It started with banana bread. Warm, nutty, fresh out of the oven, left at my door in a cheery tin that said Life Is Sweet. No note. Just a sticky note with a smiley face drawn in black pen. I assumed it was a welcome gesture. I’d just moved in a week before. The only person I’d met was the upstairs neighbor, Cass, when she helped me carry up a box labeled “KITCHEN/FRAGILE” after I dropped it on the stairs.

Cass was... disarming. The kind of person who remembered your cat’s name after one mention. Who looked you directly in the eyes like she was tuning a radio dial to your frequency. Her laugh was soft, warm, just short of seductive. But there was something beneath it. Like a faint vibration under the floorboards when she walked above me at night. Like heat pressing from the ceiling when she cooked whatever it was that made the hallway smell like cinnamon and sulfur.

I tried to dismiss it. Some people are just odd. And she was always kind. Unnervingly so. When my groceries spilled in the elevator, she appeared, as if summoned, picking up cans with inhuman speed. When I locked myself out at midnight, she opened her door before I even knocked. “Come in,” she said, holding cocoa already prepared. I never told her I’d forgotten my keys.

Sometimes I thought I heard her talking to someone. Murmuring low, rhythmic phrases. I chalked it up to late-night calls. Until I realized I never saw anyone enter or leave her apartment. Ever.

One night I woke to the scent of burning roses and the sound of whispering coming from beneath my bed. I checked, of course: Nothing.

No smoke.

No speakers.

But the next day, she greeted me in the hall with a knowing smile. “You sleep well last night?” she asked. And there was something in her tone, like she already knew the answer was going to be no.

I tried to get to know her. Invited her for dinner once. She brought wine, dark as blood, with no label. When I asked what it was, she smiled. “A very old vintage. Acquired… unconventionally.” She drank hers in three gulps and didn’t eat a bite.

I started noticing other things. Dead birds on my balcony. Candles burned down to nothing in the laundry room. And Cass always there, right when you needed her, saying the exact right thing at the exact right time.

Never giving away anything about herself.

No job, no visible family. Just that ever-present scent of spice and smoke, and that uncanny warmth that made you feel safe, until you were alone.

One night I asked her, flat out, over tea: “Why are you always around when something in my life goes wrong?”

She tilted her head and gave a smile so slow it felt ancient.

“Because, darling,” she said, sipping her drink, “you invited me in.”

I laughed. Uneasily. “Like a vampire?”

She didn’t blink. “Worse.”