The light at the window was pale, but not the clean kind. It had the color of bone scraped thin, weak enough to feel like it could be rubbed out with a hand.
Ledger lay still, listening. The building was quieter than the street had been last night. Only the occasional shift in the walls — wood expanding with a tired groan — broke the silence. Somewhere above, water moved in the pipes, then stopped abruptly, as if the tap had been turned off mid-stream.
No footsteps at the door.
He swung his legs out of bed, boots still on from the night before. The metal square leaned against the bedstead, cool to the touch when he picked it up. He set it carefully against the wall by the desk. The journal lay where he'd left it, open to the gouged warning.
After dark, never use real names.
He rubbed the grit of sleep from his eyes and closed the journal. His hand lingered on the cover before he slid it into the drawer. The action felt too much like hiding a weapon, but it would have to do.
The apartment's air hadn't changed. Cabbage and mildew still sat heavy. He cracked the window. The city's smell rolled in: coal smoke, wet brick, something sweet rotting in the gutters. Below, a thin woman in a black scarf stood under the lamppost, head tilted up toward his window.
She didn't move when he saw her. She didn't blink.
Ledger stepped back from the glass.
The hallway outside the apartment was narrow, the walls stained where hands had brushed the plaster for balance. A single gaslamp at the far end hissed faintly, its flame shivering inside the glass.
The floorboards creaked under his weight as he descended the stairs. The first landing smelled faintly of soap and blood. A door stood half-open to his left. Inside, a man in a sleeveless undershirt sat at a table, counting coins into small stacks. His head turned as Ledger passed, but the eyes didn't track him properly — sliding off to one side, like Ledger was a trick of the light.
On the next landing, a child sat on the bottom step, holding a piece of string tied in a loop. She pulled it taut, relaxed it, pulled it taut again. When Ledger's boots reached her eye level, she said without looking up, "It's too early for names."
He kept walking.
The ground floor opened into a narrow vestibule. The front door had a heavy lock, the kind you turned twice. A cracked pane in the top corner was patched with waxed cloth. Through it, the morning street looked washed-out, almost painted.
He opened the door and stepped outside.
The street was mostly empty. A cart rattled by, its wheels black with mud. A lamplighter leaned against a post, ledger in one hand, pen in the other. He glanced up as Ledger passed and said, "Ledger."
Ledger stopped.
The lamplighter smiled faintly. "Not your real one, is it?"
"No," Ledger said.
"Good. Be a shame to waste a morning like this." The man shut the ledger and moved on, pole over his shoulder, boots whispering in the wet grit.
Ledger walked in the opposite direction. The buildings hunched over the street like they were listening. A church bell somewhere gave a short, reluctant ring.
He didn't know where he was going until he saw the corner: a narrow cut between buildings with brick walls sweating in the cold. The memory wasn't his, but it pulled him like a hook. He turned into the alley.
It was barely wide enough for two men to pass. A thin trickle of water ran between the cobbles, black with oil. At the far end, a shape crouched — man-sized, but wrong in the proportions. Its spine rose too high, its arms too long. It held something small and pale in one hand.
Ledger stopped halfway down the alley. The figure didn't turn, but he could feel its attention shift.
A voice spoke, low and flat. "Ledger."
He didn't answer.
The figure's head tilted. Its hand squeezed, and the pale thing it held bent, then snapped. A sound like wet paper tearing filled the alley. The thing dropped it into the trickle of water, where it floated for a moment before the current carried it toward him.
Ledger stepped back.
The figure straightened slowly. The arms hung too long, fingertips brushing its knees. It turned and began to walk toward him, boots making no sound on the cobbles.
Ledger said the name again, louder. "Ledger."
The thing stopped. Its head tilted the other way, and its mouth — too wide — pulled into something that wasn't quite a smile. Then it stepped into the shadow of the building and was gone.
Ledger backed out into the street, breath tight in his chest.
The rest of the morning passed in fragments. He kept to streets with other people on them — fishmongers setting out their slabs, a woman sweeping her stoop, a knot of Coal Apostles shouting scripture at the clouds. Every so often, he felt the weight of eyes on him, but when he looked, there was nothing.
By midday, he was back at the apartment. The woman in the black scarf was gone from under the lamppost.
He climbed the stairs slowly, listening for any sound from behind the other doors. The child on the landing was gone. The man with the coins hadn't moved — the stacks were higher now, but his eyes still wouldn't meet Ledger's.
Inside the apartment, the light was weaker, as if the day outside had aged while he was gone. He sat at the desk, pulled the journal from the drawer, and flipped to the back.
One of the last entries read:The beast doesn't eat what you give it. It eats what you are while you're feeding it.
Another:Debt isn't always money. Sometimes it's a piece of your voice, the shape of your face, the way you walk. Sometimes it's the name you stop using.
Ledger closed the journal and set it on the desk. The metal square leaned against the wall, catching what little light came through the window. He moved it closer to the bed.
He had no intention of sleeping tonight without it within reach.