.”
Tate dashed into the stuffed bookstore where shelves were piled all the way to the ceiling, and Ezra’s eyes tracked him through the window glass.
“I’m assuming he was talking about eggplants, the vegetable,” I said.
“Yeah.”
Ezra’s voice was tight, and he didn’t so much as look at me.
“We’re just friends, dude. And he’s been using me to perfect that brownie recipe he says he wants to surprise you with, so relax.”
Ezra glanced at me. His eyes were very blue. He sized me up again, the expression over-the-top critical, inviting me to back off from his man, or else. That sort of thing wasn’t for me, but if Tate was good with it… To each their own.
“He wants to surprise me? That’s why he’s been sneaking them to class each week without leaving any for me?” The hardness in Ezra’s gaze melted like an ice cube on a barbecue. “Really? He wants to surprise me?”
The big dude sucked on his bottom lip while his cheeks filled with color. Possessive, sure, but also a big puppy apparently. A small part of me wondered what it would be like to have that, what it would be like to have this focused on me.
“Would you have eaten me if he’d been making them for me?”
Ezra looked away and shrugged. “I’m not super carnivorous, but—”
“For fucking real, dude?”
Ezra cleared his throat. “Ah, no. That was a joke. Haha. Just kidding.”
I gazed at Tate, who was looking awkward as fuck talking to the book seller. “You know, I think you should probably tell him you guys are dating.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Ezra stared at Tate as if Tate were the sun and Ezra a flower, doomed to wilt at nightfall.