We walked into Moonstones around 9:30 p.m. The place was about half-full, which was pretty good for a Tuesday night during the off-season. During the summer, tourists would wander in and want to experience the city’s historic gay bar. About half as many would show up during peak foliage season. 

I never understood the fascination with watching the leaves turn, but maybe that’s because, to me, leaves were only good for sinking to the bottom of the beach and releasing their nutrients. 

Winter ensured the crowd at Moonstones would be mostly local queers, when salt and slush lined the sides of every street and sidewalk on the peninsula. 

The bar appears unassuming from the outside, a few rainbow flags blowing in the seemingly-eternal sea breeze above the oversized wooden door. Above the door is a long black sign with the bar’s name in white narrow letters. 

Inside the bar, patrons have access to a small stage for shows, a few pool tables, and small mounted televisions here and there. 

My favorite decoration hung on the wall in a simple black frame, a printed list of guidelines regarding consensual contact. Most of it was common sense. And I’m sure folks who lacked the strength of monsters appreciated having official rules plastered and ready to be pointed to, not that this bar saw too much trouble. 

If there was trouble to be had in Portland’s bar scene, it wouldn’t be at Moonstones but another sketchier dive in the Old Port. There were at least two places that popped up in the newspaper for stabbings or shootings. Not often, mind you, but enough to make sure Portlanders feared running into a violent human stranger at night, rather than something that rose from the murky depths of Casco Bay hungry for manflesh. Or womanflesh. Hell, most monstrous mouths weren’t picky when it came to their choice of flesh. 

But it was the job of Harbor Warden to limit the devouring of flesh as often as possible. Fortunately, I heard she did a decent job. . . most of the time. Hey, nobody knocks the puck into the goal on every shot. Even Michael Jordan would tell you he didn’t score every game on the ice. . . at least, I think he would. I’m not exactly the most knowledgeable soul on human sports. 

“Hey Ariel, for the third time, what are you drinking?” Ronnie asked, bringing me back to the present. There I went, lost in my thoughts again. Maybe I should get tested for some kind of neurodivergent symptoms in my brain. Then again, good as Ronnie was at sewing me up and setting broken bones, I don’t think she specialized in monster mental health. And I didn’t trust another soul with my health. 

“Sorry, Ron. For the thirtieth time. Don’t call me Ariel. I hate that movie,” I muttered, looking up at the bar decorations. Paper snowflakes hung around the columns and across the top of the bar, with faerie lights strung in between them every few inches. Behind the bar stood three shelves, each filled with colorful liquor bottles from brandy to whiskey. 

A shorter man wearing a blue jacket and a red ascot around his neck waited patiently for my drink order. The speakers were playing Madonna, but I didn’t have to raise my voice to get Seymour’s attention. 

“Screwdriver, please. Sorry, I’m a little distracted tonight, apparently,” I said. 

What I didn’t tell him was maybe the krabbor’s big meaty claw had knocked my head a little more loose than I anticipated. 

“That’s okay. When you serve drinks to the rainbow crowd, I find there’s always an adventure to distract you,” Seymour said, scratching his handlebar mustache. 

If you looked at Seymour’s hair, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a queer shade of brown like his facial hair. But, it was actually a subtle shade of burgundy, one he’d somehow managed to dye his mustache as well. I thought that amount of upkeep was absurdly exhausting, but he wore it well, the bisexual deviant. 

“Hey now. Best not to get too attached to any of these adventures you’re talking about. I heard Brock downstairs can be a jealous cunt,” I said. 

Seymour winked at me and said, “I’d be a damn fool to betray his sweet cheeks and his trust. His loyalty was harder to win than you’d imagine. I burned a harbor of ships just to get his attention.” 

Ronnie and I laughed at that. 

As he grabbed a bottle of Svedka from the middle shelf behind him, Seymour turned back to me and said, “But you’ve met my boyfriend many times, Cassie. And you know he’d slit my throat the moment he discovered I was unfaithful.” 

If it were possible for Seymour to both shiver in fear while making puppy dog eyes at the thought of the man he loved, the bartender found a way to make it happen. 

Tapping me on the shoulder, Ronnie pulled me in close and whispered, “When do I get to go downstairs? I’ve come to this bar every week for years now and can’t seem to sneak down there.” 

I smiled something wicked and said, “Why Ron, you’ve already been downstairs many, many times.” 

She tried to roll her eyes but failed halfway and giggled as Seymour put our drinks on the bar. 

“Bitch, I meant the basement bar, not you. And you knew that!” 

I shrugged innocently and grabbed the tiny black straw in my drink, stirring the orange slice around a few times and stabbing it twice for good measure. 

After taking a drink, I sighed. 

“You know the rules, Ron. If you want to go downstairs, you gotta grow some claws or fangs,” I said. 

She wasn’t wrong about her frequent trips to Moonstones. The bar was just a couple of blocks from her office. Ronnie could be here in the time it’d take me to swim from Bug Light to East End. 

And yet, despite her loyalty, Ronnie’s toes hadn’t even touched the spiral stairs that went down into the Dark Side of the Moon. Some of the cool kids called it DSM. It was me. I was the cool kid. Actually — I was just lazy. Syllables should always be fewer, not greater. 

Behind us, a lesbian couple stood discussing beer economics, and to our left, a college kid with nails painted hot pink sat reading a collection of Edgar Allen Poe’s works. He looked to be about halfway through The Mask of the Red Death. 

We finished our first round of drinks about 20 minutes later. I was feeling the buzz more so than Ronnie, who could drink me under the table in any contest. She told me plenty of stories about outdrinking her coworkers during an internship at the Boston Aquarium. 

During our second round, I got my ex’s softer side, the one she typically hid under layers of effortless flirting and sultry laughs. But this softer side spoke slower. And the way she’d look into your eyes, it felt like she provided a periscope right into her bleeding heart. 

“It’s just. . . it hasn’t hurt like this since we called it quits, y’know?” Ronnie said, rubbing her finger around the edge of her glass. “I was the first person to use her new pronouns. I helped her pick out the new name. I was ready to keep loving her. And then she was gone. I don’t blame her, and I feel guilty for complaining, but—” I interrupted her with a hand on her arm. 

“But it still hurts.” 

Then she stared at me with those blue eyes, the ones I’d gone swimming in more times than I could count. And I knew, even with my sunglasses, she was looking deep inside of me. It was a spot I allowed few to witness, but she’d always have access, no matter who I ended up with. I had no control over that. 

She can’t get into DSM, but she’d always be welcome in some corner of my heart, I thought, finishing my second drink. 

“Yeah, it hurts alright. I mean. . . I fell in love with who we both thought was a man. And Robbie coming out didn’t change how I felt about her in the slightest. But it changed how she felt about me. I guess that’s what sucks the most. Does that make me a shitty person?”

I leaned in close and kissed Ronnie lightly on the cheek. We were treading on some dangerous territory. Part of me didn’t care about being a one-night rebound for her. I hadn’t been with anyone serious since we’d broken up. But I didn’t want to rekindle any actual feelings between us from a hypothetical rebound, which, I know, was a bit of a mindfuck. But hey, hearts are fickle assholes. 

“No, Ron. It doesn’t make you a shitty person. It makes you someone who was desperately in love. It makes you human. . . at least twice as human as me,” I said. 

She was in the middle of finishing her drink when I said that, and she nearly choked from snorting. 

“Christ, Cass. You know I hate that joke.” 

I pulled out my debit card and waved to Seymour, who was helping someone in a tiger fursuit with their drink. 

Not my circus, not my tigers, I thought. 

“Stop calling me the daughter of Triton, and I’ll stop making that joke,” I said. “C’mon. Let’s get you home.” 

As I stood up, I heard a man’s voice behind me. 

“Oh, you’re leaving? I was hoping to buy you at least one drink,” he said. 

I turned to find a middle age man with graying hair and a tailored suit that belonged in court regularly. His tie was loosened, but his boxy glasses weren’t sliding down his nose in the least. 

“Sorry, sir. I’ve got plans with this lovely lady,” I said as Ronnie stood up, now staring at the brown-eyed man. This guy looked like he spent more time in polo shirts on the fairway than cruising around gay bars. I didn’t get a single pride vibe from this old hetero. Not that gaydar was a mermaid ability, but I liked to think I’d gotten good at honing it in. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt your plans,” he said, moving a few inches closer and immediately getting on my nerves with the lack of respect for personal space. I could tell this man had a habit of ignoring boundaries and making his presence known in any setting. It made me want to feed him to the krabbor. But I also knew who he was, so that wasn’t a smart option at the moment. 

Lowering my voice and bleeding with irritability, I said, “I’m not really in the habit of accepting drink offers from men. . . if you get my drift.” 

He did get my drift. But the asshole didn’t care. 

“It’d be strictly business, not pleasure,” he said, showing me a silver wedding ring. “I think you’ll want to hear me out.” 

I sighed. And as he put a hand on my shoulder to lead me over to a more secluded corner, I saw him recoil in disgust and wipe his fingers on his pants. 

Sometimes being slimy has its advantages, I thought, reveling in the fact he wasn’t the first man who’d discovered this about me. 

Ronnie tried to follow, but the older gentleman held up a hand and said, “Why don’t you get another drink at the bar? It’ll be on me as well.” 

She flashed me a quick look, and I shrugged. I’d be fine. My expression told Ronnie we’d stay in her line of sight, and I wasn’t all that worried about an inebriated and vanilla mortal doing me much harm. 

The man introduced himself as Harold Treskus and tried to buy me a light beer. I interrupted him mid-order and told Seymour to pour me a Coke instead. I was done drinking for the night, and I wasn’t going to give this asshole the satisfaction of ordering for me. 

I walked over to desolate a corner by the tiny jukebox, which wasn’t playing anything at the moment. Rainbow lights flowed around the machine’s borders, tempting me to drop a quarter in. I narrowly avoided the temptation. 

Harold followed me holding a can of Miller Lite. He’d already had a few cans from what I could tell. His eyes looked me up and down and stopped on my shades. 

“You sensitive to the lights in here, or are those a fashion statement?” he asked. 

I shrugged, taking a drink and accidentally letting some of the fizz pop into my nose. Fuck me, that burned.  

“You drink here often? I figured the city attorney had a reserved spot at Portland’s country club,” I said. 

He raised an eyebrow. 

“So you did recognize me. I wasn’t sure you would. We’ve only crossed paths once. YARP seems to do a pretty good job of keeping you out of my line of sight,” he said. 

That earned him another shrug. 

Ronnie declined the third drink and watched us like a seahawk, no doubt ears straining for any wandering word she could pick up. Her scowl let me know she didn’t approve of whatever was happening here, and I sensed it was less about delaying our escapades and more about the creepy vibe this man was putting off. I knew her mind was replaying Schmidt’s voice over and over again, yelling, “A white man?! No!” 

“Is this official YARP business you want to discuss, because I think you have to go through Captain Jane for stuff like this,” I said, downing half my soda. 

Harold groaned. 

“Yes, I know your captain. She does a very good job of protecting you. The vague assignment reports and delayed responses to official inquiries, Jane is talented when it comes to obfuscating.” 

I frowned. 

“Captain Jane,” I said. 

He ignored me. Temper. Agitation. 

“Whatever. I’ve got a job for you, Harbor Warden. Need you to look into something,” the city attorney said, taking another drink and then scratching his cheek. 

“You’re literally in charge of the Portland Police Department. That’s a team of 22 investigators. Get one of them to do it,” I said. 

Harold stepped closer to me, but I didn’t back up. This only seemed to frustrate him more. I could tell he had a few plays in his strategy book, and this was the most common. 

“My wife went missing yesterday from our second home over in Cape Elizabeth. It’s right on the beach, and I want you to head over tomorrow to see what you can find. I understand you’re the one we call when weird shit happens near the water,” he said. 

I finished my drink, not liking the sound of this at all. 

“And I’m guessing you want me involved so this will stay on the quiet side? No cops. No crime scene. No newspapers,” I said, placing my finished Coke on a nearby counter. 

“Think whatever the hell you want, girl. Just visit my secretary tomorrow and get the address and gate key,” he said, turning to go. 

Ronnie stood up and started to walk over, but I held up my hand for one more minute. 

“What if the captain has me busy tomorrow, and my schedule is packed?”

Harold turned back toward me and sneered. The shitass. 

“I understand you keep a sea otter as a pet. That’s a category two restricted species. I took the liberty of checking your paperwork and didn’t find the required exhibitor's or wildlife rehabilitator's permit to keep him. If you don’t find some time in your schedule, I might be forced to send an animal control officer over to investigate,” he said. 

Maybe I would take my chances and feed this asshole to the krabbor. And I took solace in the fact that there wasn’t a single officer in the entire PPD powerful enough to move me out of the way should someone come for Tenebrae. See? Optimist. 

Harold put some cash on the bar and didn’t wait for Seymour to check him out before fleeing from Moonstone’s like staying here for one more second might have contaminated him. 

I fucking hate that the city attorney isn’t an elected position, I thought. When the only requirement to secure a position of power is knowing a guy, bad things tend to happen. 

And I’d just met bad things. 

Ronnie walked over and immediately started asking questions. I just shook my head and sighed. 

“We’ll talk at your place,” I said. 

“Shame. I was hoping we’d do other things when we got back.” 

Closing out my tab with Seymour, I scratched my head. 

“Do you want to fuck, or do you want to hear how the city attorney blackmailed me?” I asked. 

It took until we were back on the porch of her veterinary clinic for Ronnie to make up her mind.