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“Yeah,” I say, giving my wine glass a quarter-turn by the stem. “Totally.”

Neither of us says anything for a moment. The music drifts into something slower, lots of muted horns and lazy tsh-tsh percussion that hits almost in time with the pulsing amber light of the sculpture behind the bar.

“You look really nice, Tink.”

I glance over. He isn’t smiling now. He’s just looking at me, and it’s the kind of looking that makes my face go warm all the way to my hairline.

“I mean it. The dress, yeah. But also.” He gestures vaguely at the whole room. “You walked in here like you belonged. You came up with this whole plan, and the tab thing, and you did it without even blinking.”

I don’t quite know what to do with that. So I give him a soft chuck on the shoulder. “Hey, you did a lot too. Pulling out another two grand like that? Clutch.”

“Yeah, well…” Fox shifts his weight a little, staring at his folded hands on the bar. “That was from Kit, actually.” He lifts his shoulders and lets them fall. “Said I should show you a good time.” Before I can fully process what he means by that, Fox is moving on. “Besides, I don’t just mean tonight. You’ve done so much stuff, Tink.” Now he looks at me—sideways, but penetrating all the same. “Surviving like that, making all of us think you were a guy for so long, getting Wendy back…” He shakes his head.

My face heats a little. From the wine, or maybe not. “Aw, Fox. You say that like you didn’t also survive on the streets. Which you did.”

“Yeah. But that’s different.”

“How?”

“Just…different.” He rubs his thumb along the edge of a coaster. “I was never alone, for one thing. I had Kit the whole time. Every time I got stuck, there was Kit. You never had a Kit.”

“Well, I’m sure you would’ve made it without Kit, too,” I say, a half-joke.

But Fox doesn’t smile. Just stares down at the draft list, less like he’s reading it and more like he’s staring past it. “Probably not,” he says.

Maybe I hit a nerve. I decide to back off, recalibrate, think through what I’ll do next, and I let my gaze wander up to the middle of the bar, the mirror behind the bottles, which, handily enough, gives me a view of the whole front of the room, in reverse.

And is where I see a side door open out of nowhere.

A man steps out. Black suit, black earpiece curling down behind his ear. Not a floorman or pit boss, or at least not dressed like one; he’s all in black. I watch as he scans the room once, slow, then he heads straight for the bar—the far left side, way on Fox’s other side, where the counter curves away and our bartender is fussing with a glass and a tap.

I freeze. Instinct, vibes, I don’t know what. But I don’t move, can’t move. Soft—I keep my face soft, just another girl at the bar with nowhere to be—but my grip on my wine glass tightens a little.

Beside me, Fox has gone still, too. He looks at me, lifts an eyebrow. I give him a tiny, tiny head shake, expression still pleasant as all get-out, and try to slowly slide my eyes toward the conversation by the beer.

I can’t hear what the suit guy is saying—even the calm jazz is too loud for that—but when the bartender’s head dips toward him, hand cupped around her ear in a “come again?” kind of gesture, I catch a few syllables.

“…Darling…shouldn’t be…isn’t here…”

The bartender straightens. Her eyes go to the room, to the tables, to the door we came through. My heart lurches, then skitters. She’s looking for someone.

For me.

I am still, so, so still as I watch her from the tiniest corner of my peripheral vision, coiled like I may have to bolt at any minute—and I might.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I think. This was so stupid. What was I thinking? What did I think was going to happen? Here I am, drinking fancy wine, stolen wine, smug about playing spy, when in reality I’ve done nothing, found basically nothing out, and am about to get⁠—

Her eyes move across the bar. Over empty stools, over Fox, over me, past me. Without stopping. Gliding smooth as wiping down marble.

“I haven’t seen her,” I hear her say, loud enough to carry over the music. “If I do, I’ll let you know.”

The man says something short. Then he’s gone, back through his invisible door, and the jazz closes in over the space where he was.

I realize I’ve stopped breathing and make myself start.

“Tink?” Fox says, very quietly, smile still stuck to his face but concern in his voice. “Are you⁠—”

“Don’t,” I say, teeth clenched. Because the bartender is on her way down the bar with his beer now, her face blank, even a little bored. She sets the glass on a cocktail napkin in front of him, a small square of white with a neat fold in it. Her eyes meet mine, just a split second. And her mouth, that red lipstick, twitches.