chapter 1

Out of the corner of his eye Connor saw the light click off in one of the second-floor windows, and the car in the driveway didn’t have a single flake on it despite the ground being coated in at least a few inches of snow. Someone was home, and if he waited long enough, they’d answer the door.

Connor held the doorbell down again, this time for a good few seconds. Something slammed inside with an angry thud. Good sign.

He let go of the bell and rapped his knuckles against the door three times.

Silence.

He knocked three more times and adjusted his scarf, scanning the first-floor windows for movement.

This time, he caught a glimpse of half a man’s face through the window-- long, black hair, deep creases under his eyes, a fitted gray t-shirt.

Bingo.

He pressed the doorbell again, but before he could hold it down for more than a second, the door unlatched and opened into his face. He stumbled backwards, catching his balance on the porch railing.

“Mr. Rebane!” Connor blurted out, wiping the snow from his cheek with the sleeve of his jacket.

The door pulled shut again.

“No! I mean, I only want to ask--” Connor yelled, lunging for the door handle before the man could lock it again.

Alex stopped the door when it was open just a crack. The cold February light gave his blue eye and the sliver of his cheek Connor could see through the door an icy glow.

“I will tell you this once,” Alex spat. “Leave me alone.”

That was him, all right. Connor had spent the past week watching every recording of Alex he could find-- he would recognize that voice anywhere.

“Please, Mr. Rebane,” Connor started, before the man could slam the door again. “I only want to ask you a few questions.”

“And I don’t want to answer them. You won’t get your story from me.”

Connor stepped back and raised his hands, showing his palms in burgundy fair isle mittens.

“Please, just a few minutes of your time, and I will never bother you again.”

“If you don’t get off my doorstep,” Alex snarled, “I’m going to call the police.”

“I’ve watched every interview you’ve ever done,” Connor pressed, ignoring the threat.

He pulled off a mitten and went to unzip the messenger bag he carried. Alex snorted dismissively.

“I’m a journalism major and I still managed to struggle through reading your senior thesis,” Connor added, talking faster. “And I had to go out to Cambridge myself to get it.”

“And you didn’t understand a word of it, I’m sure.”

“Not as much as I could if you helped me. But your research on natural language processing-- they still study it in AI classes-- and I would have been a computer science major--” Connor bluffed.

“Of course you were. You’ll really say anything, huh?”

“Please," Connor begged.

“Yeah, go to hell.”

Connor grabbed the door with his unmittened hand just as Alex shut it, slamming his fingers against the doorframe with a sickening crunch.

“GOD-- fuck--” Connor swore, pulling his hand out of the doorframe.

He clutched his fingers gently in his other hand and grimaced.

“I get harassment from people like you once a month or so, but you-- you have the distinction of being by far the worst,”
Alex said idly. “Can you move them?”

Connor tilted his head curiously, and Alex gave an exasperated sigh.

“Your fingers. Can you move them?”

Connor flexed his hand slowly and winced. His pinky and ring finger were horribly swollen and barely moved.

Alex closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You’re an idiot.”

He shook his head, mumbling something to himself, and swung open the door, finally letting the journalist see him.

“Oh my god-- oh my god--” Connor started, gripping the railing.

Below the man’s t-shirt, his legs were absent, replaced by the glistening black scales of a snake. His eyes followed Alex’s body as it narrowed into a tail. Altogether he had to be no less than twenty feet long, probably closer to twenty-five; completely human from his waist up and thoroughly inhuman from the waist down.

“Did you-- and you--” Connor stuttered. “You built--”

Alex waited for Connor to finish looking at him. The journalist’s eyes snapped back and forth between his body and his face, his human torso and his thick tail.

“Perhaps you understand now my reluctance to allow the press into my home.”

“Yes,” Connor managed.

He paused, trying to find further words.

“I’m sorry,” he began, unsure what else to say.

Alex held up a hand to stop him.

“Provided you take this at face value and are sufficiently convinced you’re not hallucinating,” he suggested, “come in, and I'll get ice for your hand. Is that agreeable?”

“Yes,” Connor repeated.

Alex held the door open, and Connor stepped cautiously inside.

“Would you like coffee?” Alex said, glancing over him.

“Would I-- yes,” Connor answered, color creeping into his cheeks. “Thank you.”

“Julia?"

Alex glanced up the staircase, and Connor turned, unsure who he was speaking to.

A blonde girl stood watching from the stairs. She looked to be about his age-- perhaps in her late twenties-- and had her hair tied back in a low ponytail. She gave Connor an odd look before turning back to Alex.

“Start coffee for our guest and I, please,” he said, “and bring some ice for his hand.”

She nodded and made her way downstairs.

Connor padded into the expansive house as Alex followed closely behind. He had to admit it was unnerving having the man behind him-- for the obvious reason that he was… some type of alien, perhaps, or the victim of some strange biomedical experimentation. Alex moved near-silently, with a sound distinctly different from that of a human walking-- just the slow, quiet slide of the smooth scales on his belly against the hardwood floor.

The hallway opened into a large room occupied mostly by a swimming pool. The sides and bottom of the pool were tiled in deep red, giving the water the thick, opaque appearance of blood. Connor flinched at the sight of it.

Alex laughed.

“Apologies for my poor taste in interior design. Sit down,” he said, gesturing at the couch.

Connor nodded and sat down, leaning against the armrest, while Alex relaxed into a plush chair across from him. His tail curled around and under the chair easily, its tip settling under the coffee table just beside Connor’s feet.

Connor consciously avoided shifting away from it and forced a smile.

“I understand you’re uncomfortable,” Alex reassured. “I was for months.”

He lifted the tip of his tail and brushed against the side of Connor’s leg through his dark jeans, from his knee down to his ankle.

Connor gave an involuntary shiver, and looked up to apologize, but Alex spoke before he could.

“I apologize for that. I just wanted to show you-- it’s like another hand. Nothing more. Perhaps a distraction from your hand while Julia gets the ice.”

Connor swallowed and nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Connor."

“And you work for?”

Connor hesitated.

“A tabloid, I’m sure. Don’t be embarrassed about your employer,” Alex said. “You should only be embarrassed by your behavior outside my home.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor repeated. “Gossips Weekly.”

“I’m sure they love you, hm?” Alex’s smile twitched into a smirk. “About to break down my door for a story. I suppose I understand. This would certainly be a story.”

He gestured at himself absently.

“Mr. Rebane, I had no idea--” Connor started.

“Good, you shouldn’t have,” Alex said. “And it’s Alex. The less this is like the interview you wanted, the better. I don’t intend to reward you for harassing retired former celebrities.”

“You were more than a celebrity,” Connor prods by way of an answer.

“Yes, yes, multi-millionaire CEO and still one of the richest men in the world. Do I not donate enough for them to leave me alone? Run a story on the malaria prevention and de-worming programs I give millions to every year.”

Connor paused.

“It’s very generous of you.”

“But not a story,” Alex added derisively.

Before they could continue, Julia entered with a tray in one hand and a small bag of ice in the other. Alex thanked her when she set all of it on the coffee table, and she gave him a polite nod before leaving.

Alex passed Connor the ice wrapped in a thin kitchen towel, and Connor pressed it to his hand.

“It doesn’t look like you’ve broken any bones, unless it’s feeling worse now?” Alex questioned.

“No, I’m sure it will be okay,” Connor answered.

“I won’t wrap it; it needs the blood flow. Just keep it elevated on the armrest like you’re doing and keep the ice on it.”

Connor nodded.

Alex took the carafe from the tray and poured coffee to an inch below the rim of a ceramic mug before setting it near Connor. He took the other mug for himself, and filled it before taking a slow sip.

“Cream? Sugar?” Alex offered.

Connor smiled, and desperate not to seem like he was incapable of doing anything for himself, poured a rounded spoonful of cane sugar into the mug, followed by two more and a generous amount of half-and-half.

Alex watched as he took another sip from his own mug.

“I drink too much Starbucks,” Connor admitted defensively, noticing Alex’s look.

“No need to justify it to me,” Alex said with a smile. “I prefer my coffee black, but we should all allow ourselves more pleasure and less self-judgement. Meaningless asceticism helps no one.”

“All of that justification and you take yours black?”

“Just preference,” Alex answered. “Is this an interview question?”

Connor smiled and shifted to press the ice pack to the other side of his fingers. “If you’ll allow it.”

Alex settled into the chair, curling his tail back around the base. “I suppose I’ll indulge you.”

Connor consciously avoided asking about Alex’s body, but it seemed to crop up at every turn, and he found himself awkwardly phrasing everything to avoid it. He was sure Alex could tell he was thinking about it, but it still felt safer not to mention it.

He tried to hide his furtive glances down at Alex’s body, but his curiosity was palpable. Of course he was curious how he had gotten this way-- what he ate or drank, though he seemed to be able to drink coffee at least-- whether he had done it on purpose?

Julia returned only to set down a plate of red velvet cookies on a kitschy plate decorated with glittering hearts. It looked distinctly out of place amongst the contemporary black and red of the rest of Alex’s imposing home, but in that sense there was something almost sweet about it; the plate was Julia's, Connor considered, or perhaps held some nostalgic memories.

The cookie Connor took was delicious - soft and warm from the oven, with white chocolate chips that had were still just slightly melted. After seeing Julia’s glowing smile, he felt more than justified in taking another while Alex described how he had come to start a company at sixteen.

He knew that Alex had clearly been fully human when he was still CEO, and his sudden and mysterious retirement had been only five years ago-- so whatever this was must have happened between then and now.

That, or it was the reason for said “sudden and mysterious retirement.”

It only took a few more questions before Alex’s eyes glittered with enthusiasm at Connor’s curiosity. He answered with a care that made Connor feel oddly comforted. His focused attention to the questions gave Connor the creeping curiosity as to whether the man always made this much eye contact. Still, something about his cool blue eyes and the way they tracked Connor’s impatient pen-tapping and hair-fixing was insistent but neuroleptic, and instead of being unnerving he found it almost sedative in its effect.

Connor felt grateful for the relief; it was good to feel more at ease, and the questions flowed from his tongue easily as he took notes on Alex’s personal projects and the supposed reasons he had retired.

He had eaten another of the cookies Julia had set out before realizing he should probably stop out of politeness, but in the thick of asking a detailed follow-up question on natural language processing he found himself holding half of a fourth.

“Alright,” Alex said good-naturedly, after Connor’s pen finally ceased its persistent scratching. “I imagine you have enough material.”

“Yes-- thank you, Mr. Rebane--”

“Alex. And your fingers are somewhat better--?”

“Yes-- thank you, again, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Pay it no mind. I very rarely have the pleasure of company.”

Connor smiled and zipped his notebook and pen into his bag. He stopped himself from awkwardly thanking Alex for a third time, and then thanked Julia instead, who was standing beside the table carefully packing the cookies into a Ziploc bag.

“Your cookies were amazing,” Connor commented.

“Take them,” she insisted, handing the bag to him.

“I really couldn’t. You’ve been so kind to me already--”

“Oh, take them, Connor,” Alex repeated from the armchair, where he was reading something from his laptop.

“Julia enjoys baking, and she’s a wonderful chef, but I’m a vegan. I’m sure she was thrilled with the opportunity to finally have someone try her cookies instead of refusing them like a pretentious hipster,” he laughed.

Julia stifled a laugh, and it came out as something between a snort and a hum that Connor couldn’t help but smile at.

“He’s right, you know.”

“Thank you,” Connor relented with a smile. “If I tell anyone how nice you were, you’ll have people banging down your door every day.”

“Keep our secret, then,” Alex answered. “I don’t need anyone else to injure their hand in my doorframe.”

“I will,” Connor promised.

He shut the door gently behind him, and Alex smiled after him.

“You let him go,” Julia said, after a moment’s pause.

Alex looked up from his laptop at her curious expression.

“That I did.”

Julia paused, waiting for him to elaborate. He did, after another sip of lukewarm coffee.

“He’ll come back.”