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"You owe three years and forty-one days."
The woman in the doorway didn't flinch. She just looked at me like I'd tracked mud across her threshold.
"I don't owe anyone anything," she said.
I pulled the ledger from my coat. Heavy thing. Leather-bound, edges worn soft from too many hands. The Collections didn't do digital—too easy to hack, too easy to lose in a server fire or a well-placed curse. Paper remembered.
"Iris Thorne," I read. "Contracted August fourteenth, three years ago. Two hundred grams of purified phoenix ash, delivered on request. Payment due on receipt. You signed."
She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. She was maybe mid-twenties, dark hair pulled back in a messy knot, wearing an oversized sweater and jeans with paint stains at the knees. The apartment behind her smelled like burnt sage and something sharper—copper, maybe. Or blood.
"I didn't sign anything," she said.
I turned the ledger around and held it up. Her signature was right there, third line from the bottom. Neat cursive, the kind they don't teach anymore.
She glanced at it. Didn't even blink.
"That's not mine."
"It's your name. Your address. Your thumbprint."
"Still not mine."
I'd done this dance before. Debtors always had an excuse. Wrong signature, wrong date, wrong person. The Collections didn't care. The ledger said she owed. That made it true.
"Look," I said, keeping my voice level. "I'm not here to argue. You can pay, or you can come with me and work it off. Those are the options."
She smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile.
"Or?"
"Or I take collateral."
"What kind of collateral?"
I didn't answer. The ledger had a list. Fingers, teeth, memories, years. The Collections didn't waste anything. If you couldn't pay in cash or service, you paid in pieces.
She stepped back into the apartment. The door started to swing shut.
I caught it with my boot.
"Don't make this harder than it needs to be," I said.
She stopped. Turned. Looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes.
"You want to come in?" she asked.
"I want you to pay."
"Come in first. I'll show you something."
Every instinct I had said no. Debtors who invited you in were either setting a trap or buying time. But the rules were clear: offer them a chance to settle before you escalate. Voss had drilled that into my head my first week. Give them rope. Let them hang themselves.
I stepped inside.
The apartment was small. One room, kitchenette in the corner, a futon shoved against the wall. The floor was covered in chalk circles, layered over each other like a messy Venn diagram. Candles burned in clusters, wax pooling on mismatched saucers. The air tasted like metal and ash.
Iris closed the door behind me.
"You're a collector," she said. Not a question.
"That's right."
"You know what you're collecting?"
"A debt."
"You know what I bought with it?"
I didn't. The ledger didn't care. Phoenix ash could be used for a dozen things—resurrection spells, ward-breaking, high-grade alchemy. What she'd done with it wasn't my problem.
"Doesn't matter," I said. "You took it. You owe."
She crossed to the center of the room and knelt inside the largest chalk circle. Her fingers traced the lines, slow and deliberate.
"I used it to kill someone," she said.
I waited.
"Someone who needed killing. Someone who was going to do worse."
"Still not my problem."
She looked up at me. Her eyes caught the candlelight, reflected it back too bright.
"You don't even know what you work for, do you?"
"I work for the Collections. That's all I need to know."
"You work for parasites," she said. "People who profit off desperation. Who bind you in contracts written in languages you can't read and enforce them with muscle like you."
I'd heard it before. Every debtor had a sob story. Every debtor thought they were special.
"You signed," I said. "That makes it binding."
"I didn't."
"Then someone did it for you. Doesn't change the ledger."
She stood. Took a step toward me. I tensed, hand going to the iron rod at my belt. Standard issue. Cold iron disrupted most magic, could crack bone if you swung it right.
She didn't stop.
"You really think you can take me?" she asked.
I pulled the rod. Held it between us.
"I don't want to. But I will."
She smiled again. That same sharp, wrong smile.
"You're going to regret that," she said.
Then she spoke a word I didn't know. It tasted like rot and burnt sugar, slid into my ears like oil. The chalk circles flared white-hot, light crawling up the walls, and I felt something latch onto my chest—cold and sharp and sinking deep.
I swung the rod. She didn't move. It passed through her like she wasn't there.
The cold spread. My heart stuttered, skipped, slammed against my ribs.
"What did you—"
"I cursed you," she said. Her voice was calm. Almost gentle. "Every time you die, you wake up this morning. Same day. Same knock on my door. And every time, you'll have a new power you can't control."
I tried to move. Couldn't. My legs were locked, muscles rigid.
"You'll burn. You'll break. You'll tear yourself apart from the inside. And the only person who'll remember is me."
She stepped closer. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her skin, smell the sage and copper and something else—something old.
"You want to collect a debt?" she whispered. "Fine. I owe you a life. Not the one you came for. The one you're about to lose."
She pressed her palm to my chest. Her hand was burning hot, or maybe I was freezing, I couldn't tell anymore. The cold sank deeper, wrapped around my heart, squeezed.
"Seven jobs," she said. "Do seven jobs for me, and I'll break the curse. Refuse, and you'll loop until you lose your mind or burn the city down."
My vision blurred. The candles doubled, tripled, smeared into streaks of gold.
"Why—" I choked out.
"Because I need someone expendable," she said. "Someone who'll keep coming back."
My heart stopped.
The last thing I saw was her smile.
Then everything went dark.
And then I was standing outside her door again, fist raised to knock, the ledger heavy in my coat, the morning sun cutting sharp through the autumn trees.
I froze.
Looked down at my hands. No cold. No burn. My heart was beating steady.
What the hell?
I turned. The street was the same. The row of apartment buildings, the cracked sidewalk, the rusted-out sedan parked two doors down. Everything exactly where it had been.
I checked my phone. October ninth. 9:47 a.m.
The same time I'd arrived.
My hand was still raised. I hadn't knocked yet.
I lowered it slowly.
A dream? No. Too vivid. Too sharp. I could still feel the cold in my chest, still taste that rotted-sugar word she'd spoken.
I stepped back. Looked up at the window. The curtain twitched.
She was watching me.
My phone buzzed. Text from Voss: Status?
I stared at the screen.
If I walked away now, I'd be in violation. Voss didn't tolerate soft collectors. You took the job, you finished it. No exceptions.
But if I knocked—if I went in again—
The door opened.
Iris stood there, same sweater, same messy knot of hair. She looked me up and down, then smiled.
"You remember," she said.
My blood went cold.
"How do you—"
"Because I'm the one who cursed you," she said. "And you just died for the first time."
She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, exactly like before.
"Now," she said, "let's talk about those seven jobs."