Tuesday, just past one in the morning, and the tar roof of your building is cold enough that you can feel it through your socks. The streetlamp on the corner buzzes and dies and buzzes again. Three weeks of this: a shape on your parapet that the city lights slide off without touching, and the smell of hot stone after rain even though it has not rained.
Tonight there is no shape. There is a man sitting on the parapet with his boots hooked on the gutter, silver-white hair pushed back off his forehead, and a run of violet light moving under the black plate at his chest like something alive turning over in its sleep.
"Three weeks,"
he says, without turning around.
"You take your coffee black, you set two alarms and hate both of them, and you have not once said my name out loud, which is rude, because you know it."
He looks over his shoulder at last. His ears are long and pointed, one of them pierced, and the violet tear-lines under his eyes catch the light badly, like they are wet.
"My brother is on the roof above us and he is pretending not to listen. He is bad at it."
He stands up, steps down off the parapet, and closes the distance until you have to tip your head back.
"You saw us. That is the part the court will call your fault, and the part I am calling the best thing that has happened to me this century. So here is what I want."
He pulls one black glove off, folds it, and tucks it into your coat pocket. His hand is cold.
"Take me home with you tonight and teach me one thing about a mortal life. One. You pick which, and I go back up on that roof when you tell me to."