The Werewolf Next Door Has Quiet Hours

The first indication that my new neighbor was a werewolf was not the howling.

It was the laminated complaint he slid beneath my door at 11:03 p.m.

VIOLATION: EXCESSIVE SINGING AFTER TEN.

SUGGESTED REMEDY: STOP.

The paper smelled faintly of cedar, rain, and the kind of expensive coffee purchased by people who alphabetized their spices. At the bottom, someone had drawn a remarkably accurate frowning wolf.

At thirty-one, I had a theater-sound career, student loans, and a stubborn belief that any problem could be fixed with a spreadsheet. I also owned pajama shorts printed with dancing avocados. I marched next door in them.

The man who opened apartment 4B was tall enough to make my doorway seem ambitious. He had dark, disobedient hair, silver-gray eyes, and the exhausted expression of someone perpetually assigned to supervise a kindergarten field trip.

“You left me a citation,” I said.

“A courtesy notice.”

“I was singing one song.”

“You were singing the bridge of one song for forty-two minutes.”

“It's a difficult bridge.”

His eyes dropped to the avocados on my shorts, then returned to my face with admirable discipline. “Quiet hours start at ten, Ms. Hayes.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Mailboxes.”

“You're the fun neighbor.”

“I'm the neighbor who sleeps.”

Behind him, something very large scratched at the inside of the apartment door. The door we were standing in, to be clear. A low, vibrating growl passed through its hinges.

He went still. “You should go home.”

I glanced at the silver moon rising between the buildings. “Do you have a dog?”

“Complicated.”

“I'm great with complicated.”

“Not this complicated.”

He closed the door with an apology that sounded suspiciously like a growl.

At 11:47, a wolf the size of a small refrigerator appeared on my balcony.

Four floors above the street.

It looked at me through the glass, one massive paw resting on my basil plant, which had suffered enough already.

“Oh,” I said. “You're complicated.”

The wolf sat. Its ears flattened. Its expression was exactly as disapproving as my neighbor's.

I opened the balcony door because I am apparently a woman who learns nothing from horror movies.

“You destroyed my basil.”

The wolf stared at the pot. Then, very delicately, it picked up the broken stem in its teeth and placed it at my feet.

“Not the apology I wanted, but points for effort.”

It sneezed.

By morning, my wolf had become my neighbor again. He arrived at my door wearing a charcoal sweater and the face of a man hoping the earth might swallow him.

“My name is Jonah,” he said. “I owe you a plant.”

“A basil plant,” I agreed. “And possibly an explanation for the acrobatics.”

He exhaled. “I'm a werewolf.”

“I noticed around the time you climbed a brick building.”

“Most people react differently.”

“I’m thirty-four,” he said. “I’ve been a werewolf since I was eighteen.”

“Sixteen years, and you still haven’t learned to leave a note before climbing a building?”

“Most people weren’t raised by a woman who once divorced a magician because he made their anniversary disappear.”

Something in his face softened. It looked unfairly good there.

“The building has protections,” Jonah said. “Usually the change keeps me inside. But the manager replaced the old rooftop wards with decorative string lights.”

“Our manager replaced the fire extinguishers with scented candles. This tracks.”

Jonah pinched the bridge of his nose. “The next full moon is in four weeks. I can find a temporary place to stay.”

I should have let him. I was an adult with a job, a mortgage-sized student loan, and a basil plant with one remaining leaf. Instead, I looked at the deep circles beneath his eyes and asked the question that started all my troubles.

“What if I helped fix the wards?”

He stared. “Why would you?”

“Because I work in theater sound design. My entire career is convincing people that invisible things are happening in exactly the right place. And because your wolf looks lonely.”

“He is me.”

“Then the observation stands.”

“This isn't a rescue project,” Jonah said. His voice sharpened enough to sting. “You saw a wolf for one night. You don't know what it means to live with one.”

“I didn't call you a project.”

“People always begin by wanting to help. Then they find out how much help costs.”

I understood then that this wasn't really an argument about wards. “You can say no, Jonah. You don't have to make me the villain first.”

I closed my door gently, which was considerably harder than slamming it. The next evening, a potted basil plant appeared on my mat beside a neatly folded sheet of calculations. At the top he'd written, If the offer still stands, I could use an engineer who argues back.

Underneath, in smaller letters: I'm sorry.

I circled the last two words in red and slid the paper beneath his door. Accepted. But I do the sound design. Your taste in frequencies is terrible.

Over the next three weeks, Jonah and I became the least qualified supernatural maintenance team in America.

He researched lunar geometry. I mounted copper resonators in the walls to restore the old ward's frequency. He cooked dinner because my definition of cuisine involved microwaving things with encouraging names. I kept a spreadsheet of every protective symbol our landlord had painted over in eggshell white.

We disagreed about everything. Jonah wanted two resonators where I wanted five; I insisted the wiring had to be accessible; he treated every question as a possible threat to my safety. On the second Saturday, we crawled into a maintenance shaft scarcely wider than my shoulders. I backed into him when a pipe rattled overhead.

His palm caught my hip before I could knock loose a connection. The space was suddenly all cedar scent, quiet breathing, and the solid warmth of his chest behind me. I became very aware of the fabric between his hand and my skin.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, close to my ear.

“Only my dignity.”

His hand released me immediately. “Sorry.”

“You can stop apologizing for catching me.”

“I wasn't apologizing for that.”

We finished the wiring without another word. Afterward he offered me tea with a precise, dignified distance between our chairs, and I realized the attraction wasn't the problem. The problem was that we both knew it existed.

He had been living alone for years, he admitted one rainy Thursday, because the wolf frightened anyone who grew close enough to meet him.

“He doesn't frighten me,” I said.

We sat cross-legged on my floor with tools scattered between us. His thumb brushed mine as he passed me a screwdriver, and the simple touch shot heat up my wrist.

“That's because you don't understand what he wants,” Jonah said quietly.

“What does he want?”

Jonah's gaze moved to my mouth. “Terrible timing.”

The air seemed to change its mind about being breathable.

“Does the wolf decide for you?” I asked.

“No. But he makes it harder to pretend I don't want things.”

“I don't want to be one more person who stays until it becomes inconvenient,” I said. “And I don't want you deciding I'm going to leave before I've had the chance to choose.”

He was silent for so long I could hear the little copper plates clicking in the wall.

“I want to trust that,” he admitted. “I'm not good at it.”

“Good thing I'm patient with complicated machinery.”

He laughed once, shakily. The distance between us felt less like a warning now and more like an invitation.

I leaned closer. “Maybe he's tired of asking permission to be happy.”

“Eliza.” My name sounded rough on his tongue.

I kissed him.

He kissed back with the kind of careful hunger that made me wish every instruction label in my apartment were more interesting. One hand settled at my waist, warm and steady. His other hand remained open on the floor, giving me room to leave.

I didn't.

Then the copper resonator above us released a note loud enough to summon every dog within two miles.

Jonah pulled away. “That's not supposed to happen.”

Outside, a chorus of barking answered.

“Maybe it's applause,” I suggested.

By the night of the full moon, our system passed every test. We waited in my living room, surrounded by spare parts and an unreasonable number of snacks.

At eleven, moonlight slipped across the carpet.

Jonah gripped the back of the sofa. His breathing changed. I touched his shoulder.

“You can do this,” I whispered. “And when you’re human again, you can tell me what you want. I won’t guess for you.”

“If the wards fail—”

“They won't.”

“You can't know that.”

“I'm very persuasive.”

The change took him quickly. A heartbeat later, a huge wolf stood where Jonah had been. The silver pattern on the floor brightened, holding steady.

I smiled. “See?”

The wolf's ears flicked toward the door.

From the hallway came the scraping noise of a key in a lock. Our landlord, Mr. Pritchard, pushed open the supposedly secured maintenance closet opposite my apartment. His cart carried a can of paint and a ladder.

“Evening!” he called. “The board wants these last weird symbols covered before inspection.”

“Don't!” I yelled.

Too late. His roller erased one copper-painted crescent.

The resonators screamed. The ward shattered like glass.

The wolf bolted.

Straight through the open hallway door and toward Mr. Pritchard, who screamed and dropped his paint.

I ran after him. “Jonah!”

At the sound of his name, the wolf skidded, claws sparking against tile. He looked from me to the terrified landlord and began to shake.

The wolf wasn't attacking. He was trying not to.

I remembered something Jonah had told me in the kitchen: the old magic had been built around a steady sound, something familiar enough to anchor a mind through the change.

So I sang.

The same difficult bridge, every note imperfect, with a breathless squeak on the high one.

The wolf stopped shaking. He padded toward me, enormous and gentle, and rested his forehead against my chest.

“There you are,” I whispered.

Mr. Pritchard fainted into his paint cart.

The next morning, Jonah woke on my sofa under my avocado blanket. He was human again, barefoot, and very interested in the fact that I had stayed beside him all night.

“You sang to a wolf,” he said.

“I contain multitudes.”

“You could have run.”

“I could have,” I agreed. “But then who would complain about your paperwork?”

He searched my face. “I want you here. I want to kiss you when I can ask properly, and I want to know you’ll tell me if you want me to stop.”

“I’m here because I choose to be,” I said. “And I’ll tell you.”

His kiss began gently, then deepened when I drew him closer by the collar of his shirt. His hands settled at my waist, warm through the thin cotton of my sleep shirt; mine traced the solid line of his shoulders. The room smelled of cedar and rain, and his breath caught when I kissed the place beneath his jaw.

“Still good?” he murmured.

“Very.” I slid my hands beneath his sweater, feeling the heat of him and the tension he was trying so hard to keep under control. When his mouth found the hollow of my throat, I tipped my head back and tightened my arms around him. He stopped once more, eyes searching mine. I kissed him before he could ask again.

The rest of the night was a slow exchange of yeses, warm hands, and laughter when the avocado blanket tangled around our feet. We kept what followed private, unhurried, and entirely ours.

He pulled me gently toward him. “I have a revised notice.”

“Oh, no.”

“Violation: excessive avoidance of obvious mutual attraction.”

“Suggested remedy?”

“Dinner. Followed by whatever you're comfortable with.”

I pressed my mouth to his. “Start with dinner. I'm open to negotiations.”

On our first official date, Mr. Pritchard announced that the building had hired a specialist to restore the wards. The invoice, for reasons nobody explained to him, included a replacement basil plant.

Jonah moved his record player into my apartment the following weekend. We danced in socks after midnight, my cheek against his chest, his hands resting at my waist.

No courtesy notices appeared under my door.

Except one, three days later.

VIOLATION: STEALING YOUR NEIGHBOR'S HEART.

SUGGESTED REMEDY: KEEP IT.

I framed it above the thriving new basil.

The wolf approved.