AI “Don’t turn round unless you want the past to see your face first.”
Aurora Carter stopped with a crate of empty glasses braced against her hip, one hand still hooked beneath the bottom rung. The voice had come from the third stool from the end, soft with Cardiff vowels sanded down by London, and it reached her in the back of the neck before it reached her ears.
She turned.
The woman at the bar lifted two fingers in a half-salute. Her nails were bitten short and painted the colour of old pennies. A cigarette rested unlit between them, illegal and theatrical. Her hair, once a thick red cloud Rory remembered plaiting in school toilets before assemblies, had been shaved close to the skull on one side and bleached white on the other. A small gold stud glinted in her nose. Her mouth still held the same lopsided nerve.
Eva Morgan.
Not dead, then. Not vanished into one of the stories people told when silence looked too plain.
Rory tightened her grip on the crate until glass chimed against glass.
“Bit dramatic, even for you.”
Eva’s smile widened, but did not warm.
“Still leading with the knife. Good. I’d hate to think London had made you polite.”
Behind the counter, Silas Blackwood paused with a cloth in one hand and a tumbler in the other. His hazel eyes shifted from Rory to Eva, then down to the unlit cigarette, then back again. He wore his silver signet ring as he always did, a quiet threat on his right hand. Old maps and black-and-white photographs watched from the walls, all those dead borders and fixed faces made stranger by the green neon sign bleeding through the front windows of The Raven’s Nest.
Rory set the crate down harder than she meant to.
“You’re in my bar.”
“Your bar?”
“I live upstairs. I bleed on the stairs. That counts.”
“Does it come with shares?”
“It comes with damp.”
Silas resumed polishing the glass.
“Aurora, if this is an ambush, kindly conduct it away from the Irish whiskey. It unnerves the regulars.”
Only two regulars sat near the door, both pretending to study their pints with the devotion of monks. A man in a camel coat at the far table had not touched his drink. He had come in twenty minutes earlier, ordered mineral water, and taken the seat with the clearest view of the mirror behind the bar. Rory had noticed because delivery work taught you faces, doors, exits. It also taught you which men watched women as if waiting for them to become useful .
Eva glanced at Silas.
“You collect strays now, Mr Blackwood?”
Silas placed the tumbler on the shelf.
“Only the ones that bite.”
Rory looked at Eva again. Seven years had done ungenerous work. Not to her beauty, that had always been beside the point, but to the space around her . Eva used to enter rooms like she had stolen the key and dared the room to complain. Now she entered like she had counted the locks twice and still distrusted the hinges. A faint bruise yellowed beneath her left eye, well covered but not erased. Her coat looked expensive until you saw the frayed cuff. Her boots had dried mud at the seams. Not London mud. Too red.
“Why are you here?”
Eva tapped ash that did not exist into the tray Silas kept for nostalgia and difficult customers.
“Lovely to see you too, Rory.”
“Years of silence , then you walk into the Nest and sit there with your stage prop. You didn’t come for happy hour.”
“The cocktails are still awful?”
“Worse. Silas calls it tradition.”
“Careful. I’ve barred people for less.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I’ve thought about it with force.”
Eva laughed, a small cracked thing. It landed between them and broke open a memory neither of them reached for: two girls outside a Cardiff off-licence, seventeen and damp with cheap cider, swearing they would leave before the city learned how to keep them. Eva had worn green eyeliner. Rory had worn her father’s old barrister coat and pretended irony made it fit.
Rory wiped her hands on a towel and moved behind the bar. It gave her a strip of wood between them. Silas saw the choice, of course. Silas saw everything and charged only for the drinks.
“What are you having?”
Eva looked at the bottles.
“Something that doesn’t taste like it came with a lecture.”
“Tap water, then.”
“Whiskey.”
“You never liked whiskey.”
“You never liked men with guitars.”
Rory’s hand stilled on the bottle.
Eva watched her too closely. The name neither of them said moved through the bar with wet shoes.
Evan.
Silas set another glass down, not between them, but near Rory’s elbow . An offering, or a weapon. With Silas the difference often depended on who reached first.
Rory poured two fingers for Eva and none for herself.
Eva noticed.
“Still the good girl.”
Rory pushed the glass across.
“Still mistaking damage for depth.”
“There she is.”
“No. Here I am. There’s a difference.”
Eva drank. She did not wince. That, more than the hair, more than the bruise, more than the tired, watchful set of her shoulders, told Rory that something had altered past recognition.
Years ago, Eva had hated bitter things. Coffee, tonic, dark chocolate, any honest taste that refused sugar. She had once spat red wine into the sink at Rory’s mother’s house and declared adulthood a scam invented by people with stained teeth. Rory remembered Jennifer Carter laughing from the kitchen table, marking exercise books in green pen, while Brendan Carter pretended not to smile behind The Guardian.
Those people belonged to another country. Not Wales. Youth.
“You look well,” Eva said.
“You look like you need a solicitor.”
“Pre-Law finally paying off?”
“I quit before it could.”
“Your dad must have loved that.”
Rory stacked clean glasses, though they did not need stacking.
“My father has a complex relationship with disappointment. He likes it best when he can cross-examine it.”
“And your mum?”
“She sends recipes and pretends not to ask questions.”
Eva nodded as if that answer cost more than Rory had charged .
The Raven’s Nest shifted around them. Laughter rose from the regulars near the door and died when no one fed it. The bar always had a second life under the first. On the surface, it offered ale, stale crisps, bad jokes, and old soul records. Beneath that, a pulse moved behind the bookshelf at the back, where Silas kept a room no customer found by accident. People arrived with clean shoes and left with pale faces. Sometimes they called him the Spymaster when they thought Rory could not hear. Sometimes they called him worse.
Eva had found the place too neatly. That fact sat on Rory’s tongue.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Golden Empress.”
Rory’s jaw tightened.
“You went to Yu-Fei?”
“Your boss has opinions.”
“She has knives.”
“She held one while asking if I intended to bring grief to her best driver.”
“That sounds like Mrs Cheung.”
“Then she gave me soup.”
“That also sounds like Mrs Cheung.”
Eva turned the whiskey glass with her fingertips. The gold stud in her nose caught the bar light, flash, gone, flash, gone.
“You deliver food now.”
“Part-time.”
“You were going to be a barrister.”
“You were going to be a singer.”
“I was going to be famous.”
“You were going to be happy.”
Eva’s fingers stopped moving.
There it was. Not a slap. Worse. A hand placed on an old bruise.
Silas drew away without seeming to retreat. He limped to the far end of the bar and began rearranging bottles that had not offended anyone. His left leg dragged slightly on the turn. He gave them privacy, which in his world meant he stayed close enough to intervene.
Eva looked down at her glass.
“We had ugly ambitions.”
“We had ordinary ones. We just dressed them up.”
“You always did that.”
“What?”
“Made wanting less sound wise.”
Rory leaned both palms on the bar. The crescent scar on her left wrist showed pale against her skin. Eva’s eyes flicked to it. Childhood accident, broken greenhouse glass, blood on daffodil stems. Eva had been there. Eva had screamed louder than Rory had.
“You told me to come to London,” Rory said.
“I know.”
“You said I could sleep on your floor.”
“I know.”
“You weren’t there.”
The words did not rise. They dropped. Heavy, plain, final.
Eva put the unlit cigarette behind her ear.
“I was at King’s Cross.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“I was. Platform nine, because I thought that was funny. I had a cardboard sign with your name on it. Like films. Like idiots.”
Rory stared at her.
Eva swallowed.
“You didn’t get off the train.”
“I got off at Paddington. You told me Paddington.”
“No.”
“You texted Paddington.”
“I texted King’s Cross.”
Rory’s skin prickled under the collar of her black shirt. She remembered the old phone, the cracked screen, the message glowing while Evan slept in the next room with her bank card in his jeans pocket. Paddington. Come alone. Don’t call. I’ll find you.
Her mouth dried.
“I waited six hours,” Eva said.
“I waited three.”
“With him?”
Rory’s eyes snapped up.
Eva’s face gave nothing away now. The old Eva had lived without shutters. This one had built a city of them.
“Careful.”
“He read your messages?”
“You don’t get to walk in here and say his name without saying yours first.”
“My name?”
“You disappeared.”
Eva laughed once, without humour.
“Rich.”
“I left Cardiff with forty pounds, a split lip, and a bag he’d already gone through. I stood in Paddington station like a spare part while men asked if I needed help in the way that means the opposite. I rang you until my phone died.”
“I rang you until a man answered and told me you’d changed your mind.”
Rory felt the bar tilt, not in fact, but in memory’s sick way of moving furniture .
“What man?”
“You know what man.”
“I don’t.”
Eva’s eyes sharpened.
“Evan.”
The name struck wood, glass, bone.
Rory’s pulse climbed. In the mirror behind the bar, the man in the camel coat lifted his water and pretended not to listen. Pretence did not suit him. His shoulders had gone still.
Silas noticed too. His hand moved beneath the counter.
Eva followed Rory’s glance in the mirror and went quiet.
So she had not come alone in the way people meant when they said it.
Rory reached for a cloth and began wiping a clean patch of bar.
“Tell me why you’re here.”
Eva finished the whiskey. Her throat worked once, twice.
“I did something stupid.”
“You’ll need to narrow that down.”
“Cardiff stupid. Not London stupid.”
“That’s not narrower.”
“I took a job. Courier work. Cash. No questions, which, as it turns out, means all the questions queue up later with blunt objects.”
Rory kept her hand moving. Round and round. The cloth smelled of lemon spray and old beer.
“What were you carrying?”
“I didn’t open it.”
“Eva.”
“I didn’t.”
Rory looked at her.
Eva’s mouth twisted.
“Fine. I opened it after Newport because the bag started humming.”
“Humming.”
“Not buzzing. Not a phone. Humming. Like a choir behind a wall.”
Silas stopped rearranging bottles.
The regulars near the door rose at the same time, sudden in the way men become sudden when danger enters before they understand its shape.
Silas did not look at them.
“Gentlemen, your tab has developed legs. I suggest you follow.”
They paid in cash and left without protest. The door shut behind them, cutting off a burst of street noise. The green neon sign flickered across the window, turning the bar briefly submarine.
Rory lowered the cloth.
“What was in the bag?”
Eva reached into her coat.
Silas’ voice cut the air.
“Slowly.”
Eva froze. Then, with two fingers, she drew out a small black velvet pouch and placed it on the bar.
Nothing happened.
That made it worse.
Rory stared at the pouch. It looked ordinary, cheap even, the sort used for earrings on market stalls. A faint line of reddish dust marked the drawstring.
Silas came back down the bar with care, his limp more pronounced when he moved too slowly .
“Who gave you this?”
“A woman in Canton. Grey suit. One of those faces you forget while you’re looking at it.”
“Name.”
“She called herself Laila.”
Rory’s head lifted.
Silas’ eyes moved to her.
Eva noticed.
“What?”
Rory touched the pouch with one finger. Cold travelled through the velvet and settled beneath her nail.
“Why did she call herself that?”
“I don’t know. She asked about you.”
The bar lost its smaller sounds. No glass settling. No pipe knocking. No Soho murmur beyond the door. Just Rory’s breath, held too long.
“About me?”
“She said, ‘When you find Carter, don’t waste time apologising. She won’t forgive you before midnight.’”
Rory withdrew her hand.
Silas’ signet ring clicked once against the counter.
“Midnight is theatrical. Professionals prefer train times.”
Eva looked between them.
“Who is she?”
Rory gave Silas the question with a glance. He did not take it. He kept his attention on the pouch as if it might hatch.
“Open it,” Eva said.
“No.”
“You haven’t even seen what’s inside.”
“I’ve seen enough people punished by curiosity.”
“That’s new.”
“No. That’s London.”
Eva’s face tightened. For a moment, the years fell thin enough for Rory to see the girl beneath them, the girl who had shared headphones on a bus, who had forged Rory’s mother’s signature on a school trip form, who had once thrown a shoe at Evan’s head before either of them knew how much worse men became when laughed at.
Then the present returned and brought its teeth.
The man in the camel coat stood.
He left his mineral water untouched and moved towards the door, not hurried, not slow. His right hand stayed in his pocket. Rory saw the line of his wrist, the hard angle hidden by wool.
Silas spoke without turning.
“If you leave now, you’ll miss the interesting part.”
The man stopped.
Eva whispered something under her breath in Welsh. Rory caught only the shape of it. A prayer, or a curse. Often the same furniture in a different room.
The man turned back. His face looked unfinished, smooth where expression should have lived.
“I’ve come for the property.”
Silas rested both hands on the bar. The silver ring shone.
“Then you should have brought a receipt.”
“This matter does not concern you.”
“People keep saying that in my bar. They leave corrected.”
The man’s eyes slid to Rory.
“Aurora Carter.”
Her name in his mouth sounded filed down for a keyhole.
Eva shifted on the stool, one boot finding the brass rail. Ready to run. Ready to fight. Ready to do the wrong thing with conviction.
Rory picked up the velvet pouch.
It pulsed .
Not movement. Not heat. A pressure. Her crescent scar flared white, then red, and pain ran up her arm with the neat cruelty of a wire pulled through flesh. She clenched her teeth but did not drop it.
Silas saw. Eva saw. The man saw and smiled for the first time.
“There you are,” he said.
The pouch’s drawstring loosened by itself.
From inside came a thin, golden sound, high and sweet, like a child singing from the bottom of a well. Every bottle behind the bar trembled . The old maps on the walls rippled though no draught touched them. In the mirror, Rory’s reflection blinked a fraction too late.
Silas reached under the counter.
“Down.”
The front window exploded inward. Green neon burst in a shower of sparks, and something black and winged slammed through the broken glass straight at Eva’s throat.