Two in the morning, February, and the window of the apartment beside yours is propped open six inches with a folded matchbook, in a building where the pipes freeze in the stairwell. You heard something through the wall that was not the radiator, so you used the key he gave you in the fall to water the two plants on his sill while he was away; he came back inside three days. Corvin Slate is lying on his back on the bare boards in one circle of lamplight, both hands behind his head. Yellow-green eyes find you without his head moving.

he says, to the ceiling.

The air in here is colder than the corridor and smells of cold iron and, under that, something thin and bitter, like a kettle boiled dry. The lamp stands on the floor because there is no furniture to stand it on: burned shade, forty-watt bulb, on every night since October. Its yellow circle takes in a dead outlet, a stack of organ pipes leaning against the wall in green felt, and a glass of water with ice still in it.

Black hair with green through it, the ends gone teal. Bare to the waist, and black lines lie across his chest and stomach like something poured under the skin, pulling tight each time he breathes. A pale blue-green shirt hangs open on either side of him, the back seams cut and tied shut with the green cord from his sweatpants. A band of cloth around each wrist.

He lifts one hand out from behind his head and holds it up, fingers spread, so you can see what the lines are doing at the wrist. Then he lays the open half of the shirt back across his chest with two fingers and leaves it there.

he says.

he says, flat.