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"Say that again," she says.

"You opened the doors."

"I was sitting down."

"I know."

"I was thinking about cupcakes."

"I know."

She sets the mug on the floor. Careful. Like the floor might go next.

The front door is the one that matters. It swung wide and stayed there, and the cold is walking in across my boards, and the dead bolt I installed myself is standing proud of the strike plate like a tongue.

I close it. Throw the bolt. Put my palm flat on the wood.

The wards are still there. Evelyn's people set them the week Maren moved in next door, and I've checked them every night since, and I can feel them now, a low pressure in my back teeth, whole and quiet and doing exactly nothing.

Ours, my wolf says.

There's no pride in it tonight.

"Are they broken?" Maren's voice is smaller than she wants it to be.

"No."

"Then how did I open the doors in your house?"

"Because they're built to keep things out." I turn around. "And, you were already in."

She absorbs that information slowly. Then her eyes move down the hall, door to door to door, counting.

"So I'm a skeleton key."

"You're tired."

"I'm a skeleton key with a salt burn." She flexes her fingers and studies them like they belong to a stranger. "How do I turn it off?"

"You don't. Not tonight."

"That's a terrible answer."

"It's the true one."

She pulls the quilt higher. "You moved me in here because it was safer."

"Yeah."

"And I just proved it isn't."

I could lie. I've gotten good at it lately and I've hated every minute of it.

"It's safer," I say. "Because, I'm in it."

Her mouth does something complicated. She looks at her candles, burning in my kitchen because the bulb blew this morning and I haven't gotten to it.

"Okay," she says.