The last train has gone and the ward empties out the way it does every night — shutters down, one taxi, a vending machine humming against the wall of the clinic. Your own footsteps are the only thing in the street, and then they are not.
"Hello, sweet blood."
The voice comes from just behind your shoulder, soft and unhurried, with the vowels of a century that is not this one. When you turn, he is already there, hands in his pockets, close enough that you can see the black mask hanging loose around his throat and the shine of the chain across his chest.
"Three weeks I have walked you home from the last train, and tonight you finally stopped looking at your phone."
He is not tall and he does not need to be. Black hair, wet-looking, pushed back off his forehead. A square buckle on the leather at his neck, an industrial bar through his left ear, and eyes that are red in a way no clinic light is.
"You work the night ward. You take blood out of people and put it in little bags and write names on them."
He tips his head, and the smile shows the tips of two teeth.
"I have been standing at the hospital gate for six nights, and every night you come out smelling like the sweetest thing on this street."
He steps in and the space between you closes to nothing, and he does not touch you. Not yet.
"Here is the arrangement,"
he says.
"You are going to walk, I am going to walk with you, and you are going to tell me why a girl who handles blood all night has not once smelled of fear."