Page 19 of Branding the Bat

Trevor had the serum from the wolf on Halloween. Brown, mediocre. He had a few old vials from previous clients, turkey shifters, a raccoon, a fox. Yellow, serviceable. He could send those to the Grizzly and buy himself another week. Maybe two, if the Grizzly was in a generous mood, which the Grizzly never was.

Or he could send the gold.

He looked at the vial. The honey light. He brought it to his nose and breathed in: fruit, warmth, something bright and clean underneath. Sero's chemistry distilled into a few milliliters of liquid. Sero's pleasure. Sero's trust. Sero's tears.

Trevor put the golden vial back on the shelf in his lab, beside the first one.

Then he pulled out the mediocre batches, the brown from the wolf, the pale yellows, the one faintly blue vial from a snake shifter that had never been worth anything, and packed them into a delivery bag for the shark.

It wasn't enough. He knew it wasn't enough. The Grizzly would be disappointed, and a disappointed Grizzly was a dangerous Grizzly. But the gold stayed on the shelf.

Trevor sat in his lab, surrounded by the tools of a trade he'd built from nothing, the burner, the magic circles etched into the workbench, the racks of empty vials waiting to be filled, and tried to understand why.

He'd sold hundreds of batches. From men he didn't know, from men he liked, from men he'd played with once and never seen again. He'd extracted and refined and sold without hesitation, because the nectar was a byproduct, and the men were having a good time, and the serum helped old shifters feel young again, and nobody was getting hurt. That was the story he'd told himself. It had always been enough.

It wasn't anymore.

Because Sero had looked at him while he came, and the gold in that vial was what trust looked like when you distilled it to its essence, and Trevor couldn't sell it because selling it would make the story a lie.

The story had always been a lie. He was only just now beginning to see it.

His phone rang. The shark. Trevor let it go to voicemail, packed the mediocre batches, and left them on the kitchen counter for pickup.

Then he went to bed and lay in the dark and thought about Sero's eyes.

Chapter Six

Trevor's apartment was, as advertised, immaculate.

After working an early shift, Sero stood in the doorway on Saturday evening and took it in. Not merely clean. Curated. Every surface dusted, every object placed with intention. The living room was minimal and warm: low gray couch, a single bookshelf organized by color, which Sero found either admirable or psychotic, he hadn't decided, a glass coffee table with nothing on it except a single potted succulent that looked like it had been positioned with a protractor. The kitchen was open-plan, copper pots hanging from a rack above a marble island, and everything gleamed in a way that suggested the pots were both functional and decorative, which was the most housecat thing Sero could imagine.

"It's very clean," Sero said.

"Thank you."

"I'm not sure it was a compliment."

"It was to me. Come in. Take your shoes off at the door, please."

Sero removed his shoes and placed them beside Trevor's, which were aligned at the edge of the mat with mathematical precision. He added his at a deliberate angle, just to see what would happen. Trevor glanced down, twitched, and straightened them without comment. Sero smiled.

The apartment smelled like something good: butter, cheese, herbs, the warm yeasty scent of dough that had recently been in an oven. Trevor was in socked feet and a white t-shirt that was tighter than anything Sero had seen him wear, and his hair was slightly damp, and he looked so domestic that Sero had to look away before his face gave him up entirely.

"The quiche is almost done." Trevor led him into the kitchen. "I also made a fruit plate for you because I know you can't eat the quiche."

On the island sat a wooden cutting board arranged with sliced mango, fanned strawberries, grapes, and Sero leaned closer, thinly sliced persimmon.

"You bought a persimmon," Sero said.

"I bought three. I had to look up how to cut them. Did you know there are two kinds? Hachiya and Fuyu? Yours is a Fuyu, by the way. I could tell because it's flat on the bottom."

"You researched my persimmon."

"I research everything. It's a cat thing." Trevor pulled the quiche from the oven, golden, perfect, smelling of Gruyère and caramelized onion, and set it on a cooling rack. "Give it ten minutes. Tour?"

The apartment was larger than Sero's, a two-bedroom on the ground floor of a five-story building, with actual hallways and actual doors that closed. Trevor showed him the bathroom first, and the bathtub was, as promised, enormous. A deep soaking tub that could comfortably fit two people, tiled in dark stone, with a wooden tray across the rim that held bath salts and a candle. Lavender Epsom salts. The scent was already faintly present, as if the tub's memory of past baths lingered in the air.

"You weren't kidding about the tub," Sero said.