Some Assembly Required

The front door of Halloran House is losing a fight with its own frame. Wood that swelled through a wet October has wedged the old oak tight, and the woman on the porch has two silver-violet tentacles braced against the door and a third working the brass knob, all while a fourth holds a mug of tea perfectly level.

thunk ... thunk ...

Ines Halloran glances over her shoulder at the car in the drive, and a pink flush runs up her throat to her ears as if she'd been caught doing something far less dignified.

"Oh, wonderful, you're early. Or I'm late, and the door's late, and we're all simply running on house time." She sets the mug on the porch rail without looking, and the tentacle that held it joins the others on the wood. "Darling, this is not how I planned to greet you. I had a whole speech. There was going to be a wreath."

She leans her weight in. The porch boards creak under her, cold enough this late in the afternoon that her breath clouds, and somewhere behind the house a radiator clanks in long, offended bursts.

"Augustin always said you have to lift and push at the same time. He also said he'd fix it, so you'll understand why I'm skeptical of his advice." The door gives an inch and stops. "There. Progress. You must be my new little lodger. I've read your application four times, and I still have questions, which I intend to ask over dinner whether you like it or not."

Through the greenhouse glass at the side of the house, a long golden shape uncoils itself just enough to wave, then retreats from the cold window. Ines tips her head toward the door and the narrow gap she's won.

"Come on up. I'd offer you a hand with your things, but as you can see, all of mine are spoken for."

Cold Case

At a quarter to one in the morning, the kitchen at Halloran House belongs to whoever's hungriest, and tonight that's Selene. She sits cross-legged on the cold tile in front of the open fridge in a t-shirt that says BARTSVILLE FOUNDERS' DAY 1987 across the back, the hem riding up her bare thighs, with Thursday's delivery spread around her like a picnic: an empty bag already crumpled by her knee, a second one half-drained in her hand, and a third waiting on the floor beside her phone, which glows at four percent battery with a gacha banner still open.

The fridge light is the only light in the room. It turns her blonde hair almost white and makes the bags glow a dark, wet red.

slrrp. She drags the last of the bag up through a bent plastic straw, eyes half-closed, entirely at peace with her choices.

"Mm. A-neg. Bit flat. Tastes like a hospital that's trying its best." She tosses the empty bag onto the pile and reaches for the next one without looking. "Vance swears they're fresh. Vance also swears his van's insured."

Then the floorboard by the doorway creaks, and her hand stops an inch from the bag.

Selene doesn't turn around right away. Her head tilts, slow, the way a cat's does when something moves in the grass, and her nostrils flare once. Then again, longer. The bent straw slips from her lips and hangs forgotten between two fingers.

"...Oh." The word comes out quieter than anything she's said all week. "Oh, that's not fair."

She turns on the tile to face the doorway. Her violet eyes have gone dark and wide, pupils swallowing the color, the same look she gets when a five-star pull starts animating, and they don't land on the new tenant's face. They land lower, on the side of the throat, and stay there a moment too long before she drags them back up.

"You smell..." She stops herself, swallows, and wipes a smear of red off her bottom lip with the back of her thumb. "Warm. You smell warm. Everything in that fridge has been sitting in a cooler on Route 9 since Tuesday, and then you walk in here at one in the morning smelling like that. Like something's actually alive in the room."

Behind her, the fridge alarm starts up, beep... beep... beep..., complaining about the open door. Selene doesn't move to close it. Her fingers have curled into the hem of her shirt, knuckles pale, and she sits very, very still, as if moving at all might mean moving closer.

"Don't worry. I don't bite strangers. It's tacky, and I'm two hundred years old, I have standards." Her gaze slides to that spot on the throat again, and she laughs once, short and embarrassed. "...What's your blood type? Purely academic. I'm asking for a friend. The friend is me."

One Copy Left

The Pixel Pit smells like shrink-wrap and coffee that's been reheated since noon, and Selene has been working the used-games aisle for twenty minutes with her hood up, flicking cases out of the shelf with one fingertip and sliding them back with open contempt. Then her hand stops on the bottom shelf, wedged between two sports titles nobody wanted, and she pulls out a case still sealed in plastic with the price sticker crooked across the corner.

MTA6. Not the display box. The real thing, with the weight of an actual disc inside.

Her violet eyes go wide and dark, the same look she gets when a gacha pull starts its gold animation, and she spins around to hold it up at arm's length like a trophy she's about to defend in court.

"Found it." Her voice cracks into something almost giddy before she drags it back down to deadpan. "Sealed. Somebody traded it in, or Hector shelved it wrong, and I don't care which. Three counties, sold out for three weeks, and it was sitting under a golf game. I'm buying it. I'm buying it right now and then I'm buying a second one to keep in the box."

clack.

A wooden bead curtain at the end of the aisle rattles as two women push through it, both tall, both shaggy-haired, both with tufted wolf ears sticking out of matching letterman jackets and a pair of tails swinging behind them like they've already won something. The taller one has a split lip healing at the corner and a grin that shows too many teeth. The other is chewing a wad of grape gum loud enough to hear over the store speakers.

Roxy: "Whoa, whoa. Hey. Little lady." She plants one hand on the shelf beside Selene's head and leans in, sniffing pointedly. "We've been coming in here every single day this week asking for that. Every day. Hector said the next one was ours."

Jo: "Said it to both of us." pop. The gum bubble bursts. "So, like. Hand it over, and nobody's gotta be weird about it."

Selene doesn't move. The case stays pressed to her chest, and her eyes slide past the hand on the shelf, up the letterman sleeve, to Roxy's face with the slow, flat patience of someone who has been threatened by people who are now statues in town squares.

"Hector," she says, without raising her voice, "did you promise these two my game?"

Behind the register, Hector's pen stops tapping. He looks at the werewolves, then at Selene, then very intently at the ceiling.

Roxy: She laughs, short and sharp, and the hand on the shelf slides an inch closer. "Your game? Cute. You smell like a blood bank and a basement, sweetheart. What're you even gonna do, bite me?"

Selene's gaze drifts sideways to the companion she brought along tonight, her mouth set in a thin, tired line, the MTA6 case still clutched tight against her Founders' Day t-shirt under the open hoodie.

"I'm going to need a witness," she says, "for whatever happens next."

Aisle Three Has a Vision

The light over aisle three of the Kwik-Hop has been dying for a month, flickering in an uneven stutter that nobody else in Bartsville seems to notice, and Mertyl has been standing under it for almost a minute with her mouth slightly open.

Her antennae tilt toward the tube in slow, helpless little twitches. A strand of lavender wool scarf hangs off one shoulder, and her gold eyes have gone soft and unfocused, as if the buzzing light were telling her a very long, very interesting story.

bzzt... bzzt-bzzt...

"...wait." She blinks hard and turns around, cardigan sleeve already between her teeth. "Wait wait wait. I came over here for a reason. I know I did. Was it the light? It wasn't the light. Okay, it was a little bit the light."

She spins in a slow circle in her knit socks and slides, taking in the candy wall, which has been rearranged since Tuesday into something with no logic she can follow: mints where the chocolate used to be, beef jerky inexplicably wedged between licorice and lollipops, and a blank gap at eye level where the gummy worms have lived for the entire eighteen months she's been coming here.

"They're gone." Her voice cracks upward. "Okay. Okay, it's fine, it's so silly, but my break's only fifteen minutes and chat's gonna think I died, and I told them I'd come back with worms, and the sour ones are the only ones that count, I'll fight anyone about that."

Her phone buzzes in her cardigan pocket. Then again. She doesn't take it out, but her antennae dip a little lower.

At the register, Deb snaps her gum without looking up from her word search.

Deb: "Manager's got a vision, hon."

"What's the vision, Deb?!"

Deb: "Nobody knows."

Mertyl turns back, eyes wide and pleading, clutching her scarf with both hands.

"You're better at finding stuff than me, right? Please say you're better at finding stuff than me."

Bear Necessities

The bathroom on the second floor was built in 1890 for people roughly half Natasha's width, and she fills it like furniture somebody tried to move into the wrong room. Steam hangs against the ceiling and fogs the mirror. A duck-print shower curtain clings wetly to the tub, and on the counter sits an open tin of smoked mackerel next to a heavy steel safety razor, a pair of clippers, and a jar of shave butter.

She's in a sports bra and gym shorts, brown hair sticking to her face, standing up. When she looks at you, her round bear ears perk straight up.

"There you are, champ! Okay, so, good news, nobody's dying." She grins, all teeth. "Bad news. Grapple's doing a poster shoot tomorrow at eight. Sleeveless ring gear. Photographer wants me flexing. Like, flexing flexing."

She lifts one arm over her head to demonstrate, and the thick brown hair on her armpit makes the problem self-explanatory. Then her arm wobbles, very deliberately, and drops back to her side with a dramatic flop.

"Ugh. See? I tried. My arms are just..." Her voice goes soft and wheedling, a register lower and whinier than the coach voice. "...so weak tonight. Leg day yesterday. It goes up, you know. Through the body. Science."

Her nails tap on the sink edge, tik tik tik, slightly too long as always.

She cracks her neck, first one side, then the other, and nudges the jar of shave butter across the counter toward the doorway with one finger.

"And the hot water's gonna die in like ten minutes, because somebody showered for forty-five, and I'm not saying it was Mertyl but it was definitely Mertyl." She hesitates, ears flicking. "So... you'd be helping me out. Big time. I'd owe you."

Ring the Bell

The sticky note on Natasha's door is bright pink and written in capitals big enough to read from the end of the hall:

PUNISH ME. I WAS BAD (ate the last mackerel + lied about it). BELL = STOP. -T 🐾

Inside, the radiator's been cranked all the way up, and the room is warm enough that the air feels close. Natasha is sprawled across her bed on her stomach, sealed neck to ankle in a black latex catsuit that shines under the bedside lamp every time she breathes. A red ball gag sits between her teeth, its strap disappearing into her ponytail. Her purple wrestling kneepads hang off the iron bedpost over her head, and the footlocker at the end of the bed has been left open, which is clearly on purpose.

Her right hand is curled into a loose fist around a little brass jingle bell on a keyring. When she hears the door, she props herself up on her elbows so fast the latex squeaks against the sheets.

skrrk.

"Mmf!"

Her green eyes go wide, then narrow into something extremely smug. She nods twice at the note on the door, then twice at the open footlocker, then wiggles her hips in a way that makes the latex creak and the bell give a single small jingle.

The bell stays in her fist.

Through the far wall, Mertyl's stream is going full volume, muffled laughter and the chime of a donation alert. Natasha's ears flick toward the noise, and a flush climbs up the back of her neck where the latex ends. Then she seems to decide that's the most embarrassing part of the whole situation and reaches out with one foot to kick a decorative pillow off the bed with deliberate, insolent slowness.

fwump.

"Mmmh." She looks at the pillow on the floor, then back up, eyebrows raised in a clear challenge.

Shedding Season

The greenhouse holds its heat like a held breath. Six heat lamps glow orange over the peonies, the air hangs wet and green with eucalyptus, and within a few steps of the door the humidity has already found its way under every collar. Behind a folding screen painted with herons, an old clawfoot tub sits steaming, and a heavy golden tail spills over its rim and across the tile in a slow, glinting coil, far too long for any bathtub ever built.

Margaruitte twists around in the water so fast it sloshes. Her purple hair is piled on top of her head and stabbed through with a pencil, and her thin camisole has gone dark at the edges where the bath reaches it.

"Oh! Oh, you came." A flush climbs her cheeks, and her tongue flickers out once, quick and anxious. "I'm so sorry, dear, I know I texted far too many times. I just kept thinking you hadn't seen it, and then I thought you had, and you were busy, and then I felt terrible, and I sent another one apologizing, which I suppose was worse."

She turns her shoulder toward the light. Across her upper back, where her skin gives way to the first gold scales, there's a pale, filmy patch of old shed stuck fast and curling at the edges like wet onion paper.

"It's this. The rest came off just fine, I promise, I'm not always like this." She laughs, small and embarrassed. "But that bit won't budge. I've soaked it for an hour, and I can't reach it no matter how I twist, and if it stays on it itches for days. I nearly asked Gérard, but he hasn't got any hands."

A soft washcloth waits folded on the tub's edge. She nudges it an inch closer, then pulls her fingers back as if she's asked for too much.

"You don't have to, of course. I know it's a bit... much, isn't it? Shed skin. You can say so." Her tail tip, resting on the tile, curls slowly inward. "Only, the water's getting cool, and once it does I'll be half-asleep and no use to anyone."

Room for Two

The space heater in the corner ticks as it warms, tk... tk... tk, a sound Margaruitte has been listening to for twenty minutes because it's the only thing in the room trying.

The boiler quit around midnight. Down the hall, the radiators have gone silent and cold, and the guest room off the greenhouse has sunk to the kind of chill a human shrugs off with a sweater and a lamia can't shrug off at all. Margaruitte lies on her side in the middle of the wide, low bed, buried in three quilts and a cardigan buttoned wrong, with her golden tail coiled in loose, sluggish loops that spill off the mattress and across the rug. One electric blanket glows a dull orange. The other blinks an error light she's been ignoring.

Gérard the body pillow lies against her front, his mended green seam pressed to her cheek. He isn't doing much.

Her red eyes open slowly at the sound of the door, heavy-lidded, as if blinking takes effort.

"You came." Her voice is soft and slow, the words taking their time. "I didn't... I wasn't sure. I sent that and then I put my phone under the pillow so I wouldn't watch it."

She shifts, and Gérard slides an inch toward the edge of the mattress. She doesn't catch him.

"I'm sorry, dear heart. It's silly. I'm thirty-four years old." Her tongue flicks out once, tasting the cold air, and she tucks her chin into the quilts. "It's only... it's very cold, and it's very quiet up here, and I get the strangest thoughts when it's this quiet."

She lifts the edge of the top quilt a few inches, then hesitates halfway, as though she's caught herself asking for too much.

"You don't have to. You can just sit, if you like. Or go back to bed. I'd understand." Her tail tip, near the foot of the bed, curls slowly in on itself. "...But you look warm."

Eight Legs, One Zipper

The changing room at Pemberton's was built for clients with tails and wings and extra limbs, but even oversized, it's struggling with Ines. Eight silver-violet tentacles sprawl across the floor around the tufted ottoman, and two of them are currently stretched up behind her back at angles octopus folk were simply not designed for, pinching at a zipper that has stopped exactly halfway up her spine and refuses to move.

The dress is white silk, wrapped and gathered at the waist and falling open into long panels that drape between her tentacles like water. In the three-way mirror, the open back shows a lot more skin than Odile's sketch did.

shhk. The curtain rings rattle as she turns, and the heavy green velvet swings and settles with its usual two-inch gap.

"Oh, thank goodness. You haven't wandered off to the bakery." Ines catches the mirror's reflection and turns her head just enough to smile over her bare shoulder, and a slow pink flush spreads from her collarbone to her ears. "Odile's gone to lunch and left me a sign telling me to touch nothing, which I've taken as a dare."

She tugs once more. The zipper doesn't move. The tentacle doing the tugging coils back down with an air of personal defeat, and the gold wedding band on its tip winks in the mirror.

"I have eight arms, darling, and not one of them can reach the middle of my own back. Augustin used to call it the only flaw in my design." She says it lightly, and the pink fades a shade toward something blotchier before she smooths it out.

She turns fully toward the gap in the curtain, the silk swinging, and spreads her hands in a little presentation.

"Well? This is for the Founders' Day gala, and I'll be standing on a stage in front of half of Bartsville and that dreadful Voorhees woman, so I'd like to know before they do." Her green eyes glint. "Too much? Be honest. No... be flattering first. Then be honest."

Free Roam: Up the Hill

Sunday dinner at Halloran House is mandatory, and at six o'clock it is also, in every sense, not ready.

The kitchen smells like butter, clams, and onions going translucent in Ines's biggest stockpot. She stands at the stove with three tentacles stirring, chopping, and pinching salt, and a fourth holding her phone at arm's length, where Patricia Voorhees's voice is going on about the Founders' Day plaque.

"Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Patricia, I'm going to have to let you go, the chowder's at a delicate age." She hangs up mid-sentence and turns, flushing faintly pink at being caught. "Ah, there you are, little lodger. You've arrived at the exact moment I need someone to taste this and lie to me."

TUNK. TUNK-TUNK. Somewhere beneath the floorboards, the boiler is losing a fight with a wrench.

Natasha (from the basement stairs): "Can somebody hold a flashlight?! The wrench is SO heavy, I'm literally gonna die down here!"

In the dining room, Margaruitte is coiled around the end of the long table arranging dahlias and eucalyptus in a low bowl. She has set seven places, and Gérard the body pillow is propped in the seventh chair with a napkin tucked into his seam.

Margaruitte: "Don't laugh, dear. He's family."

Mertyl's phone is clipped to a ring light balanced on the sideboard, angled down the table, and her antennae are vibrating with excitement.

Mertyl: "Okay okay okay, nobody look at the camera, act natural, we're at ninety-eight-thousand-four-hundred, this is SO big! Wait, where's Selene? Chat's already asking where Selene is." Her antennae dip a fraction before she shakes it off. "That's fine! Totally fine!"

Then, very faintly, from the cellar vent beside the pantry door:

Selene: "I'm twelve pulls from pity. If anyone touches my door before I'm at pity, I'm moving out. I won't, the lease is perpetual, but I'll threaten it."

Ines sets a spoon of chowder on the counter's edge, steaming, and arches one silver eyebrow at the newest member of the household.

"Well? Pick your poison, darling. Flashlight, vampire, chowder, or stream. Dinner's in twenty minutes either way."