AI You still spin the glass three times.
My fingers stopped on the second turn. The ice pressed a cold ring into my palm, lemon oil on my skin. I looked up and saw her face where there should have been a stranger's, saw the old bones under new shadows.
Eva rested her elbows on the bar as if she had never left it. Her coat clung to her like a promise that had outlived its weather. The collar had a slick sheen, not leather, something cheaper that wanted to be. She wore a cropped cut that exposed the delicate points of her ears. A night of sleep had not visited her recently. The space under her cheekbones had been hollowed for coins.
You grew into those eyes.
Not the teeth first, then. Good to know .
She laughed without letting it out of her mouth. A small quiver at the throat. She reached across and turned my glass the last quarter.
I always hated that you did this, she said.
Bad luck to leave things unfinished.
You never believed in luck.
Her hand slid off the glass. She studied the way my fingertips kept to the safe side of the rim, saw the tiny white crescent on my wrist. She traced it in the air and her mouth tightened.
Still there, she said.
Always.
Silas paused before us, the cloth paused with him, mid swirl over a pint glass. He did not invite himself into our history. His hazel eyes took stock, filed everything by date and threat, and moved on. The silver signet ring on his right hand clicked against the stout handle as he set it aside.
Long time, Miss Carter, Eva said.
Do not call me that.
She smiled. Rory then.
Eva.
Her name sat between us with its arms folded. Behind her shoulder, black and white photographs watched, faces of sailors and girls with perfect lipstick who would have laughed at our seriousness. The old maps bore thumbtack scars. Somewhere near a corner of Africa, someone's initials had bled into the paper in an old spill. The neon above the door painted a sliver of green down her temple when the door opened and closed, opened and closed, the city doing its restless shuffle.
Where did you go? I said.
Picking up the sharp ones, are we.
Convenience.
She looked down, laughed into the darkness of her coat. When she lifted her head again, she had decided on charm . It never did fit her right, a borrowed jacket with the seam coming loose.
I found your flat once, she said. One stair up, sticky banister, stupid little brass number on the door. Had a bag of those Portuguese custard things. Thought you still liked them.
I do.
But you did not open the door.
Someone else did. A man. He had the decency to look bored when he told me you were not there. Rudest lie in the world, boredom.
Silas set down a small bowl of peanuts with his careful grace and took the order of a couple at the far end. His limp softened his steps without slowing them.
You could have come to the bar, I said.
This is the bar.
Earlier. Years earlier.
We both watched the condensation slide down my glass. Eva's finger followed one drop with a hunger that had nothing to do with drink.
You left, I said.
I drove you here, she said.
Yes. You left anyway.
She flinched, as if I had glanced a bruise I could not see.
He hit you twice after that, she said. Once with the hand, once with something with a buckle. The second left a mark on your shoulder that looks like a bad map of Wales.
You kept track.
I am not an archivist, Rory. I do not catalogue to feel useful.
What do you do then.
I run.
I waited.
And I come back when I need things.
There it is.
She tapped the bar twice, a little code we invented when we were twelve and hiding answers to maths problems under sleeves. Someone far older would have taken that sound for impatience. It was not that.
Ask, I said.
Not yet, she said.
We let the bar return to its business. The men in paint-splattered trousers by the dartboard argued about a bullseye that had never happened. A woman with a red scarf over her hair traced the frame of a photograph with her thumb as if she could rub herself into it. Silas poured, spoke little, collected notes, left change exact. The Raven's Nest breathed in used citrus and old varnish. A line of light glowed behind the bookcase at the back, the secret known to those who needed it.
Eva's gaze snagged there.
Still playing the librarian.
Some habits pay the rent.
You always did like a room behind a room.
You do not get to include me in that. The rooms I hid in were not lined with atlases.
She slid a coin along the bar, made it catch on the little ridge of wood where countless rings had chewed it. The coin teetered, settled with the Queen looking at us upside down.
You cut your hair, I said.
I lost it in a bet.
Who with.
Myself.
Did you win.
Look at me.
I did. Her face was a study in the small accommodations a person makes with the mirror. The eyeliner shaded not to invite attention, but to invent a border . Her teeth pressed faintly into the inner lip, a habit from school, less charming when it had worn grooves.
How long clean, I said.
Who told you I was dirty.
The pause told me more than an answer would have.
Long enough to get through this drink without shaking, she said.
She did not lift her glass.
Silas returned as if he had been waiting for the exact beat to land on. He glanced at Eva's hands, at the cheap ring with the stone that pretended to be sober. He shifted the empty napkin towards her, an old bartender's trick, offer a small white square for someone to destroy rather than their own skin.
Miss, he said. If you are going to bleed, do it on that. My polish is the only thing I baby.
I am not bleeding, she said.
Yet.
He moved away. He had taught me that trick on the second week I moved in, after I left a smear of tomato juice like a crime scene on the edge of the till. Blood is an honest nuisance, he said. The rest we can wash off with hot water.
Eva watched him.
Who is the museum curator, she said.
Silas Blackwood. He owns this place.
He looks like he owns other things.
He used to.
Does he know you.
Enough.
You never did trust men with tidy beards.
You never did trust men who did not scare you first.
Her thumb pressed into the soft of her palm. A crescent like mine would form there if she kept at it.
Two of us, she said.
Two what.
Crescents.
She had always done that. Gleaned a poetry out of ordinary damage. We used to peel our shins climbing the brick wall behind Ellis's sweet shop and she would name every scab like a saint. When one tore and bled, she bent her head to it as if it were a confession.
You kept the scar, she said.
It kept me.
She smiled for real then, teeth, the lot. It took a second off her age. Then it returned. I could have caught it and kept it like heat in my hands if I had wanted to risk the burn.
All right, she said. I need money.
No.
You did not ask how much.
No, I did not.
You know I would ask high.
Always an overachiever.
Her eyes flickered to the photographs.
Do any of those men owe you, she said. Strong backs, sentimental faces, debts that compound in the night.
They are all dead, I said.
So are we, she said. We just walk around so we can make harder choices.
If you want help, you are going to have to say something true.
She leaned close enough that I smelled peppermint disguising the ghost of a cigarette.
Evan is not the one who broke me, she said.
I kept my face still.
Me, she said. I did it. One morning I woke up and decided I could not stand to be the version of myself I had promised you. The brave one with the car and the plan and the words that made you cross the bridge. I left you because I wanted to see if you would cross without me.
You left because you were scared.
You make that sound like a complaint.
It is. You were my friend.
She did not step back. She let the closeness sting.
I came tonight because someone said your name out loud in a room where it should not exist, she said.
Which room.
The back of a minicab. The driver spoke Welsh with the man on the phone and forgot I could understand the curse words. He said, the lass above the Raven, with the blue eyes. He said Carter and Malphora and Laila in the same breath like he was throwing darts to see what would hit.
Malphora is a joke.
Not to him.
Who was he speaking to.
I did not ask him to hold the line.
Not helpful, Eva.
I am not helpful. You know this. I bring news and weather and then I go.
Spare me the weather.
Fair.
What I heard is that someone is coming to collect a favour you do not know you owe, she said.
Who.
She pushed the coin back towards me. Her nail clicked against it, that same small code again, louder.
The man who gave Evan the bottle with the buckle.
Memory tried to drag its chair over. I let it wobble.
You should go, I said.
No, she said. I should stay where you can watch me.
The red-scarved woman laughed, a sudden bright sound, and the dartboard argument died as if someone had pulled the plug. Silas's eyes found me. I tilted my chin. He nodded as if we had just agreed on when to change a keg.
We are going in the back, I said.
You still prefer rooms with one door, she said.
One door is easier to guard.
We left the bar without drama. That was the trick Silas had drilled into me, move like you are supposed to. Do not give fear the performance of a scramble. At the bookcase he let his ringed hand drift over the spines until it landed on an old blue Baedeker. The shelf unlatched with a sigh, that private sound that houses make when secrets stretch after days of stillness.
Inside, the room kept a low light. There was a table that had been a door once, you could see the holes where the knob had been. A kettle sat squat in the corner like an old aunt impatient for gossip. The maps here were more detailed, showing the river's belly, the streets that twisted like thread pulled through tired fabric. The walls held the smell of paper and cold liquor.
Sit, Silas said.
Eva perched on the edge of a chair as if any moment might require a sprint. I sat opposite with my knees braced against wood.
You are the Eva who lived in a Vauxhall Astra, Silas said.
Her head snapped towards me as if I had released a name in a church. I did not look away.
An old file, I said.
A human memory, he said. Your friend arrives thin, watches doorways, lies badly about being fine. I have seen worse, I have seen better. Tea.
No, she said.
Yes, he said, and brought it anyway.
He placed the cup and then, as an afterthought, a biscuit on a plate with a purple rim. Some bar bought cheap from a closing shop. Eva's hand moved before she could instruct it not to. She broke the biscuit and ate the smaller half first. Always did. Save the better bit. Lie to yourself that it will taste the same.
Talk, Silas said.
A man named Kerr, she said. Or Carr. They call him something that sounds like a cough. He sits where he can see reflections. He pays cash from a wallet that is too thin to hold so many notes. He does not drink more than one. His eyes do, his eyes drink the room. He asked about blue eyes in Soho and someone thought of you. He asked about Welsh swearing and the man obliged. He liked the words. He repeated them with care.
And you followed him to repay a wrong, Silas said, or to create one.
Do not patronise me, she said.
That would require more time than I have.
Eva leaned forward. The lines at her mouth deepened.
He knows the names you use when you want to be other than Aurora, she said.
Light scratched under my ribs.
Who told him, I said.
London is a sieve, she said. We are the tea leaves.
Silas's hand settled on the back of my chair. A privacy disguised as a paternalism. It steadied without pinning.
You came here knowing you might lead him, I said.
I came here because I already led him somewhere I did not like and I wanted him to lose interest, she said.
And you thought a bar with a neon sign that could be seen from three streets would confuse him.
I thought the quiet man with the bad knee might have a way to make me invisible for ten minutes.
Silas's mouth slanted.
You flatter, he said.
I tell you what you already think.
Movement passed outside the secret room, footfalls not belonging to anyone I knew, the rhythm of men who had worn heavy soles most of their lives. The shelf had clicked back into place when we came in, but the slight of the latch knew no loyalty to wood. It kept its own counsel.
I do not prefer surprises, Silas said softly .
Do you keep a back door in the back room, I said.
He lifted a brow and did not answer. Old spies hoard their yeses.
Eva had not touched her tea. She cradled the heat for its borrowed steadiness. Her thumb had found the rim and worried a chip into a wound.
All right, she said. Ask me the question you want most.
Why now.
Because the past finally wrote your name on a debt I thought had settled with mine.
We might have sat there tracing the outline of that sentence until it smudged. Silas's head tilted.
He is here, he said.
On cue, the faint scrape of the bookcase shifted. The green from the sign outside poured a thin knife into the seam of wall and wood as the shelf moved a fraction. It stopped, then pushed again, more force this time, and the spines shuddered as if the words inside wanted out.
The first thing through the gap was the muzzle of a pistol, unadorned, workmanlike. A ringed hand, not Silas's, followed.
Hello, said a voice that had spent years tasting cigarettes. We have been looking for blue.