Page 1 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle
Chapter 1
The Attic Room
The sign at the edge of the town is faded, salt-blasted, and slightly crooked. It saysWelcome to Easthaven, but it doesn’t look much like it means it. There’s a cartoon fish, smiling dead-eyed, and someone’s graffitied a tentacle around it, curling up like it’s giving a weird, suction-cupped thumbs up. I flip the bird as I roll past in my prehistoric rust-bucket of a car.
Gravel crunches under my tires as I pull off the main coastal road, which at this point is barely a road at all. It’s hot, so I have the windows down, and the air smells like brine and the sweet rot of seaweed in the sun. I’m tired. I’m wired. I’ve got one bag of clothes, half a paycheck, and absolutely no ability to remain normal about the fact that I just disappeared from my own life.
The place I’m renting is above a bait shop. It’s perched right on the shoreline, but I wouldn’t call itcute coastalor beachy. It’s gothic and angular and looks like it hasn’t seen a new coat of paint in my lifetime. The attic came with a $200 discount and a warning.
Apparently, locals say not to rent the attic above the bait shop.
So that’s exactly what I did, of course.
The streets here are narrow and cobbled. The buildings lean in like they’re listening. I see exactly one person in the half hour it takes me to weave through town—a woman sweeping her porch, eyeing me suspiciously like she thinks I don’t notice. She is not as subtle as she thinks.
I smile, but she doesn’t smile back.
It smells like low tide and damp history. It reminds me of field research, and I wonder if maybe I could set up a project or fieldwork study here. It’s the perfect location—all coastline, and very little else. There’s the bait shop, one diner, and a bookstore. That’s why I came here. It’s quiet, and I can keep my head down while I figure my shit out. Or I could end up spiraling dramatically because the silence drives me to madness.
Either way, I guess the view’s not bad. I can see all the way to thehorizon from the front stoop. Tiny silhouettes of fishing boats dot it, haloed in orange.
I have to go through the bait shop to get to the attic room apartment, which at first I thought might be too much socialization, but the property manager reliably informed me that the owner is reclusive as fuck, and I probably won’t even see him.
The key I pull from the envelope is an old, brass skeleton key. It sticks in the lock. I kick the door, but it won’t budge. I try turning the key while pulling the door, while lifting the door, and while pushing the door. Still nothing.
“Comeon,” I groan. My head tips back, and that frantic kind of energy builds up in me like static under my skin. It doesn’t take long until it has to burst out. I lunge forward, slamming my weight into the door.
It still doesn’t budge, and all that momentum I create ricochets me back. I fly off the stoop, fully prepared to fall on my ass in the street—maybe that’ll make the porch-sweeping woman smile—but that isn’t what happens.
A wall of soaked hoodie and solid muscle absorbs the impact without moving an inch. I bounce back toward the door like a ping-pong ball, all the air knocked out of me. I stagger a step, hand grabbing for the railing, and wheel around wheezing.
Holy shit.
The first thing I notice is that he’s fuckinghuge. At least six foot six. Broad, dripping, massive hands hanging loose at his sides. The front of his hoodie clings to his chest, soaked through. The fabric shapes tight over him, and it leaves very little to the imagination, which I am fine with, becausedamn.He’s built. Hard planes of muscle, but bulky in the middle. His jaw is shadowed with stubble, and his mouth is pressed into a flat line. He has his hood pulled forward just enough to shade his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?” His voice is low and rough, like he’s barely spoken yet today.
I hold up the key. “I live here.”
His expression doesn’t change even a bit. I wonder if he’s heard me at all as he continues to study me warily.
“Upstairs,” I clarify. “The attic apartment. You know, the oneeveryone warned me not to rent. Sounded fun.”
His jaw tics. “You should leave.”
That pulls a laugh out of me, short and sharp. “Nice to meet you, too. Are all the locals this friendly, or just the wet ones?”
His mouth twitches at the corner. It’s demonstrably not a smile—but it’s notnota smile, either. Something about it feels a bit like winning.
“It’s nice to meet you, too!” I affect a mock-polite tone, holding out my hand. He doesn’t take it. “I’m Neviah. And you are?”
A low rumbling sound rolls out of him, like it’s coming straight from his chest. I think this giant man just growled at me.
“Calder—Cal.” He frowns to himself, as if he didn’t mean to give his full name. “I own the shop. And the attic.”
Of course.
I glance down at the puddle forming beneath him, then back up. The guy’s a storm come ashore. I can’t see his eyes, but I can feel him trying not to look at me. It’s been a minute since anybody’s known what to do with me, but I know when a guy is trying not to thinkungentlemanlythoughts.
