Don't Call Me Luna

Chapter Two

KATANA

When Hell Gets a New Handyman

The problem with gods walking among mortals is they never bother knocking first.

Dave Westwood rolled up to my compound at dawn like salvation arriving in a Ford that should've been put out of its misery three administrations ago. The engine wheezed its last breath as he stepped out, and I swear the morning light bent around him like it was auditioning for a supporting role in whatever celestial drama he starred in daily.

Six and a half feet of broad shoulders wrapped in flannel that probably volunteered at soup kitchens. Dark hair that looked finger-combed by angels. The kind of face that belonged on recruitment posters for whatever organization needed people to believe humanity wasn't completely f****d.

A butterfly landed on his shoulder. Then another. Within seconds, he was wearing a living cape of monarchs and swallowtails that swirled around him like lovesick teenagers. A cardinal dove from the oak tree, followed by three blue jays and what looked like half the local sparrow population.

Of f*****g course.

"You lost, Boy Scout?" I kept Betty—my Louisville Slugger with anger management issues—visible but casual. Just a girl with trust issues standing in a condemned trailer park, wearing yesterday's leather and this morning's attitude.

He smiled, and actual sunlight got jealous. Dimples carved deep enough to hide bodies in, teeth that had never met a cavity, and eyes the color of everything I'd stopped believing in.

"I'm Dave Westwood. The Council sent me as your integration specialist." He lifted a hand-painted container and what looked like growlers of homebrew. "I brought cupcakes and beer."

"I know who you are." The butterflies were practically vibrating with infatuation, wings fluttering like they were trying to spell out love letters in the air. "What I don't know is why you brought a damn nature documentary with you."

He glanced at his aerial harem with the fond exasperation of someone who'd surrendered to abnormal years ago. "They're... enthusiastic about new people."

"New people don't usually get the full Disney princess treatment."

"I seem to have that effect on wildlife." He said this like attracting every creature within a five-mile radius was just an average day in whatever alternate dimension he'd escaped from. "Is this a bad time?"

Cheryl materialized beside me, drawn by the promise of organized paperwork and fancy desserts. Her nose twitched—that beta tell cataloging everything from his stress levels (nonexistent) to his pheromones (sunshine and competence, which shouldn't be a scent but somehow was).

"You must be Dave." Professional voice, the one that had bureaucratized three Council enforcers into submission. "I'm Cheryl Bowman."

He set down his offerings carefully, then extended his hand with the kind of warmth that made people confess their deepest secrets. "Wonderful to meet you. I made four kinds of cupcakes—wasn't sure what anyone preferred."

"Four kinds?" Cheryl shook his hand like he was offering her the keys to paradise. "Before six AM?"

"Lemon lavender with cream cheese frosting, chocolate bourbon, strawberry basil, and honey cardamom. The beer's an IPA with citrus notes."

Jesus Christ. The bastard had been up since probably three AM crafting gourmet baked goods like some sort of domestic terrorist deploying weapons-grade wholesomeness.

A commotion erupted from the chicken coop—our early warning system announcing incoming apocalypse. Methany burst from her trailer wielding a frying pan and the wild-eyed look of someone who'd found Jesus in a meth pipe.

"Raccoons!" she shrieked, because Methany shrieked everything. "They're holding f*****g meetings!"

Before I could grab my riot gear, Dave was moving. He walked toward the chaos with the unflappable confidence of a man who'd never met a problem he couldn't solve with kindness and supernatural competence.

"I'll handle it."

The butterflies and birds stayed behind, settling on his truck like a honor guard protecting their deity's chariot.

"Did he just volunteer to negotiate with raccoons?" Cheryl's voice had lost its professional edge.

"Apparently."

We watched him crouch by the coop, having what appeared to be a full diplomatic summit with something inside. The raccoon chatter went from threatening to conversational to what sounded suspiciously like real discussion.

He was nodding. The bastard was actually nodding like whatever Ricky the Raccoon was saying made perfect sense.

"Gentlemen." Dave's voice carried authority that could broker peace treaties before breakfast. "I understand the situation. New kits mean increased nutritional demands. But these ladies are also supporting families."

More chittering. Gestures with tiny paws. I watched a grown man conduct international relations with trash pandas and somehow make it look dignified.

"Excellent point about territory rights, but consider this: the steakhouse on Route 9 throws out more protein in a day than you could get here in a month. Less risk, more reward."

The raccoons conferred like a board of directors weighing quarterly projections. Then Ricky—presumably their elected leader—approached Dave and extended one tiny paw.

They shook f*****g hands.

"Pleasure doing business with you." Dave stood, brushing dirt off jeans that probably cost more than my trailer. "I'll have Cheryl draw up something official."

The raccoons chittered approval before disappearing into the underbrush with special ops efficiency.

But Dave wasn't finished demonstrating why normal rules didn't apply to him. Henrietta limped out of the coop, our oldest hen hobbling on the leg she'd damaged during the Great Weasel Incident three weeks ago.

He knelt in dirt seasoned with chicken poop, examining her injury with surgical focus. His hands glowed—nothing flashy, just soft luminescence like he was powered by better batteries than the rest of us.

Henrietta stood. Tested the leg. Then proceeded to strut around like she'd just won America's Next Top Chicken.

"Sweet mother of..." I caught myself before finishing the blasphemy.

"The raccoons were just hungry." Dave returned, his jeans now decorated with honest dirt and chicken feathers. "Ricky apologized about the eggs. His wife just had kits and she's craving protein. They'll try the steakhouse instead."

"You negotiated a peace treaty with raccoons."

"More of a trade agreement."

He looked around our kingdom of beautiful damage—trailers listing like drunken soldiers, Uncle Hiro's protective wards flickering between "f**k off" and "abandon hope," the general atmosphere of "we'll cut you" that we'd cultivated like a weaponized garden.

"It's perfect."

"Perfect?" I gestured at our monument to making do with duct tape and determination. "This place was a mass suicide site. We've got a man-eating wendigo in the woods, a meth cook who thinks she's a witch, and half my pack is wanted for something somewhere."

"Exactly." His smile could've powered small cities. "You've built a home for people who don't fit anywhere else. That's not just survival—that's love with teeth."

The phrase hit like sniper fire from an unexpected direction. Love with teeth. It was exactly what we were, what I'd been building without words for it.

"Cheryl will show you around." I needed distance before I did something catastrophically stupid like acknowledge he understood us better in five minutes than the Council had in five years. "Try not to die. The paperwork's a bitch."

I retreated to my trailer, but not before catching his response: "I'll do my best. Death would be terribly inconvenient."

Through my window, I conducted surveillance while Cheryl gave him the grand tour. Every few feet, another pack member emerged from hiding spots, drawn by curiosity and probably pheromones that had graduated from sunshine to full solar flare.

Tommy appeared first, our resident psychology student who'd been building himself back up since his family threw him out at sixteen for being gay. I'd found him half-dead in an alley in Louisville, and now he was three years into his degree and working on his own damage while helping the rest of us with ours.

"Holy s**t, is he single?" Tommy asked Cheryl, loud enough for three counties to hear.

"Definitely," Cheryl replied. "Rich family's probably been trying to marry him off for years."

"To some debutante omega with breeding papers," Margot added, slithering out of her lab like a scientist-shaped snake. She'd actually brushed her hair—Margot, who'd once gone three weeks without changing clothes because she was "in the zone."

"Waste of premium genetics," Tommy declared, his psych training making him analyze Dave like a case study. "Man like that radiates safe energy. Beta for sure, but the kind that makes you want to climb him like a tree."

They were talking about Dave like he was a prized stallion at auction, and I watched him handle their attention with the same easy grace he'd shown the raccoons.

Even the chickens followed him like feathered disciples, Henrietta leading the parade on her miraculously functional legs.

But it was his interaction with Methany that made me realize we were dealing with forces beyond normal classification.

She approached him with her usual combination of paranoid aggression and chemistry-fueled confidence, probably planning to demand rent money we didn't charge.

Instead, she froze mid-stride, staring at him like he was solving cosmic equations in his aura.

"You're blessed," she whispered, and for once she sounded completely sober. "The moon mother touched you. I can see it all over your shit."

Dave considered her with the kind of attention most people reserved for Nobel Prize winners. "You have a gift. You see things others miss."

"I see lots of s**t. Last week spiders spelled out messages. In f*****g cursive."

"Were they trying to communicate something important?"

No judgment. No dismissal. Just genuine interest in her arachnid correspondence. Methany blinked rapidly, processing the foreign concept of being taken seriously.

"Maybe. They seemed really focused on the letter Q."

"Fascinating. Would you mind showing me your lab later? I'd love to learn about your work."

Methany looked like Christmas had arrived early with a research grant. "You want to see my lab?"

"Absolutely. Chemistry is just cooking with more documentation."

I slammed my curtains shut before witnessing any more pack members fall under whatever spell came standard with his existence.

Twenty minutes later, Cheryl knocked once before entering—our code for "I'm coming in regardless."

"So," she said, helping herself to my emergency bourbon. "We keeping him?"

"We're tolerating him. For ninety days. Because the Council says integrate or get disbanded."

"Right." Cheryl paused, then looked at me with that expression that meant serious pack business. "Suzy, we need to talk."

I tensed. Only Cheryl got away with using my real name, and only when s**t was about to hit the fan.

"What?"

"I think he might be an alpha."

"What? No f*****g way. Did you smell him? Pure beta energy."

"That's what's got me confused." Cheryl settled into the chair across from me. "The Council's old school, right? Sexist as hell. They don't believe in female pack leaders, especially not for rogues like us."

"So?"

"So what if they sent him to take over? Traditional Council move—send in a charming alpha to win everyone over, then push you out."

I considered this, watching Dave through the window as he distributed cupcakes with focused joy. "He doesn't feel alpha."

"Maybe that's the point. Maybe he's hiding it."

"Or maybe he's exactly what he appears to be—a do-gooder beta they sent because they figured we'd eat any actual alpha they tried to plant here."

"Maybe." Cheryl didn't sound convinced. "But we should keep an eye on him. Just in case."

"Already planning on it." I gestured toward the window. "Speaking of which, I'm putting him in the murder trailer."

"The one with Harold?"

"That's the one."

Cheryl raised an eyebrow. "You sure that's not overkill? Harold hasn't been the same since Uncle Hiro's last exorcism."

"Harold's lonely since nobody wants to live in that trailer. If Dave can handle a leftover suicide cult ghost, he can handle anything we throw at him."

After venturing outside once more, I found Dave conducting cupcake diplomacy with Tommy, who was practically vibrating with excitement about having someone new to psychoanalyze.

"Your trailer's ready." I jangled the keys like a warden. "Fair warning: it comes with a roommate."

"Roommate?"

"Ghost. Harold. He's mostly harmless since my uncle cleaned house, but he's got opinions about bathroom sharing."

Dave nodded like this was perfectly reasonable information. "Does Harold prefer quiet hours? I sometimes work late."

"Harold doesn't talk. He just... hovers. Judges silently."

"I can work with that."

The murder trailer squatted at the compound's edge like a crime scene courtesy of a particularly brutal serial killer. Paint peeled in patterns suggesting prolonged suffering. The window shutters hung at angles that defied gravity.

"Home sweet home." I unlocked it with a key that could double as a shiv. "Harold mostly sticks to the bathroom. Don't use his toothbrush—yes, he has one, no, I don't know why."

Dave entered what should have sent any rational person fleeing. The interior looked like a forensic textbook had reproduced with a haunted house and birthed offspring with serious avoidment issues.

Stains that could've been blood, rust, or Harold's artistic expressions decorated most surfaces.

"It's perfect," he said with sincerity that should be classified as a controlled substance. "Excellent natural light."

A translucent figure materialized in the bathroom doorway—Harold, looking like a faded photograph of disapproval in a seventies polyester suit. He stared at Dave with the intensity of someone cataloging sins.

Dave waved. "Hi, Harold. I'm Dave. Looking forward to sharing the space."

Harold tilted his head, blinked once, then retreated back into the bathroom with what might have been acceptance.

"Thank you for this opportunity." Dave turned those impossible eyes on me. "I know the Council forced this arrangement, but I promise I'm here to help, not change what you've built."

"Right." I backed toward the door before his sincerity could infect me. "Ninety days, then you're gone."

"Understood."

I fled to my trailer where I could think without butterflies and birds creating a living shrine to supernatural competence. Through the window, I watched him begin cleaning with the dedication of someone who'd found salvation in crime scene rehabilitation.

The man was going to be a catastrophic problem. The kind that fixed your infrastructure while you slept and left wildflowers in your ammunition cache. The kind that made you believe in dangerous concepts like safety and home and love that didn't require body armor.

I'd assigned him the murder trailer to encourage resignation.

Instead, he was probably in there teaching Harold the benefits of organic cleaning products and effective communication.

Ninety days. I just had to survive ninety days of weaponized kindness and strategic competence. Of dimples and wildlife obsession and the kind of fundamental goodness that made cynics like me develop existential allergies.

Through the window, Dave emerged carrying what appeared to be Harold's collection of teeth from the cult days. He waved cheerfully at the tree line where something watched—not the wendigo, but close enough to warrant concern.

Whatever lurked out there retreated, probably confused by someone who greeted potential threats instead of reaching for weapons.

Superman crossed with solar energy crossed with Doctor Doolittle, all wrapped in flannel and supernatural competence.

We were completely, utterly, magnificently f****d.

And the terrifying part? I was beginning to suspect that might not be entirely catastrophic.