Chapter 1 · The Regular Human (3)

I did not look. I remembered Mr. Ashworth's voice, cold as his hand: <em>if anything knocks on your window tonight, don't open it.</em>

The tapping stopped after a while. I chose to believe it was a branch. I have been choosing to believe that ever since.

Morning came, gray and damp and brutally normal, like a bucket of water on a hangover. I'd fallen asleep against the tub at some point, and I woke to the sound of my kitchen cabinets opening, and the smell of coffee, and a voice like gravel saying, in tones of profound discovery:

"These are beans. They're beans, and you grind them, and then you <em>make</em> water go through them. This is witchcraft. I respect it."

I hauled myself off the floor and went to look.

He was standing in my kitchen.

I am going to describe this as clinically as possible: he was wearing nothing but a pair of my sweatpants — my LARGE sweatpants, which he filled like they were a suggestion — and he had apparently found my last clean towel, which he'd wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. His hair was dark, wet, and curling. His chest — the chest that had been a crime scene twelve hours ago — was unmarked. Smooth. Like nothing had ever happened.

He was holding my coffee grinder like it was a sacred artifact.

"Morning," I said.

He turned. The gold was gone from his eyes — they were dark now, almost black, and they looked at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing. It should have been flattering. It was deeply, profoundly not.

"Good morning," he said. "I have a question."

"You have many, I'm sure."

"These beans," he said, holding up the grinder. "Are they expensive?"

"I'm a barista, not a billionaire. Yes."

"Good." He set it down gently. "I will work for you. I will grind your beans. This is now my purpose."

"Your — no. Absolutely not. Listen." I pointed at him. "You. Me. Conversation. Who are you?"

His face went still. For a second — just a second — something old and dark moved behind his eyes, like a shark passing under ice. Then it was gone, and he was just a very attractive man in my sweatpants, looking confused.

"I don't —" He frowned. "I don't know."

"Great. Funny. Who are you, really?"

"I'm serious." He touched his head. "There's — nothing. I remember falling. I remember you. Your eyes —" He stopped. Something complicated crossed his face. "I remember your eyes. And then nothing. Everything else is — dark."

I stared at him.

He stared back.

"Amnesia," I said flatly. "You have amnesia."

"If that's the word for it, then yes. I have amnesia."

"You, a man who was stabbed — probably — in an alley last night, with no ID, no wallet, no phone, no memory — you have amnesia."

"Apparently."

"And you want to grind my coffee beans."

"It seems like the least I can do. You saved my life." He said it simply, without irony, like it was the most natural statement in the world. "I owe you a debt. I don't remember much, but I remember that. A debt is a debt."

Something about the way he said it made the cold thing in my chest go still. Not scared. Just... attentive. Like it was listening to a language it used to know.

"No," I said firmly. "No debts. No beans. You're going to a shelter, you're going to social services, you're going to —"

He stood up.

I forgot what I was going to say.

He's tall. I'd known he was tall in the alley, in the way you know a mountain is tall from a distance. Up close, in my kitchen, he was a mountain that had moved indoors. The towel cape did nothing to help. He looked like a god who'd been sent to Earth on a temporary visa and was determined to make the most of it.

"I can't go to a shelter," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because —" He paused. "Because I don't know how shelters work. And I don't trust strangers." He looked at me, and his voice dropped, low and careful: "I trust you. I woke up, and the first thing I saw was you, and I trust you. That's all I have."

It was a line. It was so obviously a line — delivered by a man who had apparently spent his entire existence learning how to deliver lines. I could see it. I could smell it.

And the cold thing in my chest — the thing that has never trusted anyone, the thing that has kept me alone for sixteen years — said, very quietly:

<em>Trust him.</em>

I told the cold thing to shut up. I told him he could stay for exactly one day. I told him he'd sleep on the floor. I told him the moment the shelter opened, he was going.

He agreed to everything with a smile that did not reach his eyes and a handshake that lingered exactly one second too long.

His hand was warm. His hand was so warm, and mine was so cold, and I hated both of those facts with my entire heart.

"One day," I said, to him and to myself and to the cold thing in my chest. "That's it."

"One day," he agreed.

That was nine days ago.