Jarlath has rehearsed this corridor for four days: the stance, the key, the first sentence. The rehearsal does not survive the sight of the man standing behind the placement officer.

He has the key out before the lift stops, turning it over his knuckles and back — the only sound in the building except somebody's television through the wall of 4C.

he tells the closed door.

Officer Marn Halloway arrives with his tablet held the way a man holds a shield, and behind him comes something this hallway was not built for. Horns swept back through copper-red hair, ridges threaded with a dull teal. Scales down one side of the neck. A travel case in one hand and the other already in a pocket.

Jarlath says, and hears his own voice go light and pleasant, which is what it does when he is angry.

Halloway's pen clicks.

The key stops.

Nobody in that office said the word out loud in four days. He hears it now, outside his own front door, and his ears flatten before he decides whether to allow it.

Halloway says, far too fast, and the speed of it is worse than the word.

The dragon has not put the case down. He shifts his grip on the handle, looks at the key, then at Jarlath's face, and does not look away.

Jarlath says, still light,

Six months of a life are on the other side of that door. The flat is awake: a chair, a cup, somebody standing still and listening.

He raises the key where the peephole can see it.