Chapter II
II
Alice follows the music.
It’s a brittle strand of notes amid the city’s crowded symphony, and she moves with cautious strides, afraid that one wrong turn will cut the cord, send the melody skittering away.
But with every block it grows a little brighter, a little louder, rising by degrees, one meager decibel at a time, until she turns onto a narrow street in Beacon Hill and finds a set of short brick steps, leading down to a sublevel door.
Not the steel door of an alley club, but a wood one, painted green.
A ribbon of fairy lights wraps along the iron rail, and a small sign mounted on the brick wall by the door reads WHITE THORN BLACK ROAST .
And standing there, halfway down the steps, the hope goes right out of Alice’s sails, because it’s obvious that this is another dead end.
It’s a coffee shop—she can smell the beans roasting from the street—and she wants to sit down on the stoop and cry, but she can’t even do that now without causing a scene.
She should probably just turn around and walk the three miles back to campus, but she can’t bring herself to do it.
Her legs are stuck, not the way they were back in the graveyard, but leaden, as if they’ve simply lost the will to listen to her.
Maybe it’s the fact she’s come this far, and she has no other leads, or that this place feels familiar in a simple, human way, a nod to the girl she was before, the one who constantly found refuge in café corners, fingers curled around a mug of tea, or the fact she can still hear the music, spilling softly through the door.
But Alice goes forward instead of back. She reaches the bottom of the steps, and the cheerful green door, and goes in.
A little bell chimes above her when the door swings open, and she steps into a place that feels more like a cluttered living room than a public café.
It’s cozy, a mishmash of furniture, sofas and chairs circled up around low tables, interspersed with four-tops, a handful of booths, and between the bearded guys in beanie hats, and the girl sipping a latte and scrolling on her phone, Alice feels like she’s back on campus.
Like she’s just ended up here on a study break, in the midst of a long night.
She looks around, some small but desperate part of her still hoping for a sign, a back curtain, the promise of a second hidden space, but there’s only the counter, and the barista behind it—a middle-aged woman with a short brown bob and a pair of pink librarian glasses.
The woman is saying something, low, under her breath, either chatting with someone Alice can’t see or maybe just talking to herself.
Either way, Alice feels like she’s interrupting, so even though there’s no one else in line, she waits, until the woman’s attention finally cuts toward her, a bemused look as if she’s the strange one for just standing there.
“You want to order something?”
Alice hesitates—the barista’s gaze flicks away, and back—but the bell has chimed again, and there are two people in line behind her now, and in the end, she asks for a menu, feels like an idiot when the woman points up at the hand-drawn board over her head.
Just the usual fare, and her dad always says there’s nothing a strong cup of tea won’t fix, whether it’s a cold or a pair of wet shoes or a bad day at school, so that is what Alice orders, and the woman makes it right, at least, with a boiling kettle and a healthy scoop of leaves, even if it comes in a mug instead of a pot.
She carries it to a corner table and sinks into a cushioned chair, wraps her fingers round the mug for a warmth she doesn’t need, but habit is its own kind of comfort.
The tea smells earthy and bitter and right enough that Alice thinks, just maybe, this is the place her old life and her new will meet, this small allowance, that it will taste like home instead of rot, but the illusion crumbles as soon as the liquid crosses her lips, her throat vising closed against the sip.
She spits the tea back into the cup, then folds her arms and lays her head down on the wood and decides this is a good enough place to give up. She wills the table to reach up and swallow her the way the graveyard tried to do, but the wood holds firm.
“That bad, huh?”
She drags her head up to find a guy, perhaps a little older than she is, but not by much.
He’s lean, verging on thin, dirty-blond hair just long enough he has it tucked behind his ears.
His fingers are dotted with silver rings, and he’s cradling an espresso cup in one hand, a notebook in the other, and she’s about to tell him that she’s really not in the mood for small talk right now when he asks, “What did you hear?”
Alice stiffens, frowns, uncertain. “What?”
“You followed the music, right?” he says, as if it’s not a secret at all, and the air contracts around her, tight with warning and hope.
She is sitting upright now, so thrown by the easy way he asks the question, and also by the thought that she might have actually done something right, that maybe, just maybe, she’s actually found what she was looking for.
“Um, yeah,” she manages.
“Well?” he asks, lifting the espresso to his lips. “What did you hear?”
Alice blinks, and looks around the café. It’s fainter here, inside the shop, but it’s still there, the piano rising and falling like a tide. “I don’t know. Bach?”
The guy shakes his head. “Kids these days,” he says.
“Not everything good is old as well.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on the back of the chair, and smiles, as if to himself, but she sees them—the tips of two teeth, sharper than the rest—and Alice wants to fling her arms around his shoulders out of sheer relief that she is not alone.
But her head is still spinning and she doesn’t exactly know the etiquette for things like this, and—
“For your information, it’s Einaudi.”
She drags her thoughts back. “Huh?”
“The composer.” He nudges her tea aside, setting the espresso in its place. “Go on. Try this.”
Her stomach turns at the sight of the dark sludge, the memory of the over-sugared coffee in the econ hall, but she watched him take a sip, and it didn’t seem to hurt him, so Alice lifts the small cup to her lips, and as she does, she catches the scent of iron beneath the coffee’s edge.
She drinks, feels her throat tighten once, and then unlock as the unmistakable taste of blood hits her tongue, and it’s—
—weird.
There’s no pulse, no bloom inside her chest, but it still goes down, warmth trailing in its wake, the trapdoor inside her falling open onto nothing but empty space, as if she never drank from that girl back at Chalice , or the creep in the nice car, or the guy on the Yard.
She gulps it down, the contents little more than a swallow, and for a moment, the floor beneath her steadies and her mind goes clear—but then the cup is empty, and Alice feels wrung out, that sudden urge to cry again, though in frustration, fatigue, or hunger, she honestly doesn’t know.
“Still thirsty?” he asks, then offers her a wan smile, a soft chuckle escaping like a sigh.
“Silly question, isn’t it? Black and red,” he adds, and he doesn’t raise his voice, but she can tell, somehow, he’s not talking to her now, and sure enough the barista glances over, and he holds up two fingers, and she nods and gets to work.
Alice looks into the empty cup, her mind racing till it feels like it will trip itself. “Then this place really is . . .”
“Oh, it’s just a front,” he says, voice dropping at last. “We keep the bodies in the back. Blood orgies on Sunday nights. The password this month is pineapple. ”
Alice stares.
The guy stares back.
And then, after a painfully slow moment, one corner of his mouth goes up. He’s mocking her. Gently, but still. Alice isn’t in the mood.
“Ha ha,” she offers dryly, and it must sound even sorrier coming out, because his expression softens as he takes the seat across from her. The barista drifts over, sets two espressos down, and wanders off again, her lips still moving as she talks to herself.
“The vast majority of the customers are, in fact, ordinary people,” he says, “but it’s true, my doors are open to all kinds.”
Alice wonders what that means as she takes up the cup.
“Angel, demons, psychics.”
She nearly chokes on the drink, but when she looks up, there it is again, that little, teasing smirk.
Like this is all a game, a joke. As if she hasn’t spent the whole night searching for proof, and going slowly mad.
He seems to feel the annoyance wicking off her, because the smile drops away, leaving something earnest in its wake.
“Ezra,” he says, holding out a hand.
“Alice.” She slides her fingers into his, and the touch feels both right, and wrong, and it takes her a moment to figure out why—there is no pulse beneath his skin, no warmth, and nothing of him on the air, no emotions or desires clouding up the room like smoke.
He is a pool of silence, a small oasis in the chaos, and when she meets his gaze, she sees his eyes are pale, and steady, like flecks of frosted glass, but there is a kindness in them.
“What are you doing here, Alice?” he asks gently.
She blinks, remembering her night, her search. She drags the phone from her pocket and swipes over to the photo.
“I’m looking for a girl,” she says, nudging the screen toward him, and even now, she’s braced for disappointment, for him to take a passing glance and shrug and say sorry, but he’s never seen her.
But that’s not what Ezra does.
He stares down at the screen, a small crease taking shape between his brows.
“Lottie,” he murmurs, half to himself, and the way he says it, so full of knowing, makes Alice’s hands begin to shake, her own voice trembling as she says, through gritted teeth, “You know her?”
Ezra drags his gaze back up. “I do,” he says. “I have, for quite a long time.”
“Where is she?” demands Alice, but the venom in the question makes him frown, and cross his arms.