Page 19 of Problematic

Old locks. No visible wards on the main door, just a half-dead sigil chalked near the jamb that would deter low-level pests. No cameras, unless some landlord had splurged recently. I could walk straight up, pick the lock, and be inside before anyone even rolled over in their sleep.

Leaving?

That was the problem.

I moved to the front door. The stupid blue one.

Up close I could see faint ward lines carved into the frame. Not hers. They looked like they came with the building. They were slumlord cheap. Generic deterrents, something you bought in a pack from a street witch and slapped on every unit when the city threatened to inspect.

I pressed two fingers to the sigil. It sputtered. Fizzled. Died.

“Pathetic,” I told it.

I didn’t open the door yet. Instead, I drew a second sigil next to the dead one, carving it into the wood with the tip of my knife. Small, tight, mean. A watcher mark. Anything that tried to cross this threshold with intent to harm would feel it.

Normally, I didn’t waste protection spells on strangers.

Today wasn’t normal.

When I finished, the new mark glowed once, faint, then sank into the grain of the door. I should have stopped there.

I didn’t. The lock gave with barely any effort. I slipped inside, crossed to her kitchen table, and set the rose from inside my coat into an empty glass. She slept on the couch a few feet away, buried beneath her blanket, entirely unaware that the man who had warded her door had immediately become the reason she needed one.

I left before the bond convinced me staying made sense.

Satisfied, I stepped back into the shadow of the building and just . . . stood there.

One in the morning, and I was lurking outside some woman’s apartment like the kind of monster mothers warned their kids about.

The irony was not lost on me.

Upstairs, someone coughed. A toilet flushed. The city shifted around us, turning over in its sleep. Down here, by her window, it was almost quiet.

The bond thrummed softer now. It was pleased I’d gotten close enough to check she was still here. Still breathing.

I hated how much that mattered to me now.

I imagined what she’d do if she opened the curtains and saw me. Mask. Shadows. Guns. The demon who ruled the city standing on her sad little patch of sidewalk in the middle of the night.

Scream, probably.

Or freeze.

Or both.

She’d be right to.

I leaned my head back against the brick and closed my eyes. Let the pull settle. Let myself exist in this stupid, fragile moment where she was ignorant and I could pretend that meant she was safe.

“Stay asleep,” I told her, voice low, knowing she couldn’t hear me through the glass and the curtain and whatever dreams she’d fallen into. “Stay stupid. Stay average. Do us both a favor.”

The bond warmed like it disagreed.

Of course it did.

I pushed off the wall and stepped away from her window, forcing myself to turn my back on it. Every step away felt wrong, like walking against a current.

Leaving was work.