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“Fine.”

—which made me like him more. They seemed like an odd match, to be honest. Seb was quiet and rarely smiled. Larkin was loud and pretty hyper most of the time. But whatever. Wasn’t like it affected me.

Thankfully, Ewen and I never travelled to or from work at the same time. I always left before him, and usually got home first. Even though we weren’t streaming the matches yet, I still worked the later hours during the latter part of the week. I liked having the mornings to myself on those days, because Ewen usually left early, no doubt to rehearse for his upcoming matches.

Which meant blessed quiet from next door. I could sleep in. Not have to worry about bumping into him out front when I went to get my mail. Not have to brace myself in case he was out there on his front porch seeing off his latest guest in skimpy shorts or a tiny robe.

In fact, he’d been shockingly quiet over the last month. For him, at least. Yeah, he’d still had people over a couple of times, and yes, I’d been subjected to the muffled sounds of sex drifting from his open window and penetrating the glass of mine. But not as often as usual.

It was weird. And in some ways, it made me just as tense. When I was at home watching TV or gaming and I heard his car pull into the driveway, it was like my body eagerly started preparing for the anger that would usually follow when he began blaring out country music or his guests would start arriving. But then most nights, nothing would happen, and I’d sit there tense and edgy, just waiting for it, not really knowing what to do with myself or the premature annoyance flooding my veins from his mere proximity.

Was he planning another rager and taking it easy in the days beforehand? Was he just lulling me into a false sense of security so he could wake me up one night at 3 a.m. blaring “9 to 5”?

Not that I was complaining about the quiet. Well, my friends told me I always found something to complain about, but whatever.

I’d offered to host game night this week to make the most of it. When I got home from the grocery store after work, I was relieved not to see Ewen’s car. Grabbing the paper bag from the passenger seat, I got out and strolled up the driveway, feeling surprisingly relaxed.

After changing into jeans and a tee, I started getting the snacks ready. When I hosted game night, my friends always expected my famous super-hot nachos. Ghouls could handle a lot more spice and heat than most other folks, so I got busy chopping an obscene amount of chillis and grating spicy cheese.

I listened to my favourite true crime podcast, Super Effing Creepy, while I prepped the food. It was one that wasn’t available for general public consumption, because the hosts—a faun and a banshee—discussed crimes involving non-humans. Like when fae kept going missing in California in the eighties, and rumours circulated that an incubus was sacrificing them to the devil. And the gargoyle crime boss wreaking havoc on Paris in the sixties.

The newest episode was about a pair of what were believed to be goblins who’d carried out a string of armed robberies on the east coast in the early noughties and never been caught. True crime aficionados were only just beginning to take them seriously, because they’d been seen as a bit of joke at the time due to their propensity for dressing up in classic robber outfits, with stripy shirts and everything. Apparently, they’d been known for kicking out windows and scribbling an overly long phallus with ‘The Bratwurst Bandits’ written on it as their calling card.

I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard of them before, but for some reason they sounded kind of familiar. Just as one of the hosts started talking about what the pair usually stole—a lot of valuable martial arts memorabilia, apparently—there was a knock on my front door.

I paused the podcast and shifted into my human form as I made my way into the hall, just in case it wasn’t my friends. But when I opened the door, Teresa, Neville and Suki were standing there.

“Nachooos,” Teresa declared as she stepped inside and held her fist out for a bump. “They smell extra spicy this time. Can’t wait, Rafeo.”

I grinned and bumped her fist, then did the same to Neville before Suki pulled me into a brief hug. Once the door was shut, we all shifted into our true forms as the trio shed their jackets and headed into the living room.

“Sodas and beers are in the fridge,” I called as I went back into the kitchen to start grabbing the bowls of chilli nuts, jalapeno chips and—ugh—pimento-stuffed olives, which only Neville liked.

He wandered into the kitchen and tugged open the fridge to grab some drinks. Usually I would’ve hated people acting like they were overly comfortable in my home, but that didn’t extend to my friends. Especially Nev. We’d all known each other for years, and they were basically my family. I didn’t have any siblings, and I wasn’t overly close with my parents. Not for any particular reason—we just weren’t a very warm and loving family, so it was easy to go a long time without speaking to them. They’d moved to Florida when I left home, wanting to be somewhere warmer.

“How was work?” Neville asked, cracking open his soda and coming over to stand beside me. He grabbed a handful of nuts and tossed them into his mouth.

We were all ghouls in our friend group, and we were all the weird kids who’d found each other in high school and college, gradually becoming a close-knit unit. Nev was my best friend, and we’d gone to high school together. When we got to college, we’d met Reece and Abed. Then Neville had met Teresa in drama club, and Teresa had brought Suki with her one time when we were hanging out, rounding out our little group.

I grunted, pushing the bowl of olives toward him. “Fine.”

“Big Dick Dan not causing a ruckus tonight?” He gave me a teasing nudge with his elbow. “Pretty quiet next door.”

I shot him an unimpressed look as I turned with the bowls. “Don’t think he’s in. And you don’t know that he has a big dick.”

Neville shrugged, grabbing the olives to follow me out. “You can just tell. Besides, you’ve complained to us about him standing on his front porch in tiny shorts. Surely you’ve seen the outline of it, at least.”

“Surprisingly enough, Nev, I don’t ever look at his dick,” I deadpanned, setting the bowls on the dining table tucked into the corner of the living room.

He snickered just as there was a knock at the door, so I thankfully managed to escape any more of Neville’s musings about my neighbour’s junk as I went to answer it. Abed and Reece grinned at me as they stepped inside, and now that everyone was here, they all got seated around the table while I went into the kitchen to grab the nachos.

When I got back into the living room, Nev had handed out everyone’s character sheets. He was our Lifestyle Supervisor, so he didn’t have a character—he oversaw the game and kept track of what happened for continuity. He’d already pulled out his notepad by the time I sat back down and set the nachos in the middle of the table.

Everyone immediately dug in, and we chatted casually while we ate. We’d been playing this campaign for a while now, so it didn’t take long for us to get fully into it once we started. Neville was our LS for a reason—he was extra theatrical and made it all way more entertaining, so the next couple of hours passed quickly.

When we ended for the night, Suki’s character—Delia in HR—had just announced a mandatory party for the office manager, because she was secretly having an affair with him. We decided to stop there, all of us having work tomorrow, and my friends helped me clean up the empty snack bowls and soda cans.

When I opened the door to see them off, relaxed and in a good mood after a fun evening, I spotted Ewen’s car parked in his driveway and some lights on next door. I tensed a little. I hadn’t heard him get home, and he was being shockingly quiet once again.