Consuela Espinoza looked over my application papers and nodded. She took a piece of candy from a jar on her desk, unwrapped it and slipped it in her mouth. I felt sweat slide from my forehead to my cheek. I watched her adjust her thick glasses at least a dozen times. Finally, she asked, "Do you have any pets?"

I nodded. "Yeah, German shepherd."

She looked up at me. "Is he friendly?"

"She," I corrected, "and she's always the first in line to greet someone."

She nodded, then looked back down at the paper. "What attracted you to my apartment building?"

"You're cheap, utilities included, and only a block and a half away from my new job."

"Oh? What do you do?"

"Clerk at a 7-Eleven."

She nodded again. "Good honest work. Well, as honest as you can be with gas prices like these." She reached into a drawer on her desk and pulled out a manila envelope. "Rent is every other Friday, you get one week's grace period, and no loud music on Sundays. There's a sweet angel there who can't stand loud music on Sundays."

"An older person?"

She shook her head. "No, he's only twenty-three, he just uses Sunday as a rest day. It's the only day he's actually sober." She stood up and walked over to the door. "Come with me, Mr. Tanner, I'll introduce you to your new neighbors."

She led me out of her house and around the street corner to the front door of the apartment building. She carried a cane, but it never touched the ground, so I assumed she didn’t actually need it to walk and only carried it for aesthetics. Consuela only lived right behind her own building, which would make paying the rent easier for sure. She opened the door, walked inside and I followed. The building was typical, nothing out of the ordinary.

The weirdness came almost immediately, however, as a motherflippin' werewolf burst out of a room. A good seven feet tall, bare-chested and hairy as can be, clad in torn blue jeans, he was exactly what you’d think of if you’d seen old horror movies as a kid. His head was entirely wolf, just on top of a humanoid body. I blinked probably a dozen times hoping that at some point the crazy thing I was seeing would just disappear and I’d regain my sanity, but nope. There was a werewolf standing down the hallway from the front door.

His eyes locked on me, though it was difficult to see because he had no pupils. He howled for a good minute, and then dropped to all fours and galloped toward me. When he was about five feet away from me, he jumped--

--and then stopped in mid-air. There was some sort of blue aura around him, and then a woman walked out from behind him. She was wearing nothing but a towel that she was holding together with one hand while her other hand was surrounded by that same blue aura. She couldn’t be more than twenty years old, with dyed green hair that extended all the way to her waist. She didn’t look happy at all.

But the most surprising part of it all was that Consuela wasn’t fazed by any of this. In fact, she almost looked entertained. She walked over to the werewolf and smacked him on the head with her cane.

The werewolf grabbed his head and cried out in pain. "Jesus! C'mon, Connie, that hurt…"

She hit him again. "I told you after the last time, Barry! You've scared off three potential tenants, and I'll not have you do it to a fourth!" She then let loose a string of Spanish that I couldn't hope to understand even If I knew Spanish. She turned to me. "This is Barry. He's harmless once you get past his initial bullshit."

The werewolf waved weakly. "Hi… Ow…"

Next, Consuela walked around the still floating werewolf and put an arm around the woman's shoulders. "Here we have Lauren, the resident witch."

I asked, "Witch?" in a tiny voice.

Consuela smacked herself in the forehead and said something in Spanish. "I completely forgot. Most of my tenants are magical beings. Barry's a werewolf, Lauren's a witch. They live down here on the first floor. Your apartment is next to Barry, just across from Lauren." She motioned to me. "Barry, Lauren,this is Jordan Tanner, and he's your new neighbor.”

Lauren giggled. “Hi! It’s nice to meet you!”

From up the stairs to the side of me, I heard a voice asking, “Did I hear new neighbor?” Next thing I knew, someone jumped from the floor above us and landed right beside me. If he was in his twenties yet, I’d be surprised, because he almost looked younger than I was. He had spiky, dark brown hair and stubble on his chin. He was dressed in a pair of women's yoga pants that stopped just below his knees and very much hugged every part of him. He wore no shirt, no footwear. He extended his hand for a handshake. "Name's Drake, pleased ta meet ya!"

I reached out and meekly shook his hand. “Yeah, same. Jordan.”

“Ooh, good name. Ever been there?”

“Where? Jordan? No.”

“Nice place. Especially back in the day.”

I honestly had no idea what to make of that, so I just turned back to Consuela and she led me to my new apartment. It wasn’t furnished, though the basic amenities of an oven, stove, microwave, refrigerator, sink, toilet, shower/bath, and bed were there. It wasn’t a big apartment. A small living space for the bed and the kitchen shared the same room, though there was a dividing half wall between them. The only doors were for the closet and the bathroom.

"I know, it's not that big," Consuela said.

I shook my head. "Big enough for me." And my dog, Saide, I don’t add to that. She’d spend most of her day on my bed, anyway.

She smiled. "As you saw with those three, everybody here is pretty young, like yourself. Down here, you get Lauren and Barry. On the second floor is Drake, Soqedhozi, Izzy, Cassian and Ivy. Then the third floor is just Lada. Of everyone living here, Lada and Drake are the oldest, though Drake always acts like a teenager. Lada has never looked old, but she’s the most mature one of the bunch.”

I sat down at the tiny kitchen table provided. Big enough for two people, at least, and I was going to be living alone, after all. “So, are they all…”

She smirked. “Strange? Most of them. Not all of them are magic, but all of them have their own little quirks. You’ll get to know them, because everyone here lives like they’re all members of one big family, and they constantly want the new people to stay, even if Barry's a little… Rough around the edges at first."

There was a knock at the door, which was still open, and standing there was the werewolf, or, well, was Barry. He still looked like a werewolf, of course. "Speaking of Barry," he said with a creepy smile on his face, "I came to apologize. Well, Lauren made me apologize. She threatened to turn me into a baby and parade me around in diapers if I didn't."

From down the hall came, "No, I didn't!"

Barry ignored her. "So, yeah, like I said, sorry. It's just a stupid habit of mine. Jordan, right?"

Consuela stepped out of the apartment. "I'll let you two introduce yourselves." She then whispered something in Spanish in Barry's ear, which almost made him jump. I thought he might piss himself, honestly. "Jordan, there's a key in the drawer by the kitchen sink, make sure you call me if you need anything. And have Barry here help you move your things in."

Once Consuela was out of the building, Barry said, "That woman terrifies me and I'm a goddamn werewolf." He then turned back to me. "So, like I said, sorry about before. I'm honestly ridiculously harmless, unless you're a cat person."

I shook my head. "No, I have a dog."

He shook his head, now. "No, I meant that literally. There are catpeople out there, and my natural instincts whenever I'm transformed are to chase them. I try my hardest to curb that, but it doesn't always work."

I blinked twice. "How do magical creatures go unnoticed by us normal people?"

He shrugged. "Mental conditioning? I dunno. I never noticed werewolves until one clawed me." He walked over to the table and sat down in the other chair. "You got any beer?"

"I'm only eighteen."

He patted me on the head. "Hey, so am I, but I still keep plenty of Budweiser in my fridge. Helps with the anxiety."

This was already getting a little weirder than I honestly wanted to deal with. I shifted the topic to something else. “Um… I thought werewolves only transformed at night during full moons.”

He shook his head. “Nah, that’s just how the movies do it. I can understand, though, that’s how I thought it was until I became one, too. We change the night of the full moon, and then we change back five days later. Simple thing, I just can’t really go outside much without attracting attention.”

“Oh.” It dawned on me a second later. “Then how are you gonna help me move like Consuela said?”

Suddenly, Lauren was standing in the doorway. “That’ll actually be me helping you move, but Barry’s gonna help you set up.” She was wearing an orange tank top that didn’t cover her stomach completely, a pair of pink and white shorts that left her legs almost completely exposed if not for the knee-high socks she had on, and a pair of tennis shoes. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that honestly didn’t make it look any shorter or unwieldy than before. “So, let’s get going.”

Barry leaned over the table and mock whispered, “She has a big date with a vampire tonight.”

“There are vampires, too?” I asked.

Lauren folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “He’s talking about Drake, and it just so happens we are not dating.”

“Drake is a vampire?”

Barry answered, “Drake is Dracula.”

“The Dracula?”

Lauren leaned against the door. “He’s not the monster everybody thinks of. Also, he’s the only vampire, he doesn’t drink blood, and he body hops.”

“So, the Drake I met is body number…?”

“He’s probably lost count at this point, honestly,” Barry responded.

Lauren nodded. “Yep. So, c’mon, let’s head to wherever you used to call home, and pick up your stuff. I have a pickup truck, luckily.”

I sighed. “Alright, yeah, let’s get going.”

* * *

"Oh, who's this?" Mom asked when Lauren and I got to the house. Sadie was also there to greet the new person, which was good, because it meant she was getting used to at least one of the strange, new creatures she was about to live near. Actually, I wondered how she'd be around Barry. Or how Barry would be around her…

"One of my new neighbors. I got the apartment, Ma, everything cleared."

She smiled and gave me a hug. "Good for you, kiddo!" She then whispered, "And is this nice young lady single?"

I whispered back, "I don't know, I haven't asked." The smirk on Lauren's face suggested she knew exactly what we were talking about.

After a short round of introductions, the moving of the boxes began. I didn't have a whole lot of stuff, mostly just clothes, books, movies, a TV and a laptop. I'd need to get a new DVD player at some point, but that could wait a couple paydays. The only real piece of furniture I was taking was my dresser.

Sadie spent a good fifteen minutes pawing at Mom before she'd get in her crate. I had to tell her that Mom would visit whenever she got the chance, but that didn't stop her from crying. She most definitely preferred me, but there was no one Sadie didn't like. I wondered how she'd handle a werewolf, but it wouldn't be long before I found out.

"You two should stay for lunch," Mom said.

I shook my head. "No offense, Mom, but we've gotta get going. Lauren has a lot yet to do today."

Lauren didn't look happy that I was using her as an excuse, but she didn't protest. I just wanted to avoid any more potential matchmaking situations. Ever since Dad died, Mom has wanted me to find a girlfriend. I assumed it was because she didn't want me to get too attached to staying home, but she never had to worry about that.

After another round of goodbyes, we piled into the truck and set out for the apartment building.

"So, was your mom just trying to hook us up?" Lauren asked.

I sighed. "Yeah. She’s been trying to get me to find a girlfriend for months.”

She giggled. “That’s adorable.”

“Oh, it’s something.”

“It’s a lot like my mom, actually. She’s wanted me to get a boyfriend forever, and it’s cute and all, but it gets annoying after awhile, y’know?”

I nodded. “Oh yeah.”

“I mean, it’s not like I haven’t dated guys ever since junior high. It’s not my fault guys duck out of a relationship the second they find out I’m a witch. I didn’t ask for magical powers or anything.” She groaned, then glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “Your gender frequently bewilders me.”

I shrugged. “If it helps, we don’t exactly understand girls as well as we think we do, either.”

She smirked. "That's pretty obvious." She pulled the truck into the parking lot just to the side of the building. "Either way, you have a nice mom."

I laughed. "Thanks. I'll be sure to tell her you said that later."

We both got out, and I let Sadie out of her crate to inspect her new potty zone just to the side of the parking lot. She seemed to like the little grass patch, much more so than she had the back yard at home. Maybe she knew that little spot belonged to her, or maybe she just liked having a smaller area to poop on.

After quickly marking her territory, she sniffed the air around her and turned toward the building. She went completely still, bared her teeth and started to growl, louder than I'd ever heard before. I could almost feel her growling, as if she were transferring her sense of being in danger to me.

I tightened my grip on her leash as we took got closer to the apartment. She seemed apprehensive, worried, even scared. The closer we got, the more intense the feeling that she knew we were about to be…

… Caught in the middle of an argument.

"Oh, Christ, as if this day wasn't bad enough, you had to come home!" shouted a voice from upstairs.

Standing in front of me, at the mailboxes, was a very, very well built girl, probably only two or three years older than me. Dressed in a low cut, cream colored top and skin tight shorts, almost none of this girl was truly left to the imagination. Her blonde hair with purple streaks was pulled into pigtails on either side of her head. She was wearing shoes that likely would have killed someone if they were unaccustomed to them.

“Shut up, Hoser!” she shouted back at him. “I don’t need this right now!” She turned toward me and I got a full view of what her shirt didn't cover, as well as her cute, almost anime-like face. "Oh! You're new. You must be Jordan! Barry was telling me about you."

I nodded. "Yep." Sadie barked. "And this is my dog, Sadie."

The girl knelt down and started scratching Sadie behind the ear. "Well, aren't you just the most precious widdle girl?" Sadie seemed to like the attention. "So, you're not weirded out by… Us?"

I scratched the back of my neck. "To be honest, and I don't mean anything bad, but kinda. It's a little freaky going from thinking werewolves and witches are fantasy to finding out they're my neighbors."

She giggled. "Yeah, that's scared off more than a few potential people. You seem to be taking it well, though."

I smirked. "Well, the first one I met was Barry. Hard to think this is all bullshit when you meet a werewolf right off the bat."

She nodded. "Yup. So, you wanna guess what I am?"

From upstairs, that voice shouted, "She's a whore!"

She scowled. "Ignoring our wonderful, wonderful angel up there, take a real guess."

From somewhere, Drake slipped an arm around her shoulder. "Izzy here is a succubus, and not a particularly bad one, either." He purred at her. I'd settled on the opinion that Drake was the weirdest one of the bunch. Granted, I hadn't met everyone yet, but Drake already seemed to be the outlier.

The girl -- Izzy -- didn't seem too happy that Drake either inserted himself into the conversation, or that he was even there at all. I got the feeling Drake was the life of every party, by which I meant he had all the fun no matter where he went.

Izzy sighed. "That. I'm a that. What he said."

"A succubus like… A sex demon?" I asked.

She nodded. Yeah. My current host is named Annabeth, and if you can believe it, she's actually worse than I am. Like, if I do two, maybe three guys by lunchtime, I'm okay. But her… Oh no… She wants seven to ten."

Drake pulled her closer. "And we all love her for it."

Izzy pushed him away. “Says you.” She walked over to me and shook my hand. “Isadora is my full name, but like Drake there, you can call me Izzy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a rough morning and I need to get up to my apartment and change into something a little less…"

The voice shouted, "Oh, yes, there's the demon whore we all know and love!"

She gave me a look that said she needed to be left alone and said, "Sometimes, I wanna kill him." With that, she stalked up the stairs and started yelling at whoever it was.

I turned back to Drake, who was busy petting Sadie. "You're a pretty girl," he said to her.

"What was up with that?" I gestured to the second floor.

"Succubi, as you know, are demons. Living right across the hall from beautiful Isadore is Soqedhozi, our resident angel."

"Angel as in… Like, wings and halos?"

"Yeah, but no wings or halos. That's just a common misconception that got passed on down the line somewhere. Angels were fucking monsters when I was growing up, but we just had the Old Testament." He stood up and followed Izzy upstairs. "Later, Jordan."

I sighed. Now an angel and a succubus. What else lived in this crazy place? At the very least, I was getting used to it.

* * *

Sadie took up a good portion of my bed, but it wasn't uncomfortable lying there with her as we watched whatever was on AMC. Ghost Rider, I think. I wasn’t really paying attention, though, I was too busy reading. It was comforting knowing I was finally on my own in the world, even though I was living in an apartment building with other people, and my apartment was little more than a bedroom with its own kitchen.

After Lauren, Barry and I got my stuff out of Lauren's truck, everybody just kinda settled into their own thing. Barry left me some housewarming beer, despite the fact that I'm only eighteen. Lauren just left me with a "If you need anything…" explanation that she was only available to help on weekends and Wednesdays, because she worked at this coffee shop that happened to be across the street from the 7-Eleven I worked at. Turns out, she had also picked this apartment because of its general proximity to her job, despite owning a vehicle. I wondered how often I'd actually seen her without realizing she'd be my new neighbor.

I learned that Barry, when he wasn't hairy and wolf-like, was a manager at a small thrift store that, like at least two other tenants' jobs, was within walking distance of the building. I honestly wondered if Consuela lumped the three of us on the same floor because we all worked in the same area. I had been to said small thrift store more than once, too, and while I didn't know if I'd met Barry in particular, I knew at least one other manager. Naturally, because of the small world it seemed I’d been inducted into, that happened to be Barry’s sister Candi. The two of them had inherited the family business after their parents retired.

I poked around on different message boards on my phone and read things I figured I’d never believe before I moved into the apartment. Stories of witches, werewolves, and other kinds of magical creatures. There were stories about sorceresses even here in town, like this girl I knew in school named Kendra. I assumed this sort of stuff went underneath everybody’s radar just because people wouldn’t really believe it. I still wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t living with a bunch of them. How it hadn’t overwhelmed me yet was a complete mystery.

There was a loud crash against my door. Sadie jerked her head toward the sound and then stood up. “Stay, girl,” I said, in a hushed tone. I got up from the bed and made my way around the cardboard boxes to the door just in time for Barry to burst into the apartment. His solid white eyes locked on me, just as happened this morning, and he growled. Sadie was up, but one loud growl from him sent her cowering in the corner. She always was pretty cowardly, honestly.

"Dude, I get this morning was some kind of initiation joke, but, c'mon, you're scarin' my dog!"

Barry didn't seem to hear me, however. Instead of backing off, he lunged at me, knocking me to the floor. He grabbed at me, his claws tearing into my forearms. I felt blood seeping from wounds he was causing, and I worried that he might actually take my arm clean off. I tried my damnedest to get him off me, but he was just too… Damn… Strong…

Finally, he screeched, and then something knocked him off of me. Suddenly, Drake was standing over him, while Lauren was helping me to my feet. She did something with her glowy hands and magically wrapped bandages around my arms. I wondered if that was all she could do, or if there were some kind of healing spells out there that she might not actually know.

In his new position pinned down by Drake’s knees, Barry almost looked like he was waking up from a dream. He shook his head at least five times, as if in a daze. If I weren’t so pissed off at him for attacking me, I’d probably come to the conclusion that he actually hadn’t meant to do what he did. It was likely pure instinct, for some reason. Though, like I said, I was too pissed at him for doing it in the first place to actually give it any non-disgusted thought.

“What the hell did you do that for?!” I shouted at him.

But not in my voice.

My hands went up to my mouth, and that’s when things started to get weirder. My hands had started to change, to slim down. I couldn’t feel it happening, it was like my entire body was completely numb, but I saw it clear as day and it terrified me. In almost no time at all, my hands were completely feminine, even down to my fingernails were shaped.

I saw the rest of my body change. It didn’t go from my hands to my arms, but occurred all over my body in different places. I couldn’t honestly figure out why I was turning into a girl, but that was obviously what was going on. My clothes suddenly didn’t fit, but they weren’t falling off, either. In less than five minutes, where once I was male, I then wasn’t.

But that wasn’t the last of the changes, either. The hair on my arms started to lengthen, then it pretty obviously became fur. This was the change I expected after being scratched by a werewolf, but why I had to become a girl to do it was beyond me. Much like the gender change, I didn’t feel the species change, either, not until the end, when the tail popped out. That part felt weird, but like I was sprouting another arm or something.

“Oooooooh-kay, that’s new,” Drake said, almost bewildered.

Lauren smacked him in the face. “He was scratched by a werewolf, dumbass. What did you think was gonna happen?”

“Not that, the girl part.”

“That confuses me, too,” I said, though I was very much not used to my new voice, so I almost thought it came from Lauren for a second.

I looked back down at him and noticed Barry had stopped moving almost entirely. His eyes, however, once again locked on me…

...And then I blacked out.

* * *

I woke up in a bed that wasn’t my own, but Sadie was right there beside me. She licked my face a couple times until I told her to stop. I looked down at my hands and saw that I was human again, though I was clearly still a girl. I was mostly grateful that my sense of touch seemed to have come back to me.

I glanced around the room and saw I was in a bedroom, but not one I recognized. The decor, however, made me pretty sure it was Lauren’s. It looked like the bedroom of a little girl who never really grew past her love of cute things, but still grew up nonetheless. It reminded me of my ex-girlfriend Kathy’s bedroom, which I’m sure to this day would still contain a doll collection the size and scale of which would likely not be considered healthy.

The door to the room opened and in walked a gray haired guy about my age, with a very visible and aged scar on his bare chest. Just the fact that he was shirtless gave me all the clues I needed to know this was Barry’s human form. I honestly hadn’t expected him to look almost as muscular as he was in werewolf form, though. He shut the door behind him and let out a sign of relief.

“I was worried you wouldn’t wake up,” he said.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My clothes had been changed, likely Lauren had given me some. A pair of very short shorts and a short sleeved shirt replaced the pajama pants and tee-shirt I had been wearing. Damn, did my legs look long now. “No thanks to you,” I said, a little more harshly than I’d intended, but it wasn’t all that far off the mark, either.

He wagged a finger at me. “Hey, now, I don’t know why I did what I did, but I didn’t mean to do it.”

From absolutely nowhere, Lauren’s voice said, “I know why you did it.” She suddenly appeared a second later, holding an almost comically large book in her hands. She had seated herself on her dresser, and sat very leisurely. “So, werewolves, it seems, have heat cycles. Not just female werewolves, but males as well.” She scanned the page she was on with her finger. “It’s essentially a reflex action, you just dive into the urge to mate, latch onto the nearest person and turn them right then and there to have sex.” She shut the book and caused the room to fill up with an absurd amount of dust, which made me cough. “The urge goes away if you’re not allowed to have sex immediately, which is why you snapped out of it when Drake knocked you to the floor, and why Jordan here changed back immediately.”

“I’m still a girl,” I said.

She folded her arms over her chest. “And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing! I just… I didn’t change back all the way, y’know?”

She dropped down from her dresser. “Nope, and you won’t. The good news is you have a whole month before the next full moon cycle. And give or take five years before you run into that heat cycle.”

“Five years?” Barry asked. “That explains why I’ve never done that before.”

I asked, “So what happens to me now? I can’t go to work like this,” I gestured to my new body, “and what about my mom? How do I explain this to her?”

Barry put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, I got you into this, I’ll help.”

I sighed. “I guess I shouldn’t say no.”

Lauren giggled. “Welcome to the freak show, Jordan.” She snapped her fingers and changed my clothes into a light pink blouse and a short white skirt. “At least you fit in more now.”