Page 1

Chapter One

Bad Vibes

By the time Hakeem turned onto the block, the sun had technically gone down, but Los Angeles was still radiating heat as if it took offense to the concept of evening.

The pavement shimmered faintly under the streetlights. The air had that dry, papery feel it got after a long day of sun, like the whole neighborhood had been left too close to a lamp. Old palm trees leaned over the street in silhouettes that looked more exhausted than tropical, their fronds rattling softly above a mess of telephone wires.

Hakeem pulled over in front of the house, halfway in front of a hedge that looked brittle enough to burst into flames if somebody lit a cigarette nearby. He killed the engine and sat there for a second with both hands on the steering wheel. The house rose up behind the windshield in a way that was eerily cinematic.

That was the first problem.

It had an aging beauty that made practical concerns seem insensitive to mention. The place was a narrow two-story rental with peeling cream paint, dark trim, and a front porch that lifted just enough to suggest either long-term settling or a minor curse. One of the front windows was tall and a little too thin. The porch light cast a weak amber cone over the steps. The whole thing looked like the establishing shot in a movie where someone made one bad decision in act one and spent the rest of the runtime paying for it in blood. It did not look stable in any sense that mattered to an insurance company. It promised a story.

Hakeem wasn’t exactly surprised by the appearance. He did see the photos online, and to be fair to his new housemate, they were accurate. But the house was different in the twilight, in a way that felt important.

Hakeem always did love a good story.

He got out of the car and immediately felt the lingering heat come up through the soles of his shoes. In the backseat and trunk were two duffel bags, a garment bag, one taped-up box full of books and DVDs, a few VHS tapes he refused to part with on principle, and a thrifted lamp with a crooked brass stem and a shade the color of old blush roses. The lamp was objectively inconvenient and maybe a little ugly, but it had character, which was more than he could say for most of the men he’d kissed in Los Angeles.

This move is temporary, he told himself. That was the line. Temporary, strategic, and not at all depressing.

It was not “twenty-six and moving into a weird old house with a stranger because rent in LA was a blood sport and his current sublet had collapsed under the combined weight of black mold, emotional instability, and a drummer who believed boundaries were a suggestion.”

This move was a pivot, meant to be a tactical retreat. A necessary housing adjustment that supported Hakeem’s artistic goals.

With a sigh, Hakeem grabbed the garment bag and one of the duffels, balanced the lamp precariously in the crook of his arm, and headed for the porch before he could second-guess the decisions that had led him here.

Up close, the house smelled faintly of dry wood and warm dust. Somebody nearby was grilling something. A dog barked twice behind a fence and then seemed to reconsider. Hakeem set the duffel down, shifted the lamp before he dropped it, and knocked.

Nothing.

He was about to knock again (this time with more emphasis) when he heard footsteps inside, a brief pause, and then the door opened.

Antonio Sanchez was not what Hakeem had prepared himself for.

They had exchanged driver’s licenses over email, so Hakeem got the general vibe of him. Up-close, Antonio was very different from the bad-lighting DMV photo. He was handsome in a low-energy way that suggested some higher power had done some very fine work and then stepped back before adding anything that would dip into avarice.

His worn edges suggested he either got too little sleep or too much. He had thick, black, wavy hair, a little unruly, with soft waves framing his face. Square glasses, the kind the internet loved to call “slutty” on men like him, rested on the bridge of his nose. Thirty-two, Hakeem remembered from the sparse email exchange and lease coordination. Older than him, but not old. Just old enough to maybe know better than everybody else in Hakeem’s orbit and find it exhausting.

His expression didn’t change much when he took Hakeem in.

“You found it,” he said.

His voice was low and dry—not welcoming, but not rude either. He spoke as if Hakeem’s arrival was an item on a list, and he was thankful to cross it off.

“Your parking situation is evil,” Hakeem replied.

Antonio glanced past him toward the street. “You got a spot, though.”

“Using the word ‘spot’ pretty loosely there.”

Something shifted very slightly at the corner of Antonio’s mouth. Hakeem hadn’t earned a smile, but there was the quick acknowledgement that Hakeem had said a thing.

“Hakeem?”

“Unless there’s another gorgeous young renter arriving with a cursed lamp.”

Antonio’s eyes flicked to the lamp. “That lamp does look like it knows something.”