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“Good. And you will not touch him. You will not tell him. You will not do any of the stupid things you do when you are frightened, like disappear or be cold and mysterious or —”

“I am not mysterious. I am reserved.”

“You are a brooding Slavic doorknob,” said my sister, tenderly. “Promise me.”

“I promise nothing. I will avoid him.”

“You said that about the last thing you were afraid of, and then you moved to Canada.”

“I like Canada.”

“You hide in Canada.” She sniffed loudly. “Call me tomorrow. Eat something.”

“I ate.”

“Wine does not count.”

She hung up. The snow kept falling. I stood on the loading dock with the phone in my hand, a man with no heartbeat and a great deal of practice at being alone, and I thought: it is only one boy. One human, with a short lifetime and a longer mouth. He is here for five weeks. I have sat out plagues. I can sit out a hockey tournament.

I put the phone in my pocket, put my shoulders back, and walked to the car.

The Halden Guest House sits at the end of a road lined with birches, a long wooden building the tournament rents each winter to keep the players from every country under one roof. It has creaking floors, terrible coffee, and forty rooms, each with a window that does not quite close. I had asked for a single. The committee, which enjoys its jokes, had put me in 214, a large room with a carved bed built for a Victorian family of six and a narrow daybed under the window for a second occupant who, I had been assured, would never exist. I had been grateful.

I let myself in and turned on the small lamp and stood in the middle of the room for a moment, taking inventory. Bed, daybed, desk, closet, bathroom. Laptop closed on the table. Six bottles of red wine lined up on the shelf, labels facing out. A paperback in Cyrillic on the nightstand with its spine broken from rereading. It was a tidy room, orderly and still. It was the room of someone who had learned long ago not to leave traces.

I was considering whether to feed tonight, and how, when the phone at the desk rang.

It was the front desk clerk, a nervous young man named Gary. “Mr. Volkov, I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just a courtesy. There’s been a small change in the room assignments this evening, and you’re going to have a roommate. I wanted to make sure you—”

“No,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I am in a single. No.”

“Yes, sir, I understand, it’s just, the paperwork’s already been—” Gary’s voice went up half an octave. “It’s… it came from the committee, sir. There’s really nothing I can…”

Behind his voice, in the lobby, I heard something else. A sound I had already learned to recognize across four hundred feet of arena. A laugh. Bright and cocky and carrying, a laugh that did not care who heard it.

I put the phone down very gently.

Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.

Someone was taking the stairs two at a time, with a duffel bag thumping against the wall, and whistling, badly, a tune I thought was a pop song from ten years ago. The steps came down the hall, past 210 and past 212, and stopped outside my door. I stood behind it with my hand on the frame and I did not move.

Knock, knock.

His heartbeat went through the wood like a drum. Quick, and strong, and pleased with itself. Nobody should be that happy about a door.

I didn’t open it.

I told myself it was a matter of principle. That I would not give in to a petulant human who had bought his way into my room. That I would show him the boundaries. That he could stand out in the hallway and think about what he had done.

The truth was that if I opened the door and that scent hit me full in the face, I did not know what my eyes would do.

One minute.

He knocked again. He said something under his breath about how rude I was. I could smell the game on him, and the shower, and underneath the shampoo something warm and sweet that made my whole mouth ache.