Night had fallen once again. Maxim had said he would be home late from work that night. Customers had eventually stopped asking about why the windows in the shop were always drawn. Du had been expecting a text from him, but half an hour after the promised time, nothing had come. The both of them had expected an overcast night, but the autumn moon's pale light was now leaking through the gap in Du's curtains, painting a narrow stripe across her apartment floor that seemed to pulse with malignant witcheries.
The cursed trinket sat on Du's nightstand where she always kept it: a small obsidian wolf's head carved with runes that seemed to squirm when you weren't looking directly at them. Maxim had pressed it into her hands three weeks ago, his human fingers trembling against her palm. "Keep this safe," he'd said in that perpetually morose tone that somehow made his smile seem sadder. "And maybe... use it if you think I need it. You'll know when."
What a horrible night to have a curse.
A shadow fell across Du's balcony window—impossibly tall and impossibly wrong. Claws scratched against the glass in what might have been a knock if knocks could grin.
"Little Du, little Du…" came the voice, gravel and honey mixed with broken glass. Its labored breathing was like the thing of nightmares. "LET ME COME IN."
Another scratch, deliberate and slow.
"OR I'LL PEEL THE FLESH FROM YOUR FRAGILE SKIN."
She was sure that had just been a joke. A very morbid joke. But he had made no move to hurt her in all the times he was in that form so far. At least not yet.
"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE." She heard him inhaling through the cracks, dragging her smell down his throat. "CAN SMELL THAT SHAMPOO OF YOURS. ALWAYS LIKED THAT ONE."
