The first thing I register is the smell.
Rain. Asphalt. And something sharper bleeding through the crack under my apartment door—cigar smoke and cold air, edged with money and danger.
I freeze in the hallway, keys biting into my palm. The building’s always smelled like damp and old curry, sometimes weed drifting up from the second floor. Never like this. Never like a man who doesn’t belong here is waiting on the other side of my door.
My heart gives one hard kick against my ribs. For a second, the fluorescent light above me hums too loud, the world narrowing to the chipped numbers on my door: 3B.
You’re being paranoid, Emma.
But the thin hairs down my arms lift, and somewhere under my ribs, an old, buried instinct that smells like smoke and sirens wakes up.
I slide my key toward the lock—then stop.
There’s a shadow under the door.
“Who’s there?” The words are out before I can stop them, my voice thinner than I’d like.
Silence. Then the faintest scrape, like someone shifting their weight, unconcerned with being heard.
I swallow, throat dry. “If you don’t answer, I’m calling the police.”
A beat. Then a low male voice threads through the door, smooth as dark velvet and absolutely amused.
“No, you won’t.”
The world tilts.
I know that voice.
Not from the news or the whispered conversations in staff rooms about the monsters that run this city. I know it from the way it once pressed against my ear through a haze of smoke and heat, younger and rawer but the same dark timbre. From a night my therapist told me I’d misremembered, because children’s minds scramble things to make sense of trauma.
I know it from a burning warehouse and a nameless boy who dragged me out of hell.
My fingers go numb. The keys hit the worn carpet with a soft jangle.
“Open the door, Emma.” Closer now. More command than request. “We’re not doing this in a hallway.”
My knees want to fold. I press my free hand against the wall instead, feeling the flaking paint under my palm, grounding myself.
It can’t be him. That boy never told me his name. He vanished. He doesn’t exist. I made him up.
My mouth works. “Who are you?”
A quiet exhale, not quite a sigh. “Do you want the version the papers use, or the one that belongs to you?”
Panic surges, hot and electric. Every self-defense class video I’ve half-watched flashes through my head. Don’t open the door. Scream. Run.
My feet stay rooted.
“Emma.” My name in that voice is a weight, a hand around my pulse. “If I wanted to hurt you, you wouldn’t have made it up the stairs.”
There’s no bravado in it. Just fact.
My stomach flips.
“Back away from my door,” I manage, surprising myself. “Or I will scream, and the whole building will—”
“The whole building will do nothing.” The velvet fades; steel slips in. “Call the police, they’ll arrive late and leave with nothing. Scream, and you’ll only draw more eyes to you. And that, little Lawson, is what I’m here to prevent.”
Little Lawson.
I’m back in smoke. A rough teenage voice in my ear. Don’t look back. Don’t say my name. Don’t ever say my name.
