Ro didn't pick up the paper until 5:47 AM.
She'd walked past it forty-three times. Served coffee, cleared plates, refilled the napkin dispensers that never seemed to hold enough. The paper sat on table six like a bomb waiting for someone brave enough to touch it.
Denise noticed, of course. Denise noticed everything.
"What is that?"
"Nothing."
"It looks like money."
"It's not your concern."
Denise held up her hands. Backed away. Ro watched her go and felt something twist in her chest—not guilt, exactly. Something adjacent. The feeling of pushing away the only person in the diner who didn't know enough to be afraid.
At 5:47, Miriam came in through the back door. She moved slowly today, more slowly than usual, leaning on the counter when she reached it.
"You're still here," Miriam said. Not a question.
"I have a decision to make."
"No." Miriam's eyes found the paper on the table. "You made it already. You're just not admitting it to yourself."
"What if I say no? What if I take the paper and walk out and never come back?"
Miriam smiled. It was not a comforting smile. "Then you learn what it means to be noticed by their kind without their protection. Trust me, child: you do not want that lesson."
"How do you know?"
"Because I tried it. Forty years ago, before my grandmother died and the anchor passed to me. I thought I could walk away." Miriam reached into her pocket and withdrew something small—a coin, old and heavy, with a tree stamped on one side. "This is what they give you when you refuse. A reminder. A promise of what comes next."
Ro looked at the coin. At the paper. At the choice she had already made, somewhere between serving coffee to monsters and dreaming of Edinburgh.
"I'm not brave," she said.
"No. You're stubborn. Different quality, equally useful." Miriam touched her arm. "Pick it up. Before the sun rises."
Ro walked to the table. Her hand was steady. That was something—her hands didn't shake anymore, not since she'd learned that the impossible was just the unexplained.
Ten thousand pounds. In used notes, countable, real. More than she had saved in eighteen months. Enough to change everything.
She folded the paper and put it in her apron pocket.
Miriam nodded. "Good. Now you learn what it costs."
The door opened at 6:12 AM. The woman in the red coat, returning like she'd never left. She didn't sit this time. She stood just inside the threshold, scanning the room with eyes that seemed to catalog more than they should.
"You kept him waiting," the woman said. Not to Ro. To Miriam.
"She needed time."
"Time is a luxury we do not have." The woman's gaze found Ro. "You have accepted."
It wasn't a question. Ro answered anyway.
"I have."
"Good. Then you can begin." The woman reached into her pocket and withdrew something that made the diner's air feel heavy—a photograph, old, edges curling. "He did not tell you what he wants. That is his way. He lets people walk into danger blind, then claims innocence because he never lied."
She set the photograph on the counter. It showed a building Ro didn't recognize—brick, ordinary, with a sign that read *All-Night Pharmacy*.
"Three weeks ago, this burned." The woman tapped the image with one red nail. "Two weeks ago, a nightclub in Bethnal Green. Similar fire. No casualties, no witnesses, no explanations."
Ro looked at the photograph. Looked at the woman. "What does this have to do with me?"
"The fires are happening at neutral locations. Places where certain agreements hold. Places where violence is impossible." The woman smiled, not kindly. "Someone has found a way around the impossible."
"And Caelan wants me to—"
"He wants you to watch. To notice. To see what others miss, because you are the one person in London who looks at impossible things and files them away for later examination rather than fleeing immediately." The woman leaned forward. "But here is what he did not tell you: the last man who watched for him is dead. Found in a skip behind King's Cross with his eyes removed. Not burned. Removed. As if someone wanted to ensure he would not see anything in the next life, either."
Ro felt her stomach drop. The coffee she'd drunk an hour ago seemed to curdle.
"I have changed my mind," she said.
"No." The woman's smile widened. "You have not. You are frightened, but you have not changed your mind. You are that kind of person—the kind that, once committed, would rather die than admit to fear."
"You don't know me."
"I know your type. I have known hundreds over centuries." The woman straightened. "He will come tonight. He will tell you half-truths. He will ask you to observe the pharmacy, to note who comes and goes, to see what is out of place. You will do this. And you will report to him. But you will also report to me."
"Why would I—"
"Because I hold his debt. Because if he betrays you—when he betrays you—I am the only one who can extract a price." The woman turned toward the door. "I do not ask for loyalty, Rowan Blackwood. Only information. What you do with it is your concern."
"It's Ro."
"It is whatever I choose to call you." The woman paused at the door. "One more thing: the fires are not random. They are targeting places where power gathers. Where secrets are traded. In three weeks, there is a gathering—a market, of sorts. Every power in London will attend. If someone can burn neutral ground, they can burn the market. And if the market burns, the peace burns with it."
She left. The door chimed once and settled.
Ro stood still, the photograph in her hand, the paper heavy in her pocket. She felt like a child who had climbed a fence to steal apples and discovered it surrounded a lion enclosure.
Miriam appeared beside her. "Well. That was informative."
"She's threatening me."
"She is recruiting you. Different thing, similar outcome." Miriam took the photograph, studied it. "I knew this place. All-Night Pharmacy. Owned by a family that's traded in unusual remedies for three generations. They had nothing that could be burned by ordinary means."
"What could burn it, then?"
"Something old. Something angry." Miriam handed back the photograph. "Or someone learning to use old, angry things without understanding the price."
The shift ended at 6 AM. Ro counted her tips—seventy-three pounds—and she added the ten thousand in her mind, and she thought about Edinburgh and safety and freedom.
She thought about the man with his eyes removed.
Denise caught her at the door. "Hey. You okay?"
"I am fine."
"You said 'I am' instead of 'I'm.' You only do that when you're stressed."
Ro looked at her—nineteen, optimistic, carrying rose quartz in her pocket. "Do me a favor. Take the next few days off. Call in sick."
"What? I can't afford—"
"I will cover your shifts. Just... stay away. Until I say otherwise."
Denise's expression shifted. For a moment, she looked almost like she understood—like the part of her that believed in energies and alignments recognized something her conscious mind couldn't name.
"Something's happening," Denise said.
"Yes."
"Something bad?"
"I do not know yet. That is what I am supposed to find out." Ro pushed open the door. "Stay safe, Denise."
She walked home through streets that had begun to wake—delivery vans, early commuters, the ordinary London that existed in daylight. The photograph burned in her pocket. The money weighed against her hip.
She reached her flat, climbed the stairs, unlocked three locks.
The message was waiting.
Not a text. Not an email. Something pressed under her door—a single sheet of heavy paper, folded once, her name written in ink that seemed to shimmer when she wasn't looking directly at it.
*Rowan,*
*You have accepted. I am bound to protect those who serve me, and I take this seriously. You are in danger now—not from me, but from those who will notice my interest. Do not go to the pharmacy alone. Wait for me. I will meet you at dusk.*
*C.*
No title. No indication of what he was, what he wanted, what protection meant coming from something that wasn't human.
Ro sat on her bed, holding the note, and for the first time in six months she allowed herself to think about what she had seen. The eggs. The coincidences. The way some customers had shadows that pointed wrong.
She thought about the scar on Caelan's knuckles, and what kind of creature could be scarred, and whether that made him more dangerous or less.
The radiator knocked. Her neighbor's television murmured. London breathed around her.
She did not sleep.
She sat and waited for dusk, and tried not to think about the man with no eyes, and failed.