9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
JASON
N ever drive angry, they say. Yeah, well, never type angry either, apparently, because I was pretty sure I was a few harder strokes away from cracking the J key on my office computer.
I had still somehow blown through most of today’s data entry, and without any errors, but even if I hadn’t been seething and pounding the keys like a madman, Mom would have realized I was pissed. I wasn’t known for being subtle.
I’d told her about the cat when I arrived—that we found one that Ricky was going to bring inside for now—but that was all.
“Oh, did you and Ricky decide to—”
“We just found it, okay!” I’d snarled. “Sorry. I’m not in a great mood.”
How could I have even begun to tell her the rest? It was all so fucked .
What. Was. I?
And why was the only way to find out the one way I couldn’t stand the thought of? Even worse was that Ricky had been thinking I should do it the whole time. Because he was the sensible and reasonable one and probably right.
“ Fuck ,” I hissed.
“Sweetheart?”
I turned, but I didn’t think Mom had heard which word I’d growled at my computer screen. “Yeah?”
“Are you hungry yet for lunch? If you’d like some time to step away, you could go get something for the office team. Ms. Greystone and Mr. Omang messaged me their orders. We usually have something delivered like yesterday, but since you have the truck, you could go pick it up for us.”
I must have been even more obvious than I’d thought if Mom was giving me an excuse to ditch. “Yeah. Sure. I can do that. Where from?”
Beastly Brewhouse.
Naturally.
Because of course I needed another reminder of Ricky when I was still pissed at him.
The place served sandwiches and snacks and all the usual fare for a coffee house café. I consoled myself knowing that Ricky hadn’t actually been inside the place yet. I would have been more consoled if I hadn’t gotten weird looks from people I passed on the sidewalk. People who knew me. This was my first time being downtown again, and since apparently everyone knew I was a monster, they looked at me like I’d grown a second head.
Only the dog I passed, being taken on a walk by their owner, reacted better than, well, their owner. The pup had desperately wanted to sniff and play with me, tail wagging like crazy, until the owner, a literal neighbor from my neighborhood , realized it was me and hurried off.
Inside the brewhouse, some horse guy was working the counter. He was pale skinned with darker patches like birthmarks, which was normal for horses like pintos, I supposed. I wouldn’t have guessed he was a horse at first glance. His face was pretty human looking, and his little white ears could have indicated any number of monster types, but I’d seen him out from behind the counter when I first came in, and he definitely had hooves.
It didn’t help my mood that when I opened my wallet to find the company card Mom had given me, I also found something I hadn’t noticed earlier. A folded-up piece of paper, and written on it twenty-five times was:
YOU WILL NOT BE A DICK
Fuck, that was cute.
Ricky, you asshole .
I ordered sandwiches and coffee to go and stepped aside to wait. There were a lot of monsters in here. Being monster run meant it was a novelty for people who wanted to meet monsters, so humans who came in knew what to expect. The monster stans were a little weird though. One chick in the corner was clearly trying to get a shot of horse guy for her Instagram.
“Anything else, sir?”
“One second, please. What did Ricky want again…?”
I whipped my head toward the order line. The person after me was scrolling through his phone, which I’d done too to get my orders right. He was wearing some sort of cloak, hood up to hide whatever he was, but I could tell he was a monster. The cloak wasn’t long enough to hide him from the knees down, which looked like giant frog legs.
“Oh! Troll Latte, please. Hot. Medium.”
“Those will be right out, sir,” horse guy said.
When the monster in the cloak came over to stand by me near the pickup counter, I had to ask, “Did you just say Ricky?”
Black eyes snapped to mine. Definitely frog-like. Fish-like?
Fish guy seemed frozen, studying my face.
Then he gasped. “It’s you. You are the one I matched with.”
“Matched? On wha—?” Shit. I glanced at my phone, still in my hand from when I’d ordered. I could see it, the little symbol at the top of my screen that meant I had unread messages from the Monster Match app.
“It is you, isn’t it?” Fish guy blinked at me—with sideways eyelids—and smiled hopefully. “Jason Bosco?”
“Uh… yes? But I gotta tell you something.”
“You are not interested.” Fish guy’s smile wilted. “It’s okay! I understand that not all monster species are attractive to humans—”
“It’s not that! I… look. Let’s sit while we wait, and I’ll explain.”
So we did, tucked back at one of the café tables.
It really just amounted to me admitting to him, “I’m not human. Anymore. I was! It’s complicated. I shouldn’t be on that app at all.”
Fish guy—Kai, he’d said—tilted his head at me. He had a sweet mohawk top fin once he’d dropped his hood. “Humans can become monsters?”
“Experts say no, but I seem to be proving them wrong at every turn. Sorry, man.”
“Was anything else on your profile incorrect?”
“No, I was pretty honest about all that. It’s a long story why I even made that profile—”
“You do not have to be human for me to be interested!” he blurted, his frilled ears giving a little bounce, as he smiled hopefully again. “If you could be. Interested, I mean.”
“I have a boyfriend.” How could an even worse day than yesterday still manage to beat me into the dirt? “Who you apparently just got coffee for.”
“Ricky?” Kai’s ears bounced again. “Oh! He said ‘Jason’ when he chased after the cat. That was your house.”
“Yeah.”
“I like Ricky! Platonically! He has been very nice to me. You are lucky to have each other.”
“I am really sorry, dude. I need to get off that app. I use it to talk to monster friends. And we can be friends! If you want.”
“I would like that! I do not have any friends here. My sister made several right away, but I have never been good at it. I studied your English language for years though, hoping for the chance to come here.” He did have this sort of purring accent, very faint and fun to listen to.
“Well, you got a friend now,” I said. “Two! I’m sure Ricky would say the same. He’s great. The best. And I totally went off on him earlier. More of a long story. See—”
“Jason and Kai?” a troll working with the horse guy announced, with our orders in bags and to-go trays. We’d asked for them to wait to call us until both of our orders were ready.
“Guess we’re out of time, but maybe…we…” I trailed off as we went over to the pickup area, because outside, visible through the front window, I could see a small crowd forming, and though I could only make out the ringleader’s profile, it was enough to see that it was Ronald McDickhole.
“Fuck.” I grimaced. “Him again.”
“Who?”
“Stay inside, Kai. I’ll be right back.”
People gathering around an idiot was never a good thing, especially in front of the first monster run business in town.
I left my bag and tray of coffee behind and stormed out of the shop.
“—and it is places like this, encouraging unsupervised interactions, that worries me the most. What’s next if they continue to let these people into our schools without oversight? We will be overrun before anyone realizes it takes more than a visa and a handful of naturalization classes to keep our citizens safe.”
“ Urg ,” I voiced aloud, because seriously? He was using his precious lunch break to spout bullshit in public now? His overpowering Patchouli smell was just as bad as last time, even being outdoors.
A few people looked at me after my groan, but McDickhole was too busy listening to himself talk. Elder Ridge was not that big, so someone shouting in front of a business that served lunch at lunchtime was going to pull people in.
Worse was that a lot of them were nodding.
“Do they think us so small-town Hicksville that we’d believe the sudden signs around the woods warning of a wolf? A wolf? Here? We have never had wolves in those woods before, but we definitely have plenty of dangerous monsters flooding our neighborhoods, and I for one will not have the wool pulled over my eyes any longer!”
People knew about the signs already? Were they watching the woods?
Was this asshole watching my house?
“I have been talking to our good, trustworthy, native citizens, and there are more than just June Mulligan missing, or Ellen Moyer, who was reported missing just today.”
Oh shit. That must be whoever vanished the other night.
“Conveniently right after those signs went up. How many people do we not know about who have gone missing? And why now? I’ll tell you why. Because of lacking safeguards in place to protect real citizens of this town from dangerous, unknown elements.”
“Oh, come on!” I finally erupted, hands clenched into fists that might have had claws digging into my palms, but right now, I just wanted this guy to shut up. “We get it. You’re a bigot. Isn’t proselytizing on street corners for religious zealots more than—and I realize I’m guessing on some of this but—straight, white, nationalist assholes like you? I know those go hand in hand sometimes—”
“Bosco!” McDickhole shouted over me. “We do not need to hear from more monsters! We need to hear from the rightfully scared humans of this town! Which used to be a peaceful, safe, quiet hamlet before our mayor threw our name into the lottery without getting the full backing of his constituents!”
“You voted him in , dickhole! That’s how it works. And don’t go acting like people never went missing before monsters came to town. My dad disappeared in those woods, long before we even knew about the monster realm.”
McDickhole smirked.
That couldn’t be good. Nor could the amount of people staring at me more than him now.
“Convenient again,” McDickhole said. “Especially considering the woods in question are behind your house, putting you right in the middle of this then and now.”
I had walked right into that one. “You know, slander is a thing, even in a small town.”
“It isn’t slander if it’s true.”
“What is happening in those woods?” someone demanded of me.
“I don’t know what he’s talking—”
“You were attacked there last year, weren’t you?” someone else asked—Mrs. Truman. I knew her. I knew most of these people.
“I was—”
“And your father did go missing. I remember that.”
“What’s happening out there?”
“Is it true you’re a monster now?”
“Are they converting people?”
Shit, shit, shit . I tried to back out of the converging crowd. I could feel the urge to change, and I had no way of knowing if it would be the wolf or cat version now. If I lost it in front of these people, it was all over. McDickhole would win.
I needed to talk to Ricky.
I needed to talk to Whitmore.
We needed to figure this out.
Now .
“Jason?” Kai asked from behind me.
I had backed up to the Beastly Brewhouse door. Kai must have kicked the automatic button or gotten someone to open the door for him, because his hands were full with both of our coffee trays, and he had our bangs hanging one from each elbow. “Come on.” I took one of the trays and looped my arm with his to lead him out of the shop toward my truck parked down the street.
“You see!” McDickhole called after us. “Choosing monsters over telling us the truth! Maybe they are converting people! What is happening in those woods, Bosco? We deserve to know! We deserve to feel safe!”
“Take it up with someone in authority then!” I yelled back. “I’m just me! And I’m not a threat to anyone!”
Not today.
I didn’t know if Kai had taken some sort of vehicle to get here, but he got into my truck with me, and we high-tailed it away from the scene. I would drop off the food and drinks for Mom and the others at the school, but then I needed to get back to the house.
To Ricky.
RICKY
“I have returned with lunch!”
Awesome . I was starving.
But when I looked at Kai’s arrival down the deer path, he was accompanied by Jason holding a coffee and carrying a bag of his own.
“What is the meaning of—” the ogre began, but Beck cut her off. He and Zinnia knew what Jason looked like.
“It is okay, Officer Breckt. Our son brings someone fully authorized to join us.” He and Zinnia were all smiles as they went over to greet Jason.
“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Zinnia asked. “We were told you had no interest in our research.”
“Shit might start hitting the fan soon,” Jason said, “and I can’t risk getting caught in the middle of it, or… letting Ricky or my mom get caught up in it either.” I’d noticed the distinct lack of him making eye contact with me, so when he finally did, I felt it like a push.
I’d been distracted since our fight, forced to work through it and daydream about all the ways tonight’s dinner would probably suck. Now he was back.
“The people of this town are not fooled by DO NOT ENTER signs,” Jason continued. “We need to solve this whole portal, missing persons, unknown monster thing. I don’t know if testing me will do anything, but if it’ll help, I’ll let you. And, um, you can eat your lunch at the house, if you want. I should have offered that earlier.”
I smiled. Whatever had happened must have been big enough to change his mind.
“If shit has the potential to hit any fan,” the ogre said, “we need to keep watch.”
“Oh! Here you are then!” Kai rushed over to her first to hand her a sandwich and some napkins, then delivered the same to the human officer. “Enjoy!”
There was a porta potty now too, which Jason eyed skeptically. “If you need a break from using that thing,” he told the guards, “you can take turns using the house for that too.”
Kai handed out the coffee, leaving only the bag of remaining sandwiches. He eyed us all hopefully, and his parents gestured down the path to agree to a change of scenery for lunch.
“You go ahead,” Jason said to the team. “I just need to, um, talk with Ricky.”
A flutter of nerves blossomed in my gut, even if he did look apologetic. I had screwed up too. I was supposed to be subtle. Supportive. Not the harbinger of his worst fears.
Kai hovered at the mouth of the clearing, waiting for us, as his parents started down the path. Jason came closer.
“Guess you met Kai, huh?” I said.
“Yeah. He sort of matched with me on the Monster Match app.”
“ What ?”
“I’ll get to that. First, I am really sorry, Ricky. I was freaked. I have been freaked, but you’ve been amazing. You I trust. I will always trust you. So, if you trust Kai’s parents, and if they are anything like him, I’m betting you’re right that they won’t dissect me right away.”
“They won’t. But if they try, the only way I’ll be holding the scalpel is to keep them away from you. Are we okay?”
“We are. I don’t know if I am. But we are just fine.” Jason inched that last bit closer to me, almost pawing at my T-shirt to pull me to him. The day had warmed up a little, but the warmth from Jason sent an immediate rush of heat through me to banish my nerves.
We kissed, right in front of the exterior workstation, with two guards able to look on while eating their lunch, though at least it felt like their eyes stayed purposefully averted.
Kai’s eyes I could feel directly on us.
“You two are sweet together. It is so unfair,” he muttered, with a tone like he’d just been diagnosed with something terminal.
“Sorry, Kai,” Jason said with a laugh.
“I am still happy to have two new friends.”
“You got it,” I said, “but what’s this about the app?”
They explained as we traipsed down the path after Zinnia and Beck. I needed to get my hands on Jason’s profile so I could update what he was looking for to friendship before this happened again. I wasn’t jealous! But I also didn’t need cute, young monsters showing up, giving him options.
I more officially introduced Jason to Zinnia and Beck once we met up at the house. Since it wasn’t as cool anymore, we opted to eat on the porch, and Jason brought water out for everyone. Even without the guards present, I made a point of asking if it was okay that Kai was about to overhear a lot more than before, but Zinnia and Beck hand-waved it.
“Our son will levear nothing,” Zinnia said.
“ Reveal , mi bavi .”
“Oh yes. Now, what do you have to tell us?”
Jason spared no details, from telling them about the cat transformation, to some human father who’d been causing trouble at the school, and who’d been rallying people on the street corner outside Beastly Brewhouse.
Concern was warranted. If that crowd turned into a bold enough mob, nothing could keep them from the danger zone, and we still didn’t know what triggered the portal.
“Can you repeat the transformation?” Beck asked Jason.
“I don’t want to lose any more clothes, and I’m not feeling up to being naked right now, but…” Jason trailed off, centering himself as the rest of us were finishing our sandwiches—which he’d scarfed down the fastest, despite doing most of the talking. He summoned his half form, not enough to stretch his shirt or jeans too badly, with green eyes, whiskers, and stripes on his fur. “It feels different from the wolf version.”
“Can you switch to that one?” I asked.
Jason concentrated again, and as he did, his features changed. Green eyes became yellow, with whiskers and stripes vanishing, until the half-wolf form I’d seen before replaced the cat in a seamless ripple.
“Wow,” Kai said, and his parents looked equally amazed.
“All this from a bite?” Zinnia asked. “Both times?”
“Yes.” Jason released the animal aspects with a shake of his head like sloughing off rainwater. “But I don’t know for sure what the creature was that first bit me.”
“We should test a non-mammal,” Zinnia said. “A snake perhaps!”
“Yes!” agreed Beck.
“Uh…” I looked between the scientists and my boyfriend, who they were way too excited to turn into a guinea pig. “There were a lot of reasons why Jason was resistant to meet you. You can’t just ask him to potentially poison himself.”
“The snakes around here aren’t venomous.” Jason shrugged, way more chill than I’d expected. “There are garter snakes around the lake, but nearer to the other access points, not in the woods. My dad planted too many snake-repelling flora. Species of perennial marigolds, lemon… grass.” He must have realized I was staring at him. “What?”
“Nothing! I thought I smelled lemongrass the other day. I didn’t think it could handle midwestern winters.”
“It can’t. Not usually. I guess it’s a hybrid. I’ve never been sure how my dad made it work as a perennial, but the lemongrass returns every year.”
“That’s amazing. You’re amazing. It’s so impressive how much you know about the ecosystem here.”
“It’s my degree.” Jason grinned. “All C average of it.”
I had always known he knew more than C average. He was just better at being in the thick of things than taking tests.
“We would never ask to experiment in an uncontrolled environment,” Zinnia said. “Would you be willing to meet with us at the facility tomorrow?”
“I guess. I’m really ditching on the work I promised my mom though.”
“I think she’ll be okay with it,” I assured him. “And maybe, afterward, we could take you through the official portal.”
“What?” Jason suddenly looked spooked again.
“Just so you can see how amazing it is there! I went yesterday, and their kappa kingdom is so cool. Not without its dangers, but not the awful place you worry about.” I took Jason’s hand. “You are never going to get sent there forever but seeing it might make it feel like less of a death sentence to visit. It could ease your nerves, and maybe prove to be a place you’d want to explore someday when all of this is over.”
“That’s optimistic,” Jason grumbled, running his thumb up and down the back of mine.
“Then it’s settled!” Zinnia clapped her hands. “Tomorrow.”
It felt good to touch Jason again, to know he wasn’t pushing me away, but we needed to get back to work in the woods and make sure the security team understood that while we would be in the lab tomorrow, whoever was assigned to the natural portal still needed to guard it—twenty-four seven.
I didn’t like what Jason had told us about the incident downtown. It reminded me too much of campus protests in Edgewind. A small gathering was one thing, but let it grow, let the crowd get angry enough, and a mob became dangerous all too quickly.
I think Kai wanted to stay behind with Jason, but his parents dragged him back into the woods. He was obviously a little smitten, and I felt as bad as I knew Jason did, because it wasn’t Kai’s fault that Jason’s profile had matched with his and gave him false hope. I still didn’t love that it had happened though.
Jason and I kissed again before parting. He wasn’t going back to the school but planned to check on the cat, and then to get back to job hunting. He also needed to message Whitmore.
“Oh, Kai mentioned a sister,” Jason said before I left. “Is she the monster who’ll be going to the high school?”
“I assume so.”
“Do you know if licking their species can get people high?”
“ What ?” I laughed.
“Just wondering! Probably only a rumor.”
Meaning he would definitely ask Kai about that eventually.
After five o’clock rolled around, I returned to the house at the same time Sandy did.
“Glad to see Minnie’s old litter box is getting some use!” she said, crouched to scritch under the kitty’s chin as I came in.
“I told Mom to pick up more litter and some wet food on her way home,” Jason explained. “Just until we turn the cat over to the shelter or… keep him?”
“You sure it’s a him?” Sandy studied the cat nuzzling her legs. Then the cat moved to Jason, who it clearly loved most.
“Oh yeah. Our boy’s got balls .” Jason snickered.
He did, more than visible when he stretched his butt and tail in the air.
“Vet visit first,” Sandy said, “but I’ve missed having a furry friend around. You’ll have to think of a name for him.”
“Ricky found him. He should think of one.”
“Me? Well, would Mickey be too obvious? After Minnie? And I’m Ricky.”
“He’s not a tuxedo,” Jason argued.
“And cats aren’t rats, but you still named your old cat after one,” I teased.
A knock at the front door interrupted our discussion, and while Sandy went to answer it, I got a few pets in with Mickey.
Whitmore had arrived, right on time. Jason had messaged him immediately after lunch but had asked for him to wait to come over until after Sandy would be home.
Before they joined us in the living room with the cat, Jason said to me, “I’m not going to tell Mom about the werecat thing. Not until we know more. But I’ll tell her everything else, everything I can, and I’ll tell Whitmore the rest. Okay?”
“Whatever you want. I’m sorry I wasn’t upfront about wanting you to do the testing, but I’m glad you are. I promise I will not let them turn this into Species . Or an alien autopsy. Or anything like that. They’d have to get through me first.”
Jason smiled, and it was as genuine a smile from him as I’d gotten today.
He told everything he’d intended to both Whitmore and Sandy, and then asked Sandy to leave us alone for a while. She did. Mickey stayed in the living room with us. The cat definitely seemed to like Whitmore, who petted the cat liberally, much to Jason’s chagrin.
“There’s more,” Jason said, “but I don’t want you telling my mom anything until I have a handle on things. Maybe if the snake thing tomorrow works or if we finally get answers.”
“Snake thing?” Whitmore questioned.
“So…” Jason sighed. “Turns out I am definitely not a werewolf.”