The thought had barely crossed his mind when a pungent smell of smoke drifted down the hall.
It was not ordinary cigarette smoke.
It was richer, harsher, with a cloying, herbal bite that made his scalp prickle.
Evan shoved open his bedroom door, rushed next door, and kicked Mary's door in.
Its cheap spring lock might as well have been made of paper against the strength he had now.
The door slammed into the wall with a bang, sending flakes of plaster raining down.
Mary was half-reclined on the bed in a loose, dirty nightgown. Its gaping collar exposed a patch of purple bruises on her collarbone.
A thick, hand-rolled cigarette rested between her fingers. Smoke coiled through the room, stinging his eyes.
When Evan kicked his way in, she did not even lift an eyelid. A familiar sneer tugged at her lips as she took another drag.
Evan forced the words through his clenched teeth, each one trembling with anger.
"How many fucking times have I told you not to smoke in my house?"
"And where the fuck did you hide my money?"
Mary blew out a thick cloud of smoke, sending it straight toward his face.
"None of your fucking business."
Three lazy, nasal words, as if she were shooing away a buzzing fly.
The last thread of Evan's restraint snapped.
He lunged forward, swung his right arm wide, and slapped Mary hard across the left cheek.
The crack was sharp and loud, like a belt striking a wet plank.
The blow whipped Mary's head to the right. Her cigarette flew from her fingers, traced an arc of sparks through the air, and landed on the bedsheet, scorching a black spot into it.
Her left cheek swelled at once, five finger marks standing out clearly. Her ears rang, and her vision went dark.
A Physique of 1.903.
That slap carried far more force than an ordinary man could muster.
Mary sat stunned for three full seconds.
Then her eyes widened, her pupils full of disbelief.
As far as she knew, Evan was a sickly weakling who could die at any moment, a useless man who could not even beat her.
"You bastard! How dare you hit me!"
She shrieked and lunged off the bed, claws reaching for his face.
Evan caught her wrist.
It felt as thin as a dry twig in his palm. He could feel the bone pressing against his fingers beneath her skin.
He twisted hard, forcing her body to turn halfway around.
Then he dragged her like a sack out of the room, down the hall, and all the way to the apartment door.
He pulled it open and shoved Mary outside.
The force sent her stumbling over the threshold. Her knees struck the wooden hallway floor, scraping away skin until beads of blood appeared.
Her right arm hung at an unnatural angle. Her shoulder had come out of its socket while he dragged her.
"Get the fuck out. I'm keeping your things to cover the rent you owe."
Evan stood in the doorway, looking down at her. His voice was cold and calm. The hottest wave of anger had passed, leaving a hard resolve behind.
Mary crouched in the hallway, her knees scraped, her left cheek swollen, her right arm dislocated. She looked like a stray cat someone had kicked aside.
Her eyes were red, and her smeared eyeliner left two black tear tracks down her face. Her lips trembled as she rasped out a shrill threat.
"Just you wait! I'm going to kill you!"
Evan shut the door and locked it.
Her curses came through the door, growing fainter and fainter until the stairwell swallowed them.
Evan turned back to Mary's room and began searching.
It looked as though someone had ransacked it. The sheets were bunched up, used handkerchiefs and empty bottles were stuffed beneath the pillow, and cheap rouge cases and hairpins littered the floor.
Perfume, tobacco, sweat, and cloying herbal smoke mingled into one complicated stench.
He crouched to search beneath the bed.
His fingers found a stiff cardboard box. He pulled it out and opened it.
His money was not inside.
He knew his own money: crumpled bills that smelled of sweat.
She didn't take it? Then one of her customers did!
Evan felt as though the whole world was against him today. He could barely contain his anger.
His money was not in the box, but it held another eleven U.S. dollars and forty-nine cents.
I'm owed this.
She had been behind on rent for weeks. At two dollars a week, she owed him at least eight.
The extra three dollars and change could count as interest.
He pocketed all the money and kept searching.
His fingers touched another container.
Smaller than the box of money, it was a tin tobacco canister, its lid worn so smooth that the design was no longer recognizable.
He twisted it open, and a strange smell rushed out.
Not tobacco.
Sweeter and stronger, with a spicy bite that made his scalp prickle. It was identical to the smoke that had filled the room.
He looked inside.
The canister held a heap of dried leaves, dark green turning brown, their edges curled. Some had been crushed and mixed with little stems and seeds.
"So that's what the smell was."
Evan pinched up a leaf and held it to his nose, then tossed it back.
"That slut's smoking Flying Leaves."
Evan had no interest in the stuff.
He scooped all the leaves out of the canister, went into the Washroom, lifted the toilet lid, and threw them in.
He pulled the flush chain. Water swept the dried leaves into a swirling clump and carried them down the drain.
With the leaves gone, Evan turned to leave.
As he stepped over the Washroom threshold, his right shoe landed on a slightly raised floorboard.
His body pitched forward.
His eyes headed straight for the iron coat hook above the doorframe.
The cast-iron hook had an outward-pointing tip coated in brown rust, aimed straight at his left eye socket.
His Physique of 1.903 saved his life.
His left hand shot out and seized an exposed pipe on the wall. All five fingers clamped around the iron as the muscles in his forearm snapped taut like a drawn bowstring.
His body hung in midair at an angle no ordinary person could have held, leaning nearly forty-five degrees forward. Less than two inches separated his nose from the hook.
He could see every speck of rust on its tip.
Bracing himself against the pipe, Evan slowly hauled himself upright.
Once both feet were planted again, he stood motionless in the Washroom doorway. His expression darkened bit by bit.
Once was a coincidence.
Twice was bad luck.
But this string of events—the missed Streetcar, the bird droppings, the laundry water, the stolen money, the fall on flat ground—linked together, each one worse than the last.
It was as though an unseen hand were tipping over dominoes, each falling at precisely the right angle to strike the next.
This was no coincidence.
This was Final Destination.
Have I been cursed? A Misfortune Curse?
Knowing that supernatural powers existed in this world, Evan immediately arrived at that answer.
What was the medium? Who cursed me?
He looked down at the money he had taken from Mary. She had not stolen his.
The master bedroom's lock was untouched, its door undamaged, and there was no sign anyone had searched the room. It could not have been one of her customers, either.
Anyone coming here to see a woman lacked that kind of ability.
The clues snapped together in his mind.
Lebon. Thompson. Or some other student from a middle-class or even noble family.
The medium was probably the money stolen from me.
He remembered passing Lebon in the school hallway over the past few days.
The blond young man had hurried past with his head down. There had been fear on his face, certainly, but beneath it lurked something else.
Anticipation.
Malice.
He had been waiting for something to happen to Evan.
Cold sweat soaked Evan's back in an instant.
They don't even need a reason.
No warning, no contact. Just crushing a bug on a whim.
Fear and anger surged up together, churning in his chest.
Mostly anger.
It was directed not just at one person, but at the whole set of rules.
In this parallel world, the rich did more than control the poor through sweatshops and financial exploitation.
With supernatural power, they could erase, enslave, or crush the people at the bottom. Their victims might never even know how they had died.
Pulis, the noble Vampire who tested Magic Potions on students.
A middle-class student who had cursed Evan because his bullying had failed.
They treated human lives like weeds.
Evan stared at the iron coat hook above the doorframe.
Without the improvement to his Physique from the Magic Potion, that stumble would have driven the rusty iron tip straight into his eye socket.
A poor student found dead outside his own Washroom, his eye pierced by a coat hook, dead from blood loss.
The coroner would write "accidental death." The newspapers would not spare it a line.
It changes a person's luck, creating a string of deadly coincidences.
Evan's mind raced.
So the supernatural in this world isn't just about training the body or strengthening the mind until your numbers are high enough.
It's more like dealing with bizarre rules and finding ways to kill through them.
But...
He looked at his arms, now considerably stronger. Even in the dim light, he could make out the lines of muscle along his forearms.
If your numbers are high enough, you can break through the rules by force.
Dodging the laundry water had come down to his physical abilities.
Catching the pipe and saving himself had, too.
The curse created accidents, but when his reaction speed and strength exceeded what an accident could kill, it ceased to be deadly.
What's the next disaster? How do I break the curse—or fight it?
Before he could sort out his thoughts, a more urgent problem struck him.
Mary. She must have gone to Zack.
Evan's pupils contracted.
So that's it. Making an enemy of Mary was part of the bad luck, too.
No wonder that anger hit me so hard. I could barely control myself.
The curse had magnified his temper, driving him to strike when he least should have and pushing matters toward the worst possible outcome.
It wants me to make an enemy of the Gus Gang.