2 Book(s) Related to ryme

I'm a folklorist. Folk traditions are my field.
At first, I thought it was just an ordinary rhyme, a scrap of oral history set to a tune.
"A rag doll in the mire, swinging high up to the sky..."
We all thought it was just a prank.
Until the first person drowned in the bog. Then the second fell from a tower crane. Then the third somehow drowned in a bathtub.
I stared at the black symbol surfacing on the back of my hand.
And then I saw the dean—the one who was supposed to be dead—standing outside my dorm window in a long black dress, smiling at me with impossible tenderness...

Noah is broke, exhausted, and one bad decision away from losing everything.
Accidentally binding himself to a three-hundred-year-old demon wasn’t part of the plan.

Kael is ancient, sharp-tongued, and deeply unimpressed with modern life. Being tethered to a human is inconvenient. Being unable to break the pact is worse.
But when memories begin slipping and a silent presence starts watching from the shadows their uneasy partnership turns into a fight for survival.
With a tether binding them together and trauma's cold hand on their shoulder, these two see and survive situations they rather not repeat.

This is slow-burn BL urban fantasy with psychological thriller elements, supernatural tension, and morally gray choices.