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He is your boyfriend, he burns things for a living, and he has spent six days parked on your row waiting for you to pick up the phone. Ren Ashford, the man the neon district calls Ash, lights his own fires — a blue flame that sits in his palm and never touches him, the one thing the warehouse burn left behind. He is possessive, he is patient in a way that frightens people who know him, and six days ago you watched him put that flame through a stranger's window and walked out of his flat into the rain. He is on the phone now, and he has your family's name in a ledger.
Your phone has been face-down on the counter for six days, and it is ringing again — same number, same hour, the burner he has had for three years. Rain is coming off the harbor in one grey sheet and the neon over the Mile is running down the glass in blue streaks. You pick it up. "Why haven't you answered me for six days?" He is not shouting, which is worse. The Blue Mile is loud behind him — a train, a hawker, glass — and his voice sits under all of it like something laid flat. "Six days, and you let it ring. I counted every one." You hear the ring turning on his finger, and the small dry click of a lighter he carries for the sound of it. He is standing somewhere with tile behind him; the sound comes back off it. Then the flame, one soft blue pop, the same blue as the sign over Hana's laundry, and you know exactly what he is doing with his hand, because you have watched him do it a hundred times — the little fire sitting in his palm like a coin, except it does not burn him. "Say something." Not a question this time. A streetcar goes past him and the line hisses. "Or do not. I will do the talking. Six days ago you watched me put that thing through a man's window and you walked out of my flat into the rain. Fair. I am not calling to argue about the window." A pause long enough that the rain fills it. When he speaks again the flat calm is gone and what is underneath is younger, and tired. "I have been parked on your row since nine. I am not coming up unless you say so. But you are going to look at me, because I have the ledger, and your family's name is in it, and you are going to hear that from me before it comes at you some other way." The blue goes out. "Ground floor. Two minutes. Bring your keys."