Chapter 1
Chapter One
San Amaro was supposed to be a fresh start. Fresh as new fallen snow. Fresh as a daisy. Fresh as… I had run out of trite, overused metaphors.
Fresh as a fish? That wasn’t a thing.
Either way, I had decided that when I got to the city, I was going to be an entirely new person. I would leave all my baggage behind me and focus on creating a new life for myself that made me happy.
I wasn’t going to be August Bright, edging out of his twenties and still single. I wasn’t going to be “the werewolf teacher.” I wasn’t even going to be the guy who cared way too much about coaching his Academic Decathlon team.
I was going to be cool. I was going to be hip.
I was going to be the side character in a coming-of-age movie who said really deep and profound things and ended up making the main character have a realization that propelled the plot forward. I was going to be Ben Kingsley! Or Stanley Tucci! I could do a good Tucci.
My point was that I was going to be amazing. So why was I still grading the same Ninth Grade English essays?
Why were my freshmen being dragged through the same white, male, non-paranormal authors? The district couldn't find a single werewolf or witch to put on the curriculum?
I narrowed my eyes at the cramped handwriting on the page. Poor Roy Flanagan struggled to properly differentiate most of his consonants when he got rushed and wrote in cursive.
I was almost positive he didn't mean “Sanger Rainsford would totally win at the Hunger Games,” but I couldn't quite figure out what he did mean.
“That would be a good essay,” I muttered to myself. “How far would Rainsford get in The Hunger Games?”
For a few minutes, I amused myself with the image. His adaptability would surely get him at least through the first few days, and his comfort with murdering people meant he wouldn't get hung up when the going got dirty.
I blinked, forcing myself back to the essay.
As Flanagan went on, it was clear that his essay on the themes of The Most Dangerous Game had devolved into his own fanfic of how Rainsford would do in the Hunger Games.
Flanagan gave him more credit than I did and claimed that he would have won.
Just for the interesting premise, I decided on a B+, even though most of his essay hadn't answered any of the prompt.
It was at least refreshing to read an essay that was completed.
Half of my honors class had fallen asleep in the middle of theirs.
And it wasn't the most interesting thing in the world to read essays that either devolved into gibberish as the writers tried to stay awake, or simply turned into a line that trailed off the page.
Granted, the essay topic was stale, and more than a few of them had shared my complaints about the reading list for the semester.
Maybe I could slip in a few werewolf novels as associated reading and claim they were there for comparison.
Teresa Cisneros would be a good contrast to her cousin, Sandra Cisneros.
We would be able to discuss the difference in theme between Sandra Cisneros's eloquent expression of the immigrant experience and her cousin’s similar experience being an American-born werewolf.
I was already standing up, pulling one of Teresa Cisneros's books off of my bookshelf, flipping through the pages and searching for the perfect short story that would dovetail with The House on Mango Street, when rock music began vibrating the wall that the bookshelf rested against.
My neighbor was home.
Every paranormal I had talked to had assured me that San Amaro was different than LA or Ventura or even Santa Cruz.
“You can wear your dog tags there,” my friend Emily had promised. “You go to a bar, and it’s witches, werewolves, even fae.”
I had frowned, unable to believe that, even in such a liberal city, where being paranormal didn't bar you from employment, housing, or the right to walk down the street without someone crossing it to avoid you.
But after I moved here and saw the World Tree as close as the US military would let us get, it had been easier to believe.
Still, the promised liberal nature of the city hadn't quite extended to my recent neighbor. Every overture of friendliness had been met with cold disinterest.
I could have attributed the distance to his clearly punk rock nature. Besides the blasting music, my mysterious neighbor wore an amazing approximation of Billy Idol's classic look, down to the bleached blond hair and eyes shadowed from staying up all night partying.
But I had known it was more than that from the moment I offered a handshake and my name, and my mysterious neighbor had glared down at my offending hand.
I hadn't grown up feeling the side-eyes and hearing parents warn their children not to invite me to their birthdays, only to not see bigotry when it sneered at common greetings.
Still, San Amaro was a fresh start, and after LA and Ventura and Santa Cruz, I was running low on California cities that I hadn't started fresh in.
If San Amaro didn't give me somewhere I could be myself, I might be forced to Fresno or somewhere in the Central Valley, and with my complexion and tendency toward heat rashes, I didn't want to risk it.
So I would take a meditative breath, act like a big boy, and bring my new neighbor a gift.
Gritting my teeth, I picked up the tray of holiday cookies that I had artfully arranged. A few Christmas-themed ones, a couple of Hanukkah blue ones, and more than a handful of solstice cookies.
No one could say no to cookies. Not unless they were a sociopath. And my neighbor was punk rock, not Hannibal Lecter.
Fresh start, August. Big boy pants.
I opened the apartment door, walked a few steps to the next one, and knocked firmly.
No one answered.
Gritting a smile, I knocked again, then pounded when my polite taps didn't quite rise above the decibels of a man screaming the words “pain in my soul.”
The music shut off.
The apartment door opened, and I expected a wave of pot or wolfsbane smoke to flow into the hallway, but instead it smelled earthy and fresh, like fallen leaves.
My neighbor glared. He was wearing blue eyeliner, his bleached hair sticking up in all directions, and he had a new piercing since last time I had seen him, a ring in the corner of his lip and…
Oh no, August. Fresh. Start. I didn't have time to have a crush on the bigot next door. I needed to be out there, finding someone who loved me for me, not lusting after someone who thought I was literal dog shit on his shoe.
My neighbor stared. I stared back, wishing I could take back the past thirty seconds of silence.
I swallowed. “I just baked some holiday cookies.”
Good job. Progress. Now tell him they’re for him, and that you appreciate that he turns off the music at eleven o'clock.
He looked at the tray in my hand, then up at me. His tongue flicked over the piercing in his lip. He raised an eyebrow.
“For you. I thought you would enjoy them.
Cookies, I mean. I know we didn't get off on the best foot, and I really hope it's not the werewolf thing, because I can't change that.
But if it's something else—if you don't like how I'm parking my car, or if I'm watching my movies too loud…” I trailed off, hoping Mr. Mysterious would fill in the blank and explain that, yes, it was that I walked too loudly in the hallway, or he didn't like the welcome mat in front of my door.
He continued to stare. My hand got sweaty on the cookie tray, and I pushed it forward, desperately hoping he would accept it, desperately hoping he would end this awkward tension.
And why was it so attractive, the way he was dissecting me with his gaze, as though he could see deep in my heart and knew every desire I had ever refused to voice?
My heart was pounding, and my shoulder actually began to ache from the effort of holding the heavy tray forward. Awkwardly, I bent and placed it in front of him.
“They're really very good,” I said, the words turning into a mumble.
I walked back to my apartment, shutting the door and leaning against it. Closing my eyes, I listened, waiting for him to say anything, waiting for the sound of him kicking the tray across the hall, or slamming his door, or…
There was a heavy sigh, and I heard a mumbled, “Shit.”
Then the door closed with a click. A moment later, the music started up again.
I tried not to look at the cookie tray, still sitting in front of his door when I rushed to work the next day, bagel in my mouth, coffee in my hand, trying to get my phone and keys inside my satchel with my other hand.
I was so busy not looking at my neighbor’s door that I ran into an enormous bear of a man standing in the middle of the hallway.
I hit him hard, stumbling back, just barely managing to right my coffee before it spilled all over the carpet.
Blinking, I looked up at him. Long blond hair had been braided into a complicated knot going down his back.
His dark eyes fixed on me. “You live here.”
Blankly, I looked back at my door. “Yes.”
“Who is the one who lives here?” He pointed at my neighbor's door, and I had a sudden sinking suspicion that if I had been able to tell him, something bad would happen to my mysterious neighbor.
“I don't know,” I said truthfully. Then I amended. “He's never really here.”
That wasn't true, but I wasn't sure I wanted this man hanging around the building. I definitely didn't want him to find my neighbor.
The man narrowed his eyes. “Has he given you a gift, this man you claim is never really here?”
And I thought about it. My neighbor hadn't even given me his name. He had given me nothing, asked for nothing, and when offered, not accepted even the slightest gift from me. My shoulders slumped.
“No. He keeps to himself.”
The mountain of a man watched me with narrowed eyes, then looked back at the door and nodded to himself. Without speaking, he turned and left, and I exhaled sharply. I wondered if I should have lied, pretending that no one lived there, or it was a family, or an old woman, or…
It was too late now, and I looked back at my neighbor's door, my eyes dropping down to the tray of cookies, still wrapped in cellophane. Still unwanted.
Shaking my head, I raced for the front door, knowing I was going to miss the bus if I didn't hurry.
To my surprise, I didn't run into the mountain of a man on my way out. I hoped that meant that he’d left quickly and not that he was lingering in the stairwell or another hallway looking for whoever he was after.
I kept thinking about the cookies as I stood at the bus stop, wondering what it meant, given the way the stranger had asked about gifts.
It probably didn’t mean anything more than that my neighbor was a bigot.
Even if he was, it didn't mean the whole city was.
It didn't mean that I had to move. I could stay here. I could last. I could.
San Amaro would be different. It already was. There was an openly werewolf member of the city council! There were Solstice celebrations on the Parks and Recreation calendar in addition to Christmas and Hanukkah! At the library, they did a little History of Paranormal Rights display during August!
The bus ride to work was split between scarfing down my bagel and grading the last of the essays on The Most Dangerous Game. I would give the honors students who had fallen asleep a second chance at the essay this lunchtime.
Walking into school, waving hi to the janitor and the office staff, I reminded myself that no matter what else was going on, I could still be Stanley Tucci. Even if my mind kept returning to my punk rock neighbor, pierced and attractive and probably an asshole.
I was so focused on everything I had to do that I nearly ran into the man standing in front of my door.
I looked up before I had my second literal run-in of the day and spilled my coffee on his pristine, expensive suit.
My first thought was that Emily should have spent less time on how accepting San Amaro was and more time on the ratio of hot men to the rest of us.
The man's eyes crinkled, and he reached forward to steady me with a hand on my elbow. “August Bright?”
Was that my name? I shook myself, letting a smile curl up my lips. “Yes. That's me.”
“Great.” The man pulled out a badge, and I tensed the hand on the strap of my bag, my breath stopping as panic clenched my lungs. “I'm Detective Nicholas King with the SAPD. I have a few questions for you.”