Alice stood at the mahogany counter of the Exchange, her purchases arranged in a neat row by the attendant's careful hands. Two grimoires, one thin and charcoal-bound, the other thick and disturbingly moist. Two clean revolvers, matte gray and anonymous, sitting on a square of oiled cloth beside a box of unmarked cartridges. A worn leather glove with one finger missing. A blank, featureless metal faceplate. And a coiled obsidian serpent with ruby eyes, resting on its velvet cushion like a sleeping pet.

  Alice stared at the spread. It looked like the inventory of a very eccentric burglar.

  She closed her eyes and ran the arithmetic behind her mask. The Volatile Catalyst had been six hundred and twenty. Reasonable. The Velvet Scripture, that blood-soaked ransom note of a book, had been fourteen thousand, three hundred and thirty. Criminal. The two revolvers and ammunition were a pittance by comparison, barely fifteen chips combined. The Thieves' Glove, two thousand four hundred. The Visage Mask, five thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine. And the Vitric Lover, six thousand one hundred and ninety-nine.

  She added it up. She added it up again, because the first number couldn't possibly be right.

  Twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and sixty-three chips.

  Alice opened her eyes. She looked at the neat little row of objects on the counter, objects that could fit into a single satchel, and felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with exhaustion.

  She had just spent the equivalent of a small warship. Fully crewed, armed to the teeth, with cannons and a flag and everything. She could have commissioned one, sailed it into the harbor, and still had change left over for a captain's hat.

  In one afternoon.

  In a basement.

  "Your current remaining balance stands at sixty-four thousand, one hundred and sixty-two crowns," the attendant said, sliding a receipt across the mahogany with the measured grace of someone presenting a document of great consequence.

  "Sixty-four thousand," Alice repeated. The number settled into her skull like a stone dropped into still water. The ripples were disorienting. It was still a staggering sum. Enough to live comfortably for decades, buy property, fund a business, retire to a coastal estate where she could spend her twilight years yelling at seagulls. Provided she didn't develop a habit of buying artifacts every Tuesday.

  "Put it all on credit," Alice said, straightening up and smoothing the front of her dress with hands that were only slightly trembling.

  "Of course, Madam." The attendant was already sweeping the items into individual wrappings of dark silk with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been packaging dangerous objects since before Alice was born. She bundled them neatly, securing the grimoires with leather straps and nestling the artifacts in padded cloth before placing the lot into a sturdy canvas bag. "It is already done."

  The bag slid across the counter, its contents landing with a satisfying, weighted thud.

  "Will that be all for this evening?"

  "I think I've done enough damage," Alice said, reaching for the bag.

  The attendant flinched.

  It was a small motion. A slight jerk of the head, a tensing of the shoulders, as if something had stung her behind the ear. Her right hand drifted up for a fraction of a second before she caught herself and smoothed the gesture into an adjustment of her mask.

  Alice noticed. She noticed everything tonight. Her nerves were scraped raw and humming like piano wire.

  "Change of plans, Miss Dragonslayer," the attendant said. Her voice shifted by a half-register. The saleswoman's warmth was still there, but something new had been layered beneath it, a note of professional urgency held on a very short leash. "As you are such a valued member of the Cellar, management has decided to offer you a bonus."

  The word bonus landed on Alice's ears like a lead coin. Heavy, dull, and immediately suspect.

  "A bonus," she repeated flatly. She slung the bag over her shoulder, adjusting the strap so the weight sat against her hip. "I appreciate the sentiment, truly, but I think I've had enough bonuses for one evening. The tickets, the favor, the winnings. My cup runneth over. I'd prefer to leave."

  "I understand your caution," the attendant said, and to her credit, she sounded like she meant it. "But I would strongly recommend accepting. Management was quite insistent."

  She stepped out from behind the counter and gestured not toward the Vault or the pits, but toward the main exit corridor, the one that led back up the spiral staircase toward Sorto Manor.

  Alice hesitated, her fingers tightening on the strap of her bag. Every instinct she had was telling her to be wary. The Cellar had been nothing but a series of escalating surprises since she walked through the door, each one more dangerous than the last. What fresh hell was management cooking up as a parting gift?

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  But the attendant was gesturing toward the exit. The same exit Alice needed to take regardless. It wasn't a detour; it was on the way out. Refusing would mean standing here arguing about the route she was already planning to walk.

  "Fine," Alice said, the word clipped. "Lead the way."

  The attendant inclined her head and set off, her heels clicking a precise rhythm against the polished floor. Alice followed, her satchel of weapons and forbidden knowledge thumping softly against her hip with each step.

  They left the Exchange behind, passing back through the heavy iron archway that separated the casino floor from the service corridors. The noise of the Cellar, the distant roar of the pits, the murmur of the tables, faded as they ascended, replaced by the muted silence of cedar paneling and gas-lit hallways.

  The attendant stopped in front of a wooden door. Plain, unassuming, and deeply familiar.

  The parlor. The same small, intimate room where Alice had sat across from a man in a wooden arrow mask and played a children's card game for her entire livelihood just hours ago. The green baize table was still there. The two high-backed leather chairs. The single gas lamp casting its cone of amber light.

  "In here," the attendant said, pushing the door open and stepping aside. "Please."

  Alice stepped inside.

  The room was as she remembered it, the same dark wood paneling, the same shadows pooling in the corners, but the card table had been cleared. The deck was gone. In its place, resting in the center of the green felt, was a folded garment of black fabric and a pair of sturdy, high-laced leather boots. The clothes were arranged with the meticulous care of a valet's presentation: fabric smoothed flat, boots positioned side by side at a perfect parallel.

  "Mr. Celo has prepared these for you," the attendant explained from the doorway, her hands clasped at her waist. "To divert danger."

  Alice turned, looking at the attendant over her shoulder. "Danger?"

  "You caused quite a splash in the pits this evening, Miss Dragonslayer." The attendant's tone was measured, careful. "A Tier 6 novice defeating a Tier 5 is the kind of event that generates conversation. Considerable conversation."

  She paused, adjusting the angle of the door.

  "Furthermore, your interactions with certain individuals in the lounge have been noted by the clientele. You are, at present, the most talked-about person in the building. Leaving in the same outfit you arrived in would be inadvisable."

  Alice looked back at the clothes on the table. A change of appearance. A clean exit. She had been planning to slip out quietly and hope the mask was enough, but if the entire Cellar was buzzing about the girl in the black funeral dress who had embarrassed half the gambling floor, anonymity required more than a lacquer half-mask and a prayer.

  "Thank you," Alice said, and was surprised to find she meant it. "That is awfully thoughtful."

  "The Cellar takes care of its own," the attendant replied, offering a small bow. "I will leave you to change. Please, take your time. I will be just outside the door should you need anything."

  The door clicked shut, leaving Alice alone with the hiss of the gas lamp and the quiet of the room.

  She set her bag down on the leather chair and turned to the table, unfolding the garment. A dress. Practical, modern, entirely nondescript. Dark fabric, high collar, clean lines that suggested a professional woman on her way home from a late shift at a clerk's office. The kind of outfit that disappeared into a crowd, which was precisely the point.

  Was the Cellar this generous with everyone? Or was this Celo's way of atoning for the Sheltie debacle, the fight he had admitted he should have stopped?

  Guilt gift or genuine hospitality, it didn't matter. Free clothes were free clothes.

  She changed quickly, peeling off the battered black dress that had survived a fistfight, a fireball, and a near-death experience. The new garment slid on easily. The fabric was impeccable, a fine-woven wool blend that breathed well and sat against her skin without scratching.

  It fit her perfectly.

  Alice paused. She looked down at the seams aligned precisely with her shoulders, the waist cinching at exactly the right point, the sleeves ending cleanly at the wrists without a millimeter of excess. She thought about Celo's "excellent memory" and what it apparently extended to.

  She decided she'd rather not dwell on it.

  The boots were sturdy. Thick-soled, reinforced at the ankle, with brass eyelets and heavy laces that cinched tight. Built for walking, for running if necessary, and they added a solid two inches to her height, which Alice appreciated more than she cared to admit.

  She turned to the small mirror hanging on the wall beside the door.

  The girl in the battered dress was gone. The reflection that stared back at her stood straighter, carried its weight differently. Dark, professional attire. Black hair tucked behind her ears. Jaw set. She looked older, perhaps. More grounded. Less like a runaway aristocrat playing dress-up in a gambling den and more like someone who had reason to be where she was standing.

  Alice knocked twice on the door. "I'm done. Coming out."

  She reached for the handle.

  Before her fingers touched the brass, the door swung inward on its own.

  It was not the attendant.

  A tall figure filled the doorframe, his tuxedo absorbing the warm light of the corridor, his posture straight and still as a church column. The wooden arrow bisecting his black mask pointed downward at Alice, the crossguard extending past his temples like a judgment rendered in carpentry.

  "Good evening, Miss Dragonslayer," Celo said. His voice carried that same velvet-over-gravel texture she was beginning to associate with imminent surprises. "I am here to escort you out of Sorto Manor. Safely."

  Alice looked up at him. The boots helped, but the man still had half a foot on her. She adjusted the strap of her bag.

  "Do you do this for every one of your clients?"

  "We do not." No elaboration. No polite fiction to soften the bluntness. Just the flat, honest admission that she was being given treatment that was not standard, and that the reasons for it were self-evident.

  He extended a gloved hand, palm up, the gesture formal and precise.

  "Grasp my hand," he instructed. "I will transport you outside the premises. I advise you hold on. It will be less disorienting."

  Alice looked at the offered hand. She thought about the last time Celo had demonstrated the scope of his abilities. Eliza and William, erased from a booth like chalk wiped from a slate, deposited elsewhere without so much as a change in air pressure.

  If Celo wanted to hurt her, he would not need to hold her hand to do it.

  She gripped it. His glove was cold, the leather smooth and unyielding beneath her fingers.

  "Ready," Alice said.

  Celo inclined his head. The wooden arrow dipped once, a final, courteous salute.

  "Until Saturday, Miss Dragonslayer."

  The world skipped a frame.