Chapter 2. My Landlord Doesn't Eat People (1)

Lynn met him for the second time in Abnormal Psychology, at ten in the morning, in front of two hundred witnesses and a malfunctioning projector.She had not slept. She had sealed a pocket rift that tried to open in the dorm's third-floor bathroom at two in the morning, which had been gross and damp and had taken forty minutes, and by nine AM she was operating on rage and residual gold light and a vending-machine croissant. Professor Hale was forty minutes into a lecture on dissociative identity disorder, the projector was flashing like it was having a seizure, and Lynn was face-down on her desk doing advanced mathematics on the probability of the day ending before she died.The mistake was the word "under."She rubbed her eyes. Under her eyelids, behind the exhaustion, the gold light was sitting like a patient dog, and one strand of it slipped through her fingers before she could catch it. It traveled through the air with the quiet confidence of a guided missile, found her triple espresso, and ignited it.The coffee boiled for exactly three seconds. Then it erupted.A brown geyser, perfectly aimed, arcing over the desks and landing with devastating accuracy on the head of Bianca Marsh, who was texting her situationship and had been having, until that moment, a very good hair day.The lecture hall went silent.Then two hundred people started laughing, and the sound was biblical."LYNN MOORE." Professor Hale's voice could have stripped paint. "Did you just spray coffee on a classmate's head in MY lecture?"Lynn raised her hand. Her face was a mask of serenity. "Professor," she said, "this is the modern dilemma of performance art. When your subconscious performs better than you do.""I'm taking points off your participation grade.""Worth it," Lynn said, sincerely, and privately rated the fountain nine out of ten. Deduct one for the temperature.The lecture limped to its end. Zoey materialized from the back row the second the bell rang, vibrating with the energy of a person who has just witnessed a historical event."BESTIE," she hissed, phone thrust in Lynn's face. The screen showed a TikTok. Title: "college student dyes classmate's hair with coffee (gone wrong?? gone RIGHT??)" View count: rising like a rocket. "You're going viral. You're FAMOUS. I'm your manager now. I get ten percent.""Delete it.""Delete my child? Absolutely not. You're a content queen and I'm the crown." Zoey looped an arm through hers and lowered her voice. "Okay but for real, what is happening with you? You've been weird for a week. You look like you fought a ghost and lost. You're glowing at inanimate objects. Are you secretly a superhero? Are you in a cult? Because if it's a cult, I have questions, and if it's a superhero thing, I have so many more questions."Lynn opened her mouth to deliver the smooth lie she had prepared — something about a thesis on sleep deprivation, a long-distance boyfriend, a sudden interest in extreme yoga —Her phone buzzed.New message, unknown number: "Three PM.

The management office. One minute late, and I'm adding fifty dollars to your property fee. Also, I had the shop make you extra blueberry pancakes. Double cream. K."Lynn stared at the K."I need to buy holy water," she said."See, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about," Zoey said happily. "You're insane, I love it, tell me everything."At two fifty-nine, Lynn Moore stood outside the glass door of the management office of the Voss Building and considered her life choices.The Voss Building was a handsome brick pre-war on a quiet street off Divisadero, the kind of building with a marble lobby and a superintendent who left aggressive notes about recycling. Lynn had moved in three weeks ago, top floor, 3B, rent that was suspiciously cheap for the neighborhood, which she had attributed to a listing error and then, increasingly, to a trap.The man behind the desk had not looked up from his iPad. There was a nameplate on the corner of the desk, acrylic, in florid script: LANDLORD. Next to it, a small hand-drawn bat."Sit," Kael Voss said, without looking up. "I've reviewed your lease. Credit history excellent. Utilities paid on time. One problem." He raised his eyes — wine-red, catching the afternoon light like dark glass. "At two seventeen AM yesterday, in unit 3B, you tore open a pocket rift in my kitchen, approximately twelve inches in diameter, and burned a hole through the floor tiles.""…That was an accident.""The accident," Kael said, tapping his iPad, "has a cost." He turned the screen toward her. An invoice, itemized with the precision of a man who had spent centuries ruling more complex economies:Floor tile replacement — $340.00Fire hazard rectification — $50.00Landlord's mental distress (reviewing security footage at 2 AM) — $1,000.00Night-shift savior overtime (prepaid) — −$500.00Total due: $890.00"Your mental distress is a thousand dollars?" Lynn pointed at the line item. "You watched a security camera for five minutes.""Forty-eight families live in this building," Kael said. "If you lose control, all forty-eight ascend to heaven on the same elevator. My mental distress is worth every cent.""You're a vampire," Lynn said, through her teeth. "Why do you know California tenant law so well?""I've ruled more complex systems." He closed the iPad with a soft click and leaned back, the ghost of a smile on his mouth. "Property management is the easiest one yet."Lynn breathed. In. Out. She had, twenty-four hours ago, watched this man freeze a monster out of the sky. She had decided the "he's handsome" part of her brain was damaged and unreliable."Fine," she said. "I'll sign. But I'm adding clauses. Clause one: the landlord does not enter the tenant's apartment after dark. Clause two: the landlord does not make pancakes in the tenant's kitchen. Clause three —""Clause three is rejected." Kael's voice was flat. "I own the shop. I have to do something with the inventory.""WHY do you own a pancake shop?""Because I can't drink blood." He shrugged, utterly unbothered. "Modern vampire. Low-cal, low-carbon, low-desire."