The University of South Alabama’s writing center was a decent place to work. The pay was neither fabulous nor terrible. The job itself was neither taxing nor boring—except for the first two weeks of any given semester. Most students didn’t panic and venture into the writing center until at least week four of the academic year. It was the second week of January and the first week of the new semester. Absentmindedly, I browsed Facebook and refreshed the writing center schedule every few minutes, hoping vainly that an appointment would magically appear.

Nothing so far.

There was a knock on the doorframe behind me. I jumped and spun around in my rolling office chair. Cascade—tall and blonde—stood in the doorway, hand on hip. Her other hand clutched a plastic bag. “I see you’re very busy,” she said. “Shall I come back later?”

She wouldn’t dare leave me to suffer.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

Cascade’s frost-blue eyes widened. She drew an offended gasp, putting a hand over her heart. “Nick, I am wounded,” she said. “Can’t I come and visit my dearest roommate while he’s at work? I just left Arthurian literature. Maybe we were talking about loyalty, and I decided I couldn’t make it one second longer without seeing my best friend.”

“It’s Friday. You never visit me on Friday—unless you’re trying to set me up with one of your friends.”

Cascade smiled, feigning innocence. “Do you know how many men and women would die to hook up with a siren or an incubus?” she asked, shoving aside a keyboard as she sat on the edge of the table.

“Millions, I’m sure,” I replied.

Her eyes narrowed and searched my face. Cascade had a way of looking at me like she always knew everything I was thinking, and although she’d assured me she had no mind-reading powers, I still wondered how much she was able to sense.

“I appreciate your efforts,” I said. “I’m trying.”

Her face softened. “I know.”

She wanted me to be happy; I wanted me to be happy, too. However, getting over an ex wasn’t really an exact science, especially when the breakup had been disastrous. As in, finding out your boyfriend had been cheating with his coworker for going on four years while he’d been dating you. It had been six months since it happened and I’d willingly gone along with all of Cascade’s blind-dates and matchmaking schemes. The problem was I wanted to be in a relationship, but I didn’t want to commit. I wanted the romance without the attachment, the performance of intimacy without the actual intimacy.

“But you’re right,” Cascade said quickly. “I do have an ulterior motive. Brand new samples!”

Cascade pulled several pots of a shimmering, glittery substance from her bag. Being her only friend with skin darker than beige, I was always subject to her new makeup concoctions. Cascade’s mission was to create makeup that worked for everyone, regardless of skin color, and while that sounded like a simple feat, five years of knowing—and three years of living with—the next Kat Von D has taught me otherwise. Makeup was hard.

I offered my arm and Cascade eagerly patch tested her new creations on my forearm. My skin glittered like a kaleidoscope beneath the light. Cascade was careful to make each patch the same size. When she finished, my arm was covered in luminous, brightly-hued powder. Cascade wrinkled her nose.

“The orange is nice,” I offered.

“Yeah, it is, but I had high hopes for the blue.”

Her medium-blue looked more like midnight on me. It would’ve been easily overlooked, too, had I not known it was there.

“Okay, the orange and gold are good,” Cascade muttered. “Green and pink are fine. Silver looks stunning. Purple is okay. Blue is…barely visible.”

She pulled her phone from her coat pocket and presumably entered the results into it.

“What is it?” I asked. “Eyeshadow?”

“Highlighter,” she replied, pausing to run a nail over her high cheekbone.

She snapped a couple of photos with her phone and handed me a make-up remover wipe. I scrubbed at my arm, but it quickly became clear that it’d take more than one wipe to remove all this glitter. Cascade watched my efforts for a few seconds before she pushed the entire packet of wipes toward me.

“So, have you finalized names?” I asked.

She’d spoken about starting a new collection, and I suspected this was it.

“Well, I’d considered fairytales, but fairytale lines are so done to death right now,” Cascade said.

“You could name them after the Pleiades,” I offered. “The seven sisters.”

“Nerd,” Cascade said. “Who would even get that? Besides, astronomical names are done to death, too. Urban Decay, Stellar, Sephora, and countless people on Etsy already have that one covered.”

“You could think outside the box,” I joked. “Call one Hertzsprung-Russell, after the diagram we use to measure stars—”

“Yes. I’m sure everyone would want that shade on their face,” Cascade laughed.

“I would’ve put it on,” I said, waving my arm.

It looked like I might be stuck wearing the silver, because it stood defiant to the end against Cascade’s unquestionably expensive makeup remover wipes. I might need to resort to dousing my arm in alcohol, an action that would surely cause Cascade to look on in horror.

“I don’t think you’re my target demographic,” Cascade said.

“You don’t…” I trailed off as I caught sight of the man standing in the doorway.

Even in his navy wool overcoat, it was clear this man was both tall and broad, and more than likely very muscular. His jaw was strong and his steel-gray eyes pierced mine. His dirty-blond hair was artfully and purposefully tousled. He could’ve stepped straight off the pages of Esquire, especially since he was dressed like a man with a substantial bank account. I felt suddenly self-conscious in my acid wash denim and Nintendo t-shirt. Today wasn’t my best-dressed day.

“Do you have an appointment?” Cascade asked, coming to my rescue.

“Do I need one?” he asked. He sounded vaguely offended, as if she had insulted him.

“Generally, yes,” Cascade said sweetly. “We can set you up with one right now if you like.”

The man rolled his eyes, and I finally managed to release the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “I’ll set you up,” I said, pulling up the schedule to add his appointment.

The man’s gaze remained fixed on Cascade. He didn’t seem particularly aggressive, but there was an indecipherable intensity in his eyes.

“Name?” I asked.

Finally, his eyes flickered towards me. There were flecks of gold in them, like stars peeking through a cloud-swaddled sky. Those eyes seemed to take me in very quickly before delivering judgment. I felt as though I’d failed some impossible test. This guy was attractive, uncommonly so, and I knew that I lacked the guts to flirt with him. It wouldn’t have been a good idea, anyway. The first rule of working in the writing center was never date a client.

“Alex Nox,” he said.

Nox was Greek for night. I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, before I could blurt out that entirely unnecessary bit of trivia.

I gathered the rest of his information quickly before waving him into the tutoring room. “I’ll be there in just a second,” I said.

“Great,” he replied, although he didn’t sound particularly enthused.

He strolled past me without another word. I looked towards Cascade to see if she’d noticed my attraction, but rather than the expected smile, a perturbed frown stretched across her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Cascade leaned close. “Nick, he feels odd,” she said. “I don’t think he’s wholly human.”

* * *

I took a deep breath. While I’d spent years having a siren for a roommate and had been invited to several supernatural events, I still felt a shiver run through me at the thought of being in a small room, alone, with an unknown supernatural creature. It was difficult to say whether it was a shiver of terror or thrill; maybe it was a bit of both.

When I entered the tutoring room, Alex sat at one of the tables. His feet were propped up on a spare chair and he was tapping a pen loudly against the faux wood. Before him rested a stapled stack of crisp, white papers printed with black ink. Double-space, twelve font, Times New Roman. I recognized the Modern Language Association style immediately, which was always a good sign. It wasn’t flawless, but Alex clearly knew the basics of the style.

I slipped into the chair across from him and caught a whiff of spicy cologne. He smelled how I thought a celebrity might. “What do you need help with?” I asked.

“Grammar, I guess,” he answered. “My professor took a lot of points off my last paper. And the MLA style.”

Most clients came to the writing center for help with grammar. I nodded sympathetically and reached for the paper.

“I never caught your name,” Alex said.

“Oh! It’s Nick,” I replied.

Alex nodded, seemingly unconcerned with the answer as he tapped his pen faster.

I read the first few paragraphs of his paper. The class code in the top left-hand corner revealed that it was for British Literature II. The paper itself wasn’t Nobel Prize worthy, but it wasn’t terrible. To Alex’s credit, he’d clearly written the paper himself and not cobbled together something from the internet. The grammar and syntax were both good. There was a defined thesis and the citations were correct. Although English wasn’t my major, I did remember reading “The Lady of Shalott,” so I was, at least, somewhat familiar with the subject matter of Alex’s paper.

“Well,” I said, “I think your grammar and MLA are fine. Mostly, the problem is your argument.”

I paused to see what effect my words would have. Sometimes people didn’t take kindly to being told their paper was flawed in any way besides grammar.

Alex wrinkled his nose and ceased tapping the pen. “What do you mean? I have a thesis.”

“Right,” I said, “but you don’t support it well. You tend to drop in lines from Tennyson’s poem and your other sources, but you don’t explain why those sources are relevant. You have to do that to make an effective argument. I can’t just read your mind and know what you mean.”

Alex clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I guess that makes sense,” he said.

“It’ll take a bit of work to fix,” I added. “Is this due soon?”

“A couple weeks from now,” Alex replied with a dismissive wave.

At least he was proactive. I’d had clients before who came to the writing center an hour before their paper was due. Some of them had even commandeered our computers and printers to do last-minute fixes and print them out. But starting an assignment this far ahead? That showed discipline.

“Wonderful,” I said.

“I guess. My New Year’s resolution was to be more…studious. Trying to bring my grades up,” Alex replied. “I’m not stupid. I just—”

“Of course you aren’t,” I replied. “Coming to the writing center doesn’t mean you aren’t smart. Rather, it means that you’re invested in your education and want to make the best possible grades.”

Alex leaned forward and rested his cheek in his hand. “You give that speech a lot?”

At least once a day, but I meant it.

I shrugged ambivalently. “Our goal is to help students improve in the long-term—not give them a quick fix. If that means encouraging students, so be it.”

“And how many people need long-term help writing English papers? Once I finish this literature survey class, I’ll never have to write another one again,” Alex replied. “That’s why I’m studying business—because I don’t like this stuff.”

“It isn’t my cup of tea either,” I said. “but it’s still beneficial to learn to argue effectively. You’ll need those skills in other areas as well. If you think you won’t be writing any papers in your upper-level business classes, you are very much mistaken.”

“Not your cup of tea? I thought you were all English majors.”

“Astrophysics,” I replied, “but I can write well. They wouldn’t have hired me if I couldn’t.”

“I’m interested in astronomy myself,” Alex said. “I find the moon fascinating. I never cared too much for the rest, though. Well, not enough to look very hard at it.”

I nodded. “You should take Intro to Astronomy, then,” I said. “Just make sure you take the astronomy lab part at night. Otherwise, you’ll never get to use the telescopes and that just isn’t as much fun.”

“I try to avoid night classes. That’s the only time things are interesting around here. Why waste my time in class?”

“Interesting?”

“Sure. Football and baseball games. Fraternity parties. Tennis practice. Intramurals…”

“Oh.”

Despite being a junior, I’d never been to a single sporting event or fraternity party. I was never invited, and Cascade rarely attended human-only functions. She preferred parties that were primarily composed of magical people. Sure, I’d been on a couple of dates and I’d tagged along to parties with Cascade, but it wasn’t the same.

Sometimes, I felt as though I was missing something integral to the university experience, as if I’d spent too much time focusing on grades and my future. It was as though I’d made a mistake in religiously following Mom’s advice to study hard and keep socializing to an absolute minimum. Of course, I also acknowledged that my dour attitude had something to do with my ex-boyfriend, Brian. I tried not to let my thoughts linger on him, but it was difficult to deny that he’d had a lasting impact on me.

I returned my attention to Alex’s paper, all too aware of how intently he was studying me. Students didn’t usually stare at me when I read their papers; they mostly played on their phones or pretended to be interested in all the posters hanging on the writing center’s walls.

“You also want to break up your paragraphs,” I said, after taking a further look. “You have a basic five-paragraph essay at this point, and that’s, well, basic.”

“Not a sports person, huh?” Alex asked.

“Not everyone is,” I answered.

“I bet you’ve never tried any sport,” Alex said.

“Not unless you count competitive chess,” I replied, handing back his paper. “Or pool.”

“Pool?”

“It’s all geometry,” I answered.

“So no real sports. You can’t know you aren’t good at something if you’ve never tried it,” Alex replied. “I bet you’d love hiking.”

Was that an invitation? My stomach seemed to twist in knots and I bit the inside of my cheek. There were plenty of pens and scraps of paper nearby. I could easily scribble down my phone number, but—but surely…

This was a bad idea. He was my client, and it would be very unprofessional to slip a client my phone number.

“Maybe your girlfriend can take you,” Alex said. “She looks like the type who enjoys exercise.”

He hadn’t offered to take me himself, so he probably wasn’t interested.

“Cascade isn’t my girlfriend,” I replied.

Not that it mattered. After all, Alex might be very attractive, but I’d fallen prey to insta-lust before. We had nothing in common. Alex was the sort of person who would’ve bullied me in high school. He was the sort of person who dated cheerleaders or sorority girls and wouldn’t look twice at someone like me. I wasn’t bad-looking, but nothing about me was particularly striking either. Not enough to draw this gorgeous man’s attention.

And he was my client. No point in fantasizing about his doubtlessly expensive cologne or the muscles hinted at beneath his tight shirt. Or about how he was tall and broad and could probably break me in half. That thought shouldn’t be nearly as attractive as it was.

Alex stood first, and I nearly tripped over my chair in my haste to walk him out. When we returned to the outer office, Cascade was waiting. She spun in one of the revolving chairs and cocked her head to one side looking straight at Alex. “So, what are you anyway?” Cascade asked.

Alex paused and glanced back at me. “I thought you smelled odd,” he said, turning his attention back to Cascade. “What are you—a fairy?”

“A siren.”

“Oh, lovely.”

Cascade’s smile widened. “And I thought you felt odd,” she said. “So, what are you?”

Alex tapped his paper against the table. “A werewolf,” he said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Cascade smiled winningly. “None whatsoever. I was just curious.”

“And what are you?” Alex asked, nodding to me.

“Fourth-generation Mexican-American,” I offered.

Alex hummed and seemed satisfied with the answer. After he left, I turned to Cascade. “A werewolf?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

I’d never met a werewolf before.