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I pushed the non-prescription glasses up my nose before I scanned my forged campus ID to access the corridor leading to the faculty staff room. My shoes clicked along the floor, and the sound echoed ahead of me like a warning. Rain tapped against the tall windows, thin and grey. The monthly meeting was taking place, so I knew the room would be empty this morning.

I stopped at the door labelled F-D12 and scanned my card again. I checked the corridor behind me and the room beyond the glass pane before I pushed it open. The room smelled of stale coffee and desperation.

The kitchen area was modern but a little small. A radiator ticked in the corner. I opened the refrigerator and found the plastic-wrapped sandwich with a strip of masking tape on it. McFarlane.

I placed my case on the counter and laid the sandwich beside it. I snapped on my gloves and unwrapped it. Ham and cheese on white bread.

How did these people survive?

Ah yes. Potatoes and oats.

I opened my case and took out a small, unmarked container. Nothing lethal. I was not a monster. But McFarlane had made my wife cry twice this term, and he would spend the next several months wishing he had been kinder.

I rewrapped the sandwich, smoothed the plastic and returned it to its shelf, tape facing outward, exactly as I had found it. I peeled off my gloves, cleaned the counter, and took one last look around the room.

I hummed in satisfaction as I left.

❦ ❦ ❦

The glasses, case and ID were gone. Now I stood beneath a stone arch on a Glasgow afternoon, hands in my coat pockets, and scanned the throng of students spilling out of the building.

The city was loud around me. Buses hissed and grumbled along the street. A busker on the corner was murdering a song on his guitar. Gulls shrieked overhead, and somewhere a siren rose and fell.

The wind cut off the river, brisk and damp, and every breath left a pale cloud in front of my face. Scarves, woolly hats, bicycles, a dozen accents tangled together until I could make out only one in three words.

Then a flash of red and gold caught my eye.

I locked on until she looked for me. She turned to her classmates, said something, and began to jog towards the arch. A red and gold scarf streamed from her neck. Her long coat swung heavily from side to side, weighed down by the illegal can of mace I had given her.

My heart beat faster, and I took long strides to meet her. My eyes scanned around her out of habit. A cyclist. A man with a pram. A girl eating a pastry in the doorway.

Her weight hit me, and I did not budge. She flung her arms around my neck and I held her close, her cold nose against my jaw, her laughter warm against my collar.

“Aww. That’s so cute,” someone said as they passed.

If only they knew.

I breathed in the sweet scent of shea from her hair as it tickled my nose. Ten months. I still counted every breath she took beside me.

She pulled back, her cheeks flushed from the cold, and began to tell me how her nemesis had been rushed to the hospital and class had been cut short. I wove my fingers through hers, and she told me all about his suffering. A blow-by-blow account, complete with sound effects. The colour of old porridge. A colleague sprinting for a bin. A whole lecture hall of students trying not to cheer.

“Karma, Tau,” she said, eyes shining. “Pure karma.”

It was delicious. I listened with the rapt attention of a man hearing his favourite bedtime story.

We walked along our usual path, our breath pluming in the cold, wet leaves plastered to the cobbles beneath our feet. She talked and gestured the whole way, and I let her words wash over me, warm as sunlight. Her dimples appeared each time she laughed.

We reached our car. She shivered as I opened the door for her, tucking her chin into her scarf. As soon as she finished her course, I would take her wherever she wanted to live. This climate was not for my lioness.

The Saint & The Sinner

El Santo

The chapel was the oldest room in the house, and the only one Rafael de la Cruz kept cold. Votives trembled in their red glass. A plaster saint watched from the wall with a patient, chipped smile. No phone had ever been permitted past the door.

He answered this one anyway.

It rang twice before he lifted it from the pew beside his rosary. A man who answered at once was a man who needed something.