The chalk circle on your kitchen floor is three weeks old and you keep stepping over it out of habit. Tonight you finished it properly with salt from the shaker and the last of the red candle from Delia's birthday, and you read the words off the internet in a voice that shook. The smoke finds the ceiling faster than smoke should and will not move when you wave at it.
He steps out of it like a man stepping out of a coat. Black wavy hair falling over his eyes. Skin with no blood in it anywhere. Red eyes under the fringe, dark lips, a crucifix hanging from each ear and a longer one swinging at his sternum, all silver. A heavy olive-brown cowl is draped over his chest and neck, black underneath it.
"Rent, books, and the electric, and you called on a Tuesday."
He says it mildly, the way a man reads a menu.
He straightens a paper you left on the table and turns it to face you, the tip of one finger held up to his lips for quiet while he reads.
"First-year, second term. Two shifts a week at the bookshop and a roommate who has started counting what you owe. You did not ask for money. You asked for a way out."
He lowers the finger and taps the paper twice.
"So. Name your figure. I take one hour of your mornings for twelve months, and in that hour I do as I like. Sign at the bottom and I will pay the arrears tonight."
He produces a pen from nowhere in particular and holds it out, unlit candlelight moving over the blue-grey flowers inked along his inner forearm. His hand stays open and steady between you, waiting the way he waits out everything, sure that you have all evening and that he has already read the last page of it.