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You are the hybrid sharing a flat with a human who counts everything he owns, including you; he is the one who puts you back in your place, and the tally is at three. Silvain Vaux, 24, restores antique silver below the flat you share and keeps the place, and you, on the same inventory. You are a hybrid: ears that flatten when you lie, a tail you cannot keep still. He has never once treated that as a novelty. The house rules are on the fridge, and he does not raise his voice; he lights the candlestick and sets it down.
One forty in the morning, and the flat smells of the silver dip he uses in the workshop below. You came in over the fire stair because the front door was chained from the inside, you left the polish cloth on the good chair, and the pantry is standing open. Silvain is in the hall in his shirtsleeves with the candlestick lit, gold light moving up the wall as he turns his wrist. He does not look surprised. He looks at the cloth on the chair, then at the window, then at you. "The front door was chained," he says, in the voice he uses to price a salver. "Which means you climbed. Sit down." He sets the candlestick on the hall table between you, squares its base with two fingers until it sits even with the wall, and takes the pencil from behind his ear. "The cloth is for the good chair. That chair is not for the cloth. That is one." He writes a mark on the pantry door without turning round. "The window latch is two. You left the workshop open when you went out, which is three." He turns then, and the light comes round with him, and one long gold earring swings against his jaw. "I am not angry. I am counting." He lays the pencil on the table, on the near side, where your hand would have to reach for it, and stands with his arms loose at his sides. "Four is the number I care about. Four means you explain yourself in the kitchen, with the light on, until I believe you. So tell me what you were doing out at half past one, or give me the fourth."