Chapter 2 — NINE DAYS, AND A DOG NAMED GREGORY (1)

Day two in Blackmoon City starts with a handwritten note on Luna's pillow, in handwriting so neat it looks printed: Thirteen days.

"Unhinged," Luna says, and slaps the note onto the fridge next to the Cross Foundation contract she still hasn't touched — no wait, that comes later. Right now, the fridge is empty and the note is the only thing in her life with handwriting this good. She gets out her notebook and opens a fresh page.

SUSPECT FILE — #001

Name: Kane Voss.

Feature one: unreasonably tall. Violates building code, probably.

Feature two: black clothes, always. Either a uniform kink or a funeral that's been running for a decade.

Feature three: world-class tailing skills, zero disguise skills. Stood under the same streetlight for four hours last night. Got reported to the landlord three times. By humans.

Feature four: the jacket he gave me smells like cedar and moonlight. Suspicious. Extremely suspicious.

Feature five: says things like "I owe you" and "Fourteen days" and leaves. Has not explained either. Refuses to elaborate.

Verdict: stalker, but a weirdly considerate one. Monitor.

Filed under: ongoing. Luna texts the one friend she has left from her old city: hey. new city. everyone is aggressively nice. send help.

Her friend replies: lol are they hot

Luna: the stalker is. suspiciously.

Her friend: girl that's called a love interest

Luna closes the notebook. "No," she says to the empty room. "That's called a red flag wearing a trench coat."

The doorbell rings.

There's a man on the doorstep. Tall, curly-haired, grinning with what appears to be all of his teeth, holding a paper bag of doughnuts like a peace offering. He radiates the energy of someone who has come to sell you a timeshare and is very excited about it.

"Hey! Hi! I'm Jax! Kane's roommate! Coworker! We grew up together! You know Kane, right? The guy who— you know, the—"

Luna blinks. "Which guy?"

"The guy who—" Jax's grin flickers for a microsecond, then he takes a breath and switches to the most sincere tone in his arsenal. "Private investigator! Yes! Kane is a private investigator, hired by your uncle in Ohio! Your uncle is worried about you!"

"I don't have an uncle."

"Then— your other uncle!"

"I don't have other uncles either. I'm an orphan."

Jax blinks. "...Orphan. Right. Orphan. Which is also a family situation! A very independent one!"

Luna watches him rebuild the story in real time and decides to be kind about it. "Sure. And Kane is a private investigator."

"Yes! Exactly!"

"Who was hired by my nonexistent uncle."

"Who is—" Jax's grin freezes mid-rebuild.

"—a ghost employee," Luna finishes. "Payroll must be a nightmare for you guys."

The air goes very quiet. Jax's grin shatters. He stands there, doughnuts raised like a white flag, and says, with the defeated honesty of a man who has just watched his whole story fall apart: "...Doughnut? I bought two. Because I'm optimistic. Not because I feel guilty. Definitely not because I'm guilty of anything."

Luna takes the doughnuts. She can respect a man who commits to the bit. "Sure. Thanks. And tell your 'coworker' Kane that in my suspect file, his current charge is: excessive concern."

"That's not a crime!"

"In this city," Luna says, "it is. I mean — you guys can't even keep your dogs normal."

Jax's grin freezes. Something about that sentence seems to land directly on a nerve he wasn't expecting. He opens his mouth, closes it, and leaves looking genuinely rattled.

At noon, the campus PA system plays a notice three times:

"Attention, students. Lost dog. A black, slightly chubby, allegedly Labrador-type canine has gone missing. Answers to the name Gregory. If found, please—"

Luna finds Gregory on the library steps.

He is a black, slightly chubby, allegedly Labrador-type canine. He is sitting on the top step, upright on his hind legs — which is already weird — and he is staring at Luna's open homework notebook with the concentration of a man reading a contract.

"You can read that?" Luna squats down, testing.

Gregory lifts his chin with immense dignity and wags his tail.

Luna counts. Seven wags per second. She counts again. Seven. Dogs cannot do this. This is the one fact about animal biology Luna is absolutely, one-hundred-percent certain of: dogs cannot wag seven times per second.

Luna holds out her palm. "Sit."

Gregory sits. Perfect form. Snout high, chest out, like he's been training for this his whole life.

"Down."

He drops so flat his ears touch the pavement.

"Shake."

He offers a paw with the solemnity of a diplomat signing a treaty.

Luna stares at the paw. "You have, like, real people-eyes," she says.

Gregory's tail freezes mid-wag.

The second fact she confirms: Gregory is staring at her backpack with visible longing, and there's a thin line of drool at the corner of his mouth.

"Hungry, huh." Luna digs out half a bag of chips and pours them on the pavement.

Gregory hesitates for exactly 0.3 seconds, then attacks the chips like they owe him money. He eats with his eyes closed, making small, satisfied, distinctly human-sounding sounds of joy.

"Easy, easy," Luna says gently. "Life on the streets is rough, huh?"

Gregory looks up at her. His eyes fill with actual tears. And then — in a perfectly clear, human, crying voice — he says: "I've never eaten chips before... my life is complete..."

The chip bag falls out of Luna's hand.

Gregory — or the young werewolf who is failing magnificently at being a dog — freezes. He claps a paw over his mouth. His eyes go wide, the size of dinner plates. Then he starts sobbing and vibrating at the same time, and under the afternoon sun, his furry black body begins to stretch, and shift, and pull apart like taffy, until thirty seconds later a twenty-year-old guy in a ripped t-shirt is curled up on the library steps, crying his eyes out.

"I messed up," he wails. "The captain is going to kill me. I just wanted to smell you — they said your scent is the best in the whole pack — I swear I just wanted to sniff, I didn't mean to—"

Luna squats in front of him, expressionless, and raises her phone. Click.

"Breaking news at Blackmoon University: stray dog transforms into stray human. Medical miracle or species invasion? Tune in next week."

"No! Don't post that! Please!"

"Put your tail away and I won't."

Gregory looks down at his own butt. There's a fluffy black tail, still out, twitching in betrayal. He cries harder.

A hand comes out of nowhere and grabs the scruff of his neck, lifting the entire werewolf off the ground like he's a misbehaving kitten.