Alice flinched. A full-body recoil, as if the words had come with a backhand.

  How?

  She stared at the porcelain mask. She had been one of dozens of travellers on that road. The explosion had left no witnesses, no paper trail, and—she had assumed—no survivors who could place her at the scene. She had been in Dunwick for less than a day. The odds of an Inspector investigating that specific crater stumbling across her in a fighting pit were not just long; they were absurd.

  "I..." Alice started. She looked at the ebony box, then back at Eliza. "I haven't agreed to tell you anything."

  She crossed her arms. It wasn't that she objected to the D.A.A. on principle. Magic was dangerous, and somebody had to police it. But she specifically, actively, viscerally did not like this person. Sheltie was arrogant, manipulative, and powerful enough to make the arrogance stick.

  "Oh..." Eliza sighed, the porcelain mask tilting downward in clear displeasure. She tapped a finger against the closed lid of the box. "That is unfortunate. Cooperation makes things so much easier. We would really appreciate it if you d-"

  "My apologies for the interruption."

  The voice didn't come from the table. It came from directly beside it.

  Everyone froze.

  Beside William, the air rippled violently. The absolute silence of the sound-dampening field shuddered, and for a split second, the roar of the lounge—clinking glasses, laughter, the distant announcer—bled through like static interference before William frantically clamped his concentration back down.

  "I do hope I am not intruding," the voice continued, smooth as velvet drawn over gravel, "but I was hoping for a few moments of your time. It is a matter pertaining to the Cellar's integrity."

  Alice turned her head.

  Celo was standing at the edge of the booth. Hands clasped behind his back. Tuxedo absorbing the dim light. The wooden arrow bisecting his mask pointed downward at the table with its usual, relentless accusation.

  Nobody had seen him approach. He had simply been absent, and then he had not been.

  Eliza recovered first. She straightened in her seat with the practised ease of a woman who had been startled at better parties than this, and turned to face him. Her grip on the wine glass tightened by a fraction.

  "Celo," she greeted, her tone acquiring frost. "You have a terrible habit of materialising beside people. It's rude."

  "Occupational hazard," Celo replied.

  "Yes, well." She waved a hand. "You are intruding. We are in the middle of a private discussion. Come back when we've finished."

  "I am afraid that will not be possible," Celo said. He hadn't moved, but something about his stillness had changed—a density to it, as though the air around him had quietly decided to pay attention. "Asking for your time was a formality."

  Eliza bristled. She was not accustomed to being refused, and certainly not by staff. "Fine," she said, clipping the word short. "What is it?"

  Celo tilted his head. The crossguard of his mask cast a sharp shadow across his shirtfront.

  "Miss Sheltie," he murmured, and the politeness had gone thin enough to see through. "Are you so dense that you have not realised? Or has the wine done the thinking for you this evening?"

  Eliza went still. Her jaw tightened behind the porcelain, the mask tilting upward in a motion that was pure reflex—indignation, compressed and swallowed. She took a breath. Held it. Let it go. She was remembering, Alice suspected, exactly whose basement she was sitting in.

  "If this is about the damages caused by my forfeiture," Eliza said, her voice levelled with effort, "I can assure you there was no collusion. Miss Dragonslayer and I met minutes ago. There was no fixing." She reached for the ebony box. "This is a truth detector. I can prove it. I have never—"

  She went to flip the latch. Two gloved fingers descended onto the lid and pressed it shut.

  Celo hadn't grabbed her wrist. He hadn't needed to. The two fingers rested on the ebony with the gentle, absolute authority of a paperweight.

  "I have no reason to doubt the words of your esteemed self," he said softly. "Match fixing is not why I am here."

  He withdrew his hand.

  "Rather—"

  The air in the booth changed.

  It was not gradual. It was not a creeping unease or a slow tightening of the throat. The atmospheric pressure inside the small, enclosed space spiked—violently, specifically, and all at once, as though an invisible hand had closed around the booth and squeezed.

  Alice's lungs seized. The breath she'd been drawing simply stopped, the air refusing to enter, her diaphragm flattening under a weight that had no source and no shape. Her shoulders drove downward into the leather as though something enormous were sitting on them. The edges of her vision darkened.

  Beside her, William made a thin, strangled sound. His eyes lost focus. His hands slid off the table.

  Pop.

  The sound barrier collapsed. The noise of the lounge crashed back in—a tidal wave of laughter, chips, chatter—slamming into them at full volume after the hermetic quiet of the field.

  Whatever remained of Eliza's composure burned away. Sweat broke across her neck, sliding beneath the rim of the porcelain. She gripped the edge of the table, knuckles bloodless, her spine bowing forward under the pressure even as she fought to keep it straight.

  "This is regarding your actions in the arena against Miss Dragonslayer," Celo said. His voice had not risen by a single decibel. It didn't need to. "The puppeteering of an opponent. Forcing a fighter to accept a duel against her will. Violation of the sanctity of the pit."

  The pressure increased. The table groaned.

  "Unsportsmanlike," Celo said. "And forbidden."

  "Celo—" Alice choked. Black spots swarmed her vision. Her diaphragm was a fist, clenched and refusing to open. "Please."

  The weight vanished.

  Air rushed back into the booth with a cold hiss, and Alice sucked it in—a ragged, greedy gulp that burned on the way down. William pitched forward onto the table, clutching his chest, wheezing in short, wretched bursts.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Celo took a step back. He brushed something invisible from his sleeve.

  "My apologies to Boxer and Dragonslayer," he said, inclining his head. "I was inconsiderate. I had not realised I had released my presence to such a degree. It happens when I am... disappointed."

  Eliza was still upright. Barely. Her breathing was shallow and controlled—the breathing of someone who refused to gasp in front of an audience. She stared at Celo, and behind the porcelain, Alice could see the recalculation happening in real time. The man she had been dismissing as floor staff had just flattened three people with his ambient displeasure.

  "If it was against the rules," Eliza said, finding her voice, "and you knew—why didn't you intervene sooner?"

  Celo paused. The arrow remained still.

  He let out a breath—a long, human sound that sat oddly against the wooden mask. A sigh.

  "I wish I could have," he said. His voice was low, and for the first time, it sounded like it belonged to a person rather than a position. "I was moments away from stopping the match. But..."

  He trailed off. His head turned slightly, as though listening to something none of them could hear.

  He shook it off.

  "Regardless," he said, and the steel was back. "What you have done is a violation, and it is done. We are required to respond."

  He looked down at Eliza. The arrow pointed like a sentence being passed.

  "Henceforth, you are banned from the premises of the Cellar. By extension, you are barred from Sorto Manor and any affiliated establishments."

  "That's all?" Eliza asked. Her cadence had returned—not fully, but enough to serve. She set her wine glass down with a precise clink, smoothed the front of her coat, and checked her cuffs with the air of a woman preparing to leave a tedious luncheon. "Banned from the premises. Devastating. I shall struggle to sleep tonight, knowing I've been barred from a basement."

  "I am not done," Celo said.

  He did not raise his voice. The temperature in the booth dropped anyway.

  "It would be unbecoming of the Cellar to meet such violations with a slap on the wrist," he continued. "We have standards, Miss Sheltie. You have trampled them."

  "Surely you're not taking a finger," Eliza said, crossing her arms. The mock intrigue in her voice was almost convincing. "A hand? That seems a touch barbaric, even for you."

  "That would be fitting," Celo agreed, in the tone of a man considering two equally acceptable lunch options. "And certainly within my rights, given the jurisdiction. But physical maiming is crude. Instead, a Jinx has been placed upon you."

  Eliza's eyebrow climbed. "A Jinx. What kind?"

  The silence stretched. Celo let it.

  "A specific weaving of probability," he said. "Targeting your romantic endeavours. Your love life will be visited with... catastrophic misfortune."

  For the first time since the explosion in the arena, Eliza's composure cracked cleanly in half.

  "What?"

  "Are you joking?" Alice said.

  She hadn't meant to speak. The words left her mouth propelled by an indignation that had apparently decided, without consulting the rest of her, that this was the hill it wanted to die on. She was on her feet before she'd finished the sentence, her palm flat on the table.

  "She assaulted me," Alice hissed, pointing an accusing finger at Eliza. "She forced me to fight for my life, and nearly blew my head off with an uppercut. And your punishment is... bad dates? In what universe is that equivalent to losing a finger?"

  Celo turned his head slowly, the wooden arrow swinging to face Alice.

  "I did not choose this punishment, Miss Dragonslayer," Celo said calmly. "It was chosen because it was deemed the most fitting for the transgressor. And it has already been applied."

  He turned back to Eliza, who was sitting very still, seemingly processing the implications of a supernatural curse on her social calendar.

  "Everything I need to say has been said," Celo concluded.

  Eliza did not respond. She did not mock him, and she did not laugh. She simply sat there, accepting the decree with a stiff, icy glare directed at the wooden mask.

  "Wait," William managed, from the corner of the booth where he had been quietly trying to reconstitute himself as a functioning human being. He raised a trembling hand. "Am I banned as well?"

  Celo glanced at him. "You are not. However, you are partially complicit in Sheltie's violations by virtue of your partnership. I suggest you leave for the evening. You are welcome on subsequent visits, provided you choose better company."

  He offered a short, sharp bow. "I bid you adieu."

  Alice blinked.

  There was no flash. No theatrical displacement of air. One moment Eliza and William were occupying the booth—weight on the leather, heat in the air, the faint residual shimmer of William's collapsed field still hanging around the edges—and the next moment the bench was empty. The cushions held the impressions of their bodies for a few seconds, slowly inflating back to shape, but the people were simply gone. Excised from the room as cleanly as a word struck from a page.

  Alice stared at the empty seat, a chill running down her spine. It was just her and Celo now.

  "My apologies for the trouble, Miss Dragonslayer," Celo said. The steel had left his voice, replaced by the warm, solicitous register of the floor manager. As if the last five minutes had been a brief administrative matter, now resolved. "It is regrettable when our guests forget their manners."

  He paused, looking at the pouch of chips Alice was clutching. "However, it is good to know that you gained much from today's visit at the Cellar, despite the irregularity of the finale."

  He reached into the breast pocket of his tuxedo and produced two slips of heavy, cream-coloured paper. Gold leaf edged them—real gold, catching the candlelight with a soft, living shimmer. He slid them across the table.

  "As remuneration for what occurred," Celo said. "Consider visiting the Cellar five days from now. Saturday evening."

  Alice looked at the papers. "Tickets?"

  "VIP tickets," Celo corrected. "The Cellar will be hosting a gala. Music, high-stakes tables, diversions of every stripe. But more importantly, the Level 4 pits will be open."

  Alice looked up. "Level 4?"

  "It is a rare occasion when the Level 4 pits are active," Celo said, and something in his voice shifted—not louder, but deeper, as though the words were being drawn from a lower register. Reverence, or something adjacent to it. "To see Tier 4 combatants in action is a spectacle very few are permitted to witness. I would encourage you not to miss it. Bring a friend."

  Alice turned the tickets over in her fingers. They were beautiful. They were also not money.

  "I'd rather have remuneration in gold," she said, pushing them back an inch. "I don't need tickets to a gala."

  The wooden arrow regarded her with what she could only interpret as disappointment.

  "Take them," Celo said, and the gentleness in his voice had the shape of a command. He pushed them back. "This is remuneration by the Cellar. The experience is worth more than the coin."

  Alice hesitated. Then she sighed, snatched the tickets, and stuffed them into her pocket. "Fine. Saturday. Gala. Wonderful."

  "And," Celo continued, stepping closer, "for the troubles you endured personally—and for my own failure in not intervening when I should have—I owe you a separate debt. That failure was mine."

  He placed a hand on his chest. "As such, I offer you one favour. From me. Not the Cellar. Me."

  Alice's eyes sharpened behind the lacquer.

  She looked at the empty space where Eliza had been sitting. An arrogant, powerful Senior Inspector—a woman who built cages from thin air—had been terrified of this man. Had been banished from the room with a thought. Celo wasn't a floor manager. He was something else entirely. Tier 4 at the absolute minimum.

  And he was offering her a personal favour.

  "A favour," Alice repeated, and the wheels were already turning.

  Celo coughed—a polite, pre-emptive sound. "Within reason, of course."

  He straightened his cuffs and stepped back from the booth.

  "Remember. Saturday evening. The Gala. Bring a friend. And do spend your chips at the Exchange before you leave, Miss Dragonslayer."

  He tipped his head, the wooden arrow dipping in a final salute.

  "The Cellar appreciates your patronage. We hope to see you again soon."

  He turned and walked into the crowd, and the crowd accepted him the way water accepts a stone—closing over the space he'd occupied as though it had never been disturbed. Within three steps he was indistinguishable from the dark. Within five he was gone.

  Alice sat alone.

  The booth felt larger without them. The candlelight seemed thinner, the shadows deeper, the ambient noise of the lounge pressing in from all sides now that William's field was gone and there was nothing between her and the room but air. She could feel the speculative murmurs from adjacent tables like fingers prodding at the edges of her attention.

  She sat there for a long moment, letting the last five minutes settle. Then she looked down at the table.

  The ebony box sat where it had been left. The silver filigree caught the candlelight in delicate, spiralling veins, shimmering faintly against the dark wood. Sheltie and Boxer had been removed so quickly they hadn't had a chance to take it with them.

  Alice stared at the music box. She thought about the glass ballerina inside, frozen mid-pirouette. She thought about the melody—that brief, invasive warmth, the way it had unwound the tension in her jaw without asking permission.

  She reached across the table and pulled it toward her.

  "Well," she murmured. "Free souvenir."