Chapter 5

Eli sleptin on Monday morning, and by the time he woke up, the house was quiet. James would be at work, so Eli was in no hurry to get up. He lazed, enjoying the warmth of his bed, until he got bored and grabbed his laptop. He balanced it on his chest, pulling up the data from his recording box.

He sat up abruptly, and the computer slid into his lap. The live feed showed nothing, as if the vein had been snuffed out. That couldn't be right.

Making a frustrated sound, Eli opened the file showing every measurement of magical flow recorded since he'd set up the box. He generated a quick graph. Everything seemed to have been ticking along fine until two in the morning. Then it all stopped.

He shut the laptop and got dressed quickly, only pausing briefly in the kitchen to fill a to-go cup with the coffee James had left for him in the pot. Then he was out the door and driving to the town center. He parked in front of the park next to the diner and marched across the road to the grassy median.

The little cone marking his equipment had been thrown into the dormant flower beds, and the recording box ripped from the ground, left lying next to the stone.

"Come on," Eli grumbled as he picked up the cone. Wasn't one of the benefits of being in a sleepy little town not having to deal with vandalism?

Eli grabbed the recording box and immediately realized the metal probe was loose. It hadn't been snapped off, but it wasn't sitting firmly, meaning it would be useless. All the calibrations would be off and would need to be reset.

Eli swore. He'd have to contact his supervisor about a replacement or send this one south so the lab techs at the university could fix it. Week one, and he was already set back.

When doing research, you always ran the risk of having to do experiments over again, meaning if you were doing them in the field, you might have to stay longer to redo them. Eli wasn't having any of that. He'd just have to work on gathering other data in the meantime.

But what if whoever did this struck again? He couldn't continuously replace equipment. Eli turned the box over in his hands. It was powered off even though the battery shouldn't have needed to recharge for another couple of days.

He flicked the switch, and it lit up. That was good, at least. Eli turned it back off. As he did so, he noticed scratches along the sides of the box. Four distinct scrapes in the metal on either side, in a pattern like they'd been made by nails or claws.

A human couldn't have scratched metal like this, not without a tool, and that wasn't what it looked like. Most animals wouldn't even be able to do this damage. But shades could.

Had a shade attacked his experiment? But why? Eli was surprised a shade had even noticed the small instrument in the grass, especially at night. Unless the indicator light had drawn the beast in.

Shades were mischievous, and their curiosity often led to disruptive behavior. Raccoons knocked over trash cans to find food, shades did it to disrupt order. Or at least that's what people said. Still, messing up the street the night before trash day wasn't the same as property damage. Shades didn't usually go that far.

Eli gathered the cone and the permit sign and trooped back to his car. Preventing shades from striking again would be harder than if the damage had been done by a person. It's not like a video camera would dissuade a beast from Beyond.

There had been a shade at the house when he and James had gotten home last night. They'd pulled into the driveway to find the thing swooping around the front porch. Houses in Moonlight were warded, so shades couldn't get inside, and James hadn't been fazed to see the beast hanging around. He'd chased it off with his shade-light without trouble, but other worldly creatures certainly weren't something Eli would miss when he left.

The diner wasbusy that night. Princeton Taylor, the museum curator, ran a trivia night every second Monday, so every booth was packed. The distraction was exactly what Eli needed. And he could claim to be busy enough to escape chatting with customers for too long.

Sam was there with some other guys who worked the logging land north of town. Eli wasn't serving that table and hadn't managed to catch the guy's eye. Maybe Sam was avoiding looking at him, and if he was, that was fine. Eli wasn't sure what he'd say to his old friend anyway.

"It would be great to get an exhibit in the museum telling people about your study," Princeton said to Eli after trivia night had ended. Princeton was sitting at the counter, eating now that his responsibilities were done for the night.

"It will be a while before I have anything written up," Eli reminded him.

"That's fine." Princeton set down his tuna melt and picked up a curly fry. "It's the exact kind of local thing we should be showcasing."

The museum wasn't big. It was attached to the post office and consisted of two small rooms. Putting together a display would only be more work for Eli, but he couldn't think of a way of saying he didn't want to do it without being rude.

Maybe Princeton would forget about it after Eli left town.

That night, Parker made turkey club sandwiches for everyone working, and after Kaylin and Aydin had had their breaks, Eli joined Parker in the office to eat.

"You look beat." Parker gestured for Eli to take the chair, leaving him to lean on the desk, hovering over Eli.

"Long day." Eli tucked into his sandwich and told Parker about his ruined recording box.

"You think it was a shade?" Parker raised his brows in surprise. "That seems odd."

"Yeah. I don't know why they'd go after something so small, sitting low on the ground."

"Hm." Parker chewed thoughtfully. "Once you have it set up again, I can ward it for you."

"Really?" What a relief. "That would be great. I was going to ask James, but I wasn't sure how that would go." Eli's brother didn't have as much magic as Parker, and warding spells were draining, not to mention tricky.

"James would have just called me," Parker assured him. "Let me know when you're ready, and I'll be there."

Eli shifted in his seat. "Should I get your number then?" It was a simple, casual question, practical even, but it didn't feel that way.

"Yeah, pass me your phone." Parker set his plate down and held out his hand.

Eli passed it over, their fingers brushing.

Getting Parker's number shouldn't feel significant, but Eli had butterflies.

Parker passed the phone back. "Text me so I have yours."

"Oh. Right, yeah." Eli busied himself with sending a message. He couldn't shake seeing all his interactions with Parker through the lens of having a crush on the guy. It was like the idea had burrowed into his head and stuck. But he didn't get crushes on men. He'd never thought about kissing a guy or fantasized about things like that. He'd only ever felt that way about women.

"It'll be okay." Parker bumped Eli's leg with his in a reassuring way.

"Huh?" Eli looked up, unsure why Parker was comforting him. What was his face giving away?

"You look really concerned, Eli. I don't think I've ever seen you stare so hard at your phone. But don't worry. Once you get your box fixed, shades won't mess with it again. My wards are solid."

"I'm sure they are." Eli tried to smile convincingly. "I won't let it stress me out, promise."

Too bad he suspected he had way bigger problems than shades.

Eli layawake in bed that night, unable to sleep. Did he have a crush on Parker? Yes, he thought he did. Nothing else explained how he was acting.

He had a crush on a man. The idea was thrilling and panic-inducing. It felt right, familiar, but also like it had hit him out of nowhere. How could this be? Was he queer? The idea didn't feel wrong. It felt like something he'd longed for. But if it felt so right, how could he have not realized before now?

Eli didn't know what to do. He'd assumed he'd had himself figured out. He was straight. It was something he reminded himself of often.

It wasn't like he was isolated from queerness or had an upbringing that forced him to repress anything. James was bisexual, and he'd told Eli he'd liked guys in his early teen years. James had even come out publicly in high school, and their grandmother had been nothing but supportive.

So how had Eli missed this? Or had he not liked guys before now? No, somehow, his feelings didn't seem new. It was like Eli had known and not known he was attracted to men at the same time. It was confusing as hell and kind of made him want to cry in frustration.

Eli lay in the dark of his childhood bedroom and looked up at the ceiling.

He thought back to other times he'd felt inexplicably awkward around men. If he were honest with himself, the thing with Parker wasn't the first time it had happened. He'd always dismissed any weirdness, and none of the other incidents had lasted long, making them easier to ignore than Parker.

There was one college friend, Mark, who came to mind. One time, he and Eli had made plans to hang out without the rest of their group, and Eli had wondered why it felt like he was trying to ask a girl out on a date. Mark wasn't a girl, so Eli had assumed his reaction was just a flare-up of social awkwardness. He was introverted, so it made sense.

With Mark, he'd sensed he had a crush and dismissed it. But why? Lying there now, Eli couldn't understand how past him could be so dense. So what if Mark wasn't a girl. Why hadn't his mind taken the next logical step? It had felt like asking someone on a date because he'd wanted it to be a date. Had his conviction that he was straight really blinded him to any other possibility?

It was like he'd gathered evidence of his straightness and then used it to push away anything he found to the contrary. As a researcher, he knew better than to cherry-pick data to support a theory, but it had all been subconscious, and he wasn't sure why he'd started doing it in the first place.

Eli knew he looked at men. He assumed men just appreciated each other and there was more to checking someone out than what he'd been doing. More to attraction than what he'd been feeling. But that wasn't true. Eli wasn't experiencing attraction to a man for the first time with Parker. He wasn't having his first queer crush. He was realizing that his attraction to men had been there all along. Maybe it wasn't the same as his attraction to women. Maybe these crushes had been fewer and farther between, but that didn't discount them.

It should have felt good to realize all this, but Eli was overwhelmed with the sense he'd screwed up somehow. He'd cheated himself by not being honest with himself.

And what was he supposed to do now?

It wasn't like he was going to pursue something with Parker. It would never work. Parker was a Moonlight Falls man through and through. He'd never leave, and Eli would never live here. Eli liked relationships—he didn't do casual flings or one-night stands—and wouldn't consider dating someone if he couldn't see a potential future with them. There was no future with Parker.

He was the worst possible man for Eli to come to terms with having a crush on. Parker would never see Eli as more than his friend's little brother, the kid who liked blue whipped cream, the guy obsessed with mushrooms, or the city boy who couldn't handle a single shade.

But it was fine. Eli would get over his crush. Maybe he'd start dating guys in LA. He just hoped Parker didn't pick up on his feelings. He didn't need to embarrass himself on top of everything else.