Alex did not consider himself a particularly panicky person.
Honestly, he was the kind of person who drove his gas tank down to fumes, and ate pork after the sell-by date on a regular basis. He took police sirens behind him in stride because, yeah, he had been speeding. He woke up late and still ate a full breakfast. He heard strange noises outside his window at night and assumed it was a stray cat before burglars or ghosts even crossed his mind. He understood that when his mother called him three times in the space of an hour, she probably was not calling to tell him about a funeral. He was, he thought, very close to unflappable.
But he still froze when the bathroom door squeaked open while he was in the middle of his shower. The water continued streaming down from the showerhead, noisy, and almost instantly unwelcome as he heard one sharp footstep on the tile, and a few muffled ones on the bathroom rug.
apprentice, never master 