The Broken Halo had been built for people who did not want to be saved.
That was what Alex liked about it.
Nobody came through the door expecting miracles. They came for cheap whiskey, burnt coffee, fried food that tasted better than it had any right to, and the rare luxury of sitting somewhere nobody asked them to be inspiring. The bar sat between a closed pawn shop and a laundromat that only worked when threatened, its sign hanging crooked above the door: a cracked gold ring split down the middle, halo or warning depending on how drunk a person was.
Inside, the air smelled like spilled beer, old wood, fryer grease, cigarette smoke that had soaked into the walls before the ban, and rain from everyone’s coats. The floorboards complained under heavy boots. The lights were low and amber, flattering no one enough to be dishonest. Behind the bar, taped beneath the mirror, the house rules had been written in Alex’s own hand.
NO SAINTS.
NO SERMONS.
PAY YOUR TAB.
The last line was underlined twice.
People respected religion less than debt.
Alex stood behind the counter with her hair braided over one shoulder, wiping down a glass that had been clean three minutes ago. Bartending was mostly repetition. Pour. Listen. Pretend not to listen. Cut someone off. Watch the door. Count exits. Smile when needed. Don’t smile when a man might mistake it for permission. Keep the regulars alive enough to come back tomorrow.
It was almost peaceful.
Almost.
The city had been nervous all week.
Redline always did that.
The Gala was two days away, and Bellwether had started polishing its grief for public display. Banners hung in Civic Crown. Asterion ads played on every corner screen. News anchors wore darker colors and softer voices. Charity links scrolled beneath footage of candlelight vigils and cleaned-up memorial walls. The city loved remembrance when remembrance could be sponsored.
At the far end of the bar, Mr. Ochoa sat with his usual glass of ginger ale and a Redline memorial pin fixed to his coat. He had not touched alcohol in eight years, but he came in every Thursday anyway because he said the bar was quieter than his apartment. Tonight, he kept looking at the television like it had personally offended him.
It probably had.
Above the liquor shelves, the old boxy TV played reruns on mute with closed captions crawling across the bottom. The remote had gone missing sometime during a fight about playoff coverage three months ago, and Alex had decided the silence was better for everyone’s health. Usually the channel ran ancient sitcoms, cooking shows, public apologies, and old hero documentaries no one watched unless they were drunk enough to insult the production quality.
Tonight, it was playing Little Starling.
Alex noticed only because three people groaned at once.
“Oh, hell,” said Nessa from table four. She worked nights at Saint Mercy and always smelled faintly like antiseptic and peppermint gum. “They’re running this one again?”
A man at the pool table glanced up. “Which one?”
“The kid show with Daystar.”
“She was in a kid show?”
Alex set the glass down and reached for another. “She was in everything for a while.”
On the TV, a little girl with honey-brown hair and solemn green eyes stood in a bright yellow kitchen set. She could not have been more than eight or nine. Maybe younger. Hard to tell with child actors. They always looked too polished and too tired at the same time.
The caption at the bottom read:
LITTLE STARLING: IF WE STAY TOGETHER, WE WONT EVER HAVE TO BE ALONE AGAIN.
The girl on screen smiled.
The room did not.
Alex had seen the episode before. Everyone had, even if they pretended otherwise. Little Starling had been one of those shows the city used to love in the sticky, overwhelming way people loved something harmless after a disaster. A sweet girl. A broken family. A glowing night-light shaped like a star. Lessons about courage, forgiveness, and keeping the curtains open so morning could find you.
Back then, Celeste Lumos had been billed as Estie Vale.
Not Celeste.
Not Daystar.
Not Saint Dawn.
Just Estie, the little girl with the voice like a bell and the smile adults called brave when they meant useful.
Alex had been a kid when the show aired. She remembered watching it on a secondhand TV while her adoptive mother folded laundry and said, Poor thing, she looks exhausted. Alex had not understood then. She had only thought the girl was pretty.
Now, older and meaner and better at reading faces, Alex understood exactly what her mother had seen.
The child on the screen smiled half a second too late.
Like she had waited for permission.
Alex looked away first.
Some things were worse when they were old.
At table two, two utility workers argued over whether the Gala would actually raise money for Redline families this year or whether Asterion would “administrate” the donations into marble flooring and executive lunches.
“It’s always the same,” one of them said, stabbing a fry toward the TV. “They put a Saint on a stage, cry for five minutes, then everyone goes home feeling clean.”
“Not everyone,” Mr. Ochoa said.
The utility worker quieted.
Mr. Ochoa did not look away from the TV. The child-Celeste was hugging a man in the set backyard, her little face turned toward the camera just enough to catch the light.
“They always play her before something,” he said.
Alex’s hand stilled around the glass.
Nessa looked over. “What does that mean?”
Mr. Ochoa blinked, as if he had not realized he had spoken aloud.
Then he shrugged and lifted his ginger ale. “Means I’m old.”
No one laughed.
Alex filed the sentence away.
Bartenders survived by keeping a private shelf in their mind for things people said when they thought no one would remember. Names. Threats. Confessions. Bad jokes with too much truth under them. Mr. Ochoa had that look tonight, the one Redline survivors got when the city started arranging flowers over old blood.
She kept wiping the glass.
Behind her, tucked beneath the counter beside a stack of unpaid tabs, a deck of cards sat wrapped in a red rubber band.
One card had slipped free.
Alex noticed because it had not been there a moment ago.
The jack of spades rested faceup near the register, one corner hanging over the edge of the shelf.
She stared at it.
Then reached down and pushed it back into the deck.
“Not tonight,” she muttered.
The card did not answer, which was polite of it.
The front door opened.
Rain-slick air came in first.
Then Levi Vale.
Alex knew him by the shape of his exhaustion before she saw his face. Some men entered bars like they were looking for a drink. Levi entered like he had been holding himself upright out of spite and had finally found a room where spite could sit down.
His coat was damp. His collar was open. His tie, if he had started with one, had not survived the day. A bruise shadowed one side of his jaw, not dramatic enough to be a fight story but too fresh to be ignored. He moved like his shoulder hurt and he was pretending it didn’t because pretending was cheaper than medical care.
Alex set the glass down.
The room noticed him in the mild, practiced way bars noticed familiar trouble.
Levi walked to his usual stool.
Alex reached for the coffee pot instead of the whiskey.
Levi dropped onto the stool with a small wince.
“Don’t start,” he said.
Alex poured coffee into a chipped mug. “Wasn’t going to.”
“You have a face.”
“I have several. This one comes free with obvious injuries.”
He looked at the mug. “I wanted whiskey.”
“I know.”
“And?”
“And I enjoy disappointing men before they pay me.”
Levi stared at the coffee like it had betrayed him personally.
Alex slid it closer. “Drink.”
He wrapped both hands around the mug but did not lift it.
Up on the TV, the little girl smiled again, bright and obedient, beneath a painted star.
This time, Levi looked up.
And went still.
That was the first thing Alex noticed.
Not the bruise. Not the wet coat. Not the way he held his left shoulder too carefully beneath the pretense of casual exhaustion. Those were obvious. Men came into The Broken Halo bruised all the time. Bellwether was a city with too many sharp corners and not enough apologies.
But stillness was different.
Stillness meant the room had touched something before the person could hide it.
Levi sat with both hands around the coffee mug, eyes lifted to the television above the bar. On-screen, the little girl stood in that too-bright yellow kitchen, her face tipped toward a woman playing her mother. The set lights gave her hair a honey shine. Her green eyes looked enormous on the old recording.
The captions rolled beneath her.
ESTIE: IF WE KEEP THE LIGHT ON, NOBODY HAS TO BE SCARED.
The child smiled.
Levi’s fingers tightened around the mug.
Alex watched that too.
“Bad episode?” she asked.
He blinked, as if he had forgotten there were people in the room.
“What?”
Alex nodded toward the TV. “You look offended by children’s programming.”
Levi looked back at the screen.
For a second, he seemed about to say something honest.
Then he remembered himself and lowered his gaze to the coffee. “I hate reruns.”
“Liar.”
“Strong accusation from a woman watering me instead of serving me.”
“Coffee isn’t water.”
“It’s bean punishment.”
“You look like you lost an argument with a sidewalk. You get bean punishment.”
He huffed once, but the sound had no real life in it.
Alex leaned her forearms on the bar, close enough to speak quietly, not close enough to look like concern in front of the room. Concern made people skittish. Especially people like Levi, who wore exhaustion like a jacket he could take off if nobody pointed at it.
“Who hit you?” she asked.
“Nobody.”
“Impressive. Nobody has terrible aim.”
“I wasn’t hit.”
“Your jaw disagrees.”
“My jaw is dramatic.”
“Your shoulder too?”
He looked down at the mug.
There it was.
The little pause.
The one that meant the truth was in the room, but not invited to sit.
Alex reached beneath the counter and pulled out a clean towel. She folded it once, then again, just to give her hands something to do besides slap sense into a man who would probably apologize to the sense afterward.
“Levi.”
He did not look up.
“Who hit you?”
“No one hit me,” he said, quieter now. “I hit the street.”
That answer pulled the noise out of the bar for half a second.
Or maybe Alex only felt it that way.
She looked him over again. Bruised jaw. Stiff shoulder. Damp coat. Eyes red from too little sleep and too much fluorescent lighting. His knuckles were fine, which meant he had not thrown punches. His body was sore in the wrong places, the kind of sore that came from impact, not a fight.
“You fall?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“People who say something like that usually mean something worse.”
“Sometimes they mean they don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then they usually drink somewhere else.”
That got his eyes up.
Good.
Not angry. Not quite. But awake enough.
The old show continued behind her. Canned laughter crackled low from the muted speakers, lost beneath the bar’s noise. On-screen, little Estie Vale climbed onto a chair to reach a star-shaped night-light on a kitchen shelf. Her hands were small. Too small for the careful way she moved.
Alex glanced at the screen again.
“She was everywhere when I was a kid,” she said.
Levi’s gaze flicked up despite himself.
Alex pretended not to notice. “Commercials. Charity specials. Those awful holiday movies where somebody learns forgiveness because a child says something creepy in a snowstorm.”
“She was a child.”
The words came out too flat.
Alex looked at him.
Levi seemed to realize how he’d said it a second too late. He lifted the mug and took a drink, then made a face because the coffee was old enough to have legal opinions.
Alex set a glass of water beside it.
“She was,” Alex said.
He didn’t answer.
On the TV, the child actress hugged the woman playing her mother. The camera pushed in close. The little girl’s face rested against the woman’s shoulder, angled perfectly toward the lens. Even with the volume muted, Alex knew the kind of music playing. Soft piano. Hopeful strings. The kind that told people when to feel moved so they did not have to decide for themselves.
Nessa at table four sighed. “God, I forgot how sad this show was.”
“It wasn’t sad,” the pool-table man said.
“That’s because you don’t pay attention to anything without a scoreboard.”
Alex picked up the remote that technically no longer worked and hit the power button out of habit.
Nothing happened.
Of course.
The TV kept playing.
Levi’s eyes stayed on the screen.
Alex watched his face instead.
“You know her?” she asked.
His jaw flexed.
“Everyone knows her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know her.”
There was the careful answer. The answer someone gave when the truth had too many doors.
Alex wiped at a spot on the bar that did not need wiping.
“You met Daystar.”
Levi went still again.
Not as much as before.
Enough.
Alex lowered her voice. “Is that what the street was about?”
His eyes sharpened. “What street?”
“Don’t.”
“Alex—”
“No.” She leaned closer, her expression flat now. “You come into my bar looking like you got dragged behind a Department vehicle, stare at a twenty-year-old rerun like it threatened your family, and ask what street like I’m stupid. Try that somewhere people like you less.”
He looked away first.
That was new.
Levi usually met pressure with a joke, a dodge, or a charming little self-destructive grin that made people forgive him before they remembered he had not answered. Tonight, he only looked tired.
Really tired.
The kind that got into the bones.
“The Department had questions,” he said.
“I bet they did.”
“They didn’t like my answers.”
“Were your answers bad?”
“Incomplete.”
Alex let out a quiet breath through her nose. “That means yes.”
“It means incomplete.”
“It means you lied badly enough that they noticed but not badly enough that they could prove why.”
His mouth moved like he wanted to smile.
It failed.
Alex did not like that.
She liked Levi better irritating. Irritating meant alive. Irritating meant his brain was still throwing sparks even when the rest of him was trying to quit.
“Did they hurt you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Levi.”
“They didn’t touch me.”
That was not the same.
She heard it.
So did he.
The bar shifted around them. Glasses clinked. A stool scraped. The fryer snapped from the kitchen. Mr. Ochoa muttered something at the TV. Outside, rain ticked against the front windows, turning the neon sign red and gold in the puddles.
Alex set both hands on the bar. “What did they do?”
Levi stared into the coffee.
“Put me in a room,” he said. “Asked the same questions different ways. Why did I fail to report immediately? Why was she off route? Did she use her ability? Did I observe signs of emotional instability? Did I discuss restricted topics? Did I make promises?”
His voice changed at the last word.
Alex noticed.
“Did you?”
“No.”
Too quick.
She said nothing.
Levi swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “They asked if I was compromised.”
Alex looked toward the TV, where little Estie Vale was now sitting on a porch swing beside a boy actor with freckles and too much hair gel.
“What did you say?”
“I asked them to define compromised.”
Alex closed her eyes briefly. “Of course you did.”
“They defined it poorly.”
“Levi.”
“What?”
“You cannot antagonize the Department from inside their little interrogation rooms and then come here surprised you look like death warmed over.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“No. You’re worse. You’re proud.”
That landed.
He looked at her sharply, but there was not enough anger behind it to make the look dangerous.
Alex held it anyway.
“I’m not proud,” he said.
“Then what are you?”
He looked back at the television.
For a long moment, he did not answer.
On-screen, the little girl laughed. The caption only read [LAUGHTER], but the laugh itself was visible in her face. Too bright. Too perfectly timed. Her eyes slipped, for half a second, toward something off-camera.
Someone off-camera.
Waiting.
Then the smile returned.
Levi saw it.
Alex knew he saw it because his face changed.
Not much. But enough.
He looked like a man who had found a bruise on someone else and realized it had been there for years.
“Angry,” he said finally.
Alex’s grip tightened around the towel.
That answer was honest.
She wished it wasn’t.
“At who?” she asked.
His eyes did not leave the screen.
“I don’t know yet.”
The words sat between them.
Alex looked at him, then at the child on TV, then at the house rules behind the bar.
NO SAINTS. NO SERMONS. PAY YOUR TAB.
She had written the first line as a joke after some drunk ex-hero tried to bless the building with his presence and refused to settle his bill. But suddenly the joke felt old in the wrong way.
No Saints.
And yet there one was, trapped in a rerun above her liquor shelves, smiling on command for a city that still wanted her beautiful.
The front door opened again.
This time, nobody had to look to know trouble had arrived.
The room’s mood changed before Hector Voss stepped fully inside, as if the bar itself recognized expensive danger and checked its pockets.
Levi closed his eyes.
“Please tell me that’s not him.”
Alex looked over his shoulder.
Hector stood in the doorway with rain on his black coat and amusement already on his face.
Alex sighed.
“That’s him.”
Hector Voss entered The Broken Halo like he had never once wondered whether he was welcome anywhere.
The rain had darkened the shoulders of his coat, but somehow made him look more deliberate rather than less. His black hair was slicked back, his suit immaculate beneath the open coat, his pale gray eyes moving over the room with the lazy attention of a man counting exits, debts, and weaknesses in the same glance.
People looked away when his gaze passed over them.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
That was the thing about Hector. He did not make rooms go silent. Silence was too obvious. He made rooms remember what they owed.
Alex stayed behind the bar and watched him cross toward Levi’s stool.
Levi did not turn around.
“Go away,” Levi said.
Hector smiled. “That’s no way to greet an old friend.”
“That was me being polite.”
“How grim. I’d hate to hear fondness.”
Alex took another glass from the drying rack. “Try not to bleed on my floor, either of you.”
Hector looked at her. “Alexandra.”
“Hector.”
“No warm welcome?”
“I charge extra for warmth.”
“I can afford it.”
“I know. That’s why I overcharge you.”
His smile deepened, but his eyes had already moved back to Levi’s bruised jaw and stiff shoulder. The amusement on his face stayed exactly where it was. Alex did not trust that. Men like Hector smiled when they were entertained, angry, bored, or deciding whether someone needed to disappear. The expression meant nothing without the eyes.
And his eyes had sharpened.
“Rough day in public service?” Hector asked.
Levi finally looked at him. “I’m not in public service.”
“No, you’re in whatever gray little hallway the Department puts men when it wants them useful but not visible.”
Levi’s hand tightened around the coffee mug.
Alex saw it.
Hector saw it too.
Alex reached for a bottle from the shelf. “You drinking or threatening?”
“Can’t I do both?”
“Not without paying for both.”
“Bourbon,” Hector said, taking the stool beside Levi. “Something that survived long enough to develop character.”
Alex poured him the mid-shelf bottle.
Hector looked at it.
Then at her.
She slid the glass across. “Character’s overrated.”
For a moment, his smile almost became real.
Levi stared into his coffee like it might open a trapdoor and let him leave through the floor.
Hector lifted his glass but did not drink. “You look terrible.”
“You came all this way to flirt?”
“I sent men to look for a car. I came to see whether you were alive enough to disappoint me in person.”
Levi went still.
Alex’s hand paused beneath the bar.
Not by much.
Enough.
The television above them continued playing Little Starling. On-screen, young Estie Vale stood in a school hallway set, clutching a lunchbox shaped like a star. A boy actor said something that made the studio audience laugh. The caption read [LAUGHTER] even though the little girl on-screen did not look amused until half a second later.
Alex looked from the TV to Levi.
His face had changed again.
Hector followed the glance upward.
For the first time since entering, his expression shifted into something Alex could not immediately name.
Recognition, maybe.
Interest.
Not softness.
Never that.
“Well,” Hector said. “That’s unpleasant.”
Levi’s voice was flat. “Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes, but I had not yet committed the crime.”
Alex set both hands on the bar. “You two want to explain why everyone’s acting haunted by a rerun?”
Hector looked at her. “Isn’t everyone haunted by reruns?”
“No.”
“Then people lack imagination.”
Levi pushed the coffee away and lowered his voice. “What car?”
Hector’s smile thinned. “Ah. Now we’re friendly.”
“What car, Hector?”
Alex did not move.
Bartenders learned how to become furniture when people forgot furniture had ears. She took the towel, wiped the same section of bar, and listened with her whole body.
Hector turned his glass in a slow circle. “Black. No headlights. No plates worth remembering. Last seen vanishing near Thorn and Civic service access.”
Levi’s jaw worked once.
“That all?”
“No. That’s what I’m giving you for free.”
“Why are you looking for it?”
“Curiosity.”
“Try again.”
“Concern.”
Levi gave him a look.
Hector sighed. “Fine. I dislike sloppy threats.”
“That wasn’t a threat.”
“No?” Hector’s gaze dropped briefly to Levi’s shoulder. “A car appears exactly where Daystar steps off an approved route, disappears through a camera dead zone, and the Department produces no formal response. If that isn’t a threat, it is at least an audition.”
Alex stopped wiping.
Daystar.
There it was.
The name hit the bar differently than it hit a television screen. On TV, she was old footage and soft lighting. In Hector’s mouth, she became current. Dangerous. Too close to whatever had bruised Levi and sent him into Alex’s bar looking like he had forgotten how to sleep.
Levi’s voice hardened. “Keep your voice down.”
Hector glanced around the room. “This place has heard worse.”
“This place talks.”
“Only when treated poorly.”
Alex looked at him. “This place is standing right here.”
Hector lifted his glass toward her. “And looking radiant.”
“Try that again and I water your bourbon.”
He seemed delighted.
Levi did not.
“Why do you care?” Levi asked.
That question landed more heavily than the others.
Hector was silent for half a beat too long.
Then he drank.
Alex noticed because Hector did not drink when he wanted the room to think he did. He held glasses. Toyed with them. Used them as punctuation. But this time he actually took a sip.
“Because,” Hector said, setting the glass down, “something is moving before the Gala.”
Levi looked tired of the word before it even finished forming. “What does that mean?”
“It means the Department is nervous. Asterion is tidying corners. Halo is negotiating in rooms where saints should not be seen. Redline files are becoming difficult to keep still. And tonight, a respected professor agreed to attend a memorial he has avoided for years.”
Alex looked at Hector.
That was a new piece.
Levi caught it too. “Professor?”
“Magnus Blackwell.”
Levi’s face darkened. “You’re bringing Singularity to the Gala?”
A man at the far end of the bar glanced over at the name.
Alex stared at Levi.
Singularity.
She knew that name. Everyone did, even if no one said it too loudly around police radios. The hero killer. The gravity man. The professor who looked respectable in university papers and like a warning in leaked street footage.
Hector smiled. “He prefers Professor Blackwell.”
“Of course he does,” Levi said. “That makes it so much better.”
Alex leaned forward. “You’re bringing a wanted vigilante to the Redline Gala?”
Hector’s gaze moved to her. “Alleged.”
“No.”
“Professor.”
“No.”
“Guest,” Hector offered.
Alex stared at him.
Hector lifted one shoulder. “Fine. Complication.”
Levi rubbed a hand over his face, then immediately regretted it when the motion pulled at his shoulder. “You’re insane.”
“Frequently. But not about this.”
“You think walking Magnus Blackwell into a room full of Saints, D.E.A. officials, and Asterion executives is a plan?”
“I think it is a conversation starter.”
“I think it’s how buildings fall.”
Hector’s smile faded a fraction. “Then perhaps everyone should behave.”
The words were light.
The meaning was not.
Alex looked between them and felt the bar shift around her again. Not visibly. Nobody else knew enough to panic. Nessa was still nursing a drink at table four. Mr. Ochoa still watched the TV. The pool-table men still pretended not to listen.
But something had entered the room with Hector and settled beneath the floorboards.
The Gala.
Redline.
Daystar.
A car without headlights.
A professor with gravity in his hands.
Levi looked at Hector. “Do not drag me into whatever you’re doing.”
Hector tilted his head. “My dear Levi, you threw yourself into traffic for a Saint. I’m afraid you arrived before me.”
Levi’s face went still.
That, Alex thought, was too clean a hit.
“Enough,” she said.
Both men looked at her.
She picked up Levi’s coffee, dumped it, and refilled the mug with fresh from the pot. Then she set it down hard enough that the spoon jumped.
“You want to have a secret little disaster meeting, rent the back room.”
Hector looked amused again. “You have a back room?”
“I have a storage closet with a table, two chairs, and a mouse I’ve been pretending not to know about.”
“How intimate.”
“You can sit there, lower your voices, and stop making every regular in this room pretend they aren’t listening.”
Levi shook his head. “Alex, you don’t want this near you.”
She looked at him.
That was the wrong thing to say.
He realized it too late.
Alex set both hands on the bar, leaning in until he had no choice but to meet her eyes. “Trouble walked in here wearing your coat twenty minutes ago. Then worse trouble followed in better shoes. Do not sit on my stool, drink my coffee, bleed on my counter, and tell me what I want near me.”
Levi looked away.
Hector watched her with new interest.
Alex hated that.
She looked at him next. “And you. If this is some Hector Voss performance where everyone in the room becomes a prop, take it somewhere with marble floors and worse music.”
Hector’s eyes gleamed. “You wound me, Alexandra.”
“No, I don’t.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “You don’t.”
For one moment, the mask slipped just enough for Alex to see the calculation beneath it. Not threat. Not yet. Evaluation.
She had been evaluated by worse men.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the card deck beneath the counter.
The jack of spades had slipped loose again.
She felt its corner against her skin.
Hector’s gaze dropped.
Just once.
To her hand.
Then back to her face.
Interesting, his expression said.
Alex pushed the card back without looking.
“Back room,” she repeated.
Levi stood slowly, jaw tight from pain he refused to admit. Hector rose after him with far more grace and far less visible injury. Alex grabbed the ring of keys from under the register and came around the bar.
“I’m staying by the door,” she said.
Levi frowned. “No.”
Alex unlocked the narrow hallway beside the bathrooms. “Yes.”
“This isn’t your problem.”
“It is my bar.”
“That’s not—”
“My bar,” she said again, “is where this conversation is happening. So either I stay close enough to know whether I need to call an ambulance, the police, or an exorcist, or you both leave.”
Hector leaned toward Levi. “I like her.”
“She doesn’t like you.”
“I admire consistency.”
Alex opened the storage room door.
It smelled like cardboard, old lime wedges, cleaning solution, and mouse betrayal. A small round table sat beneath a buzzing light. Two folding chairs leaned against the wall beside stacked crates of beer and a broken karaoke machine Alex refused to throw away because sometimes history deserved punishment.
Hector stepped inside first, because of course he did.
Levi followed, slower.
Alex stayed at the threshold.
From the bar, the TV audio suddenly crackled louder.
Not loud enough to be clear.
Just enough to pull her attention back.
She turned.
On-screen, little Estie Vale stood beneath the painted star-shaped night-light. The caption crawled across the bottom.
ESTIE: DON’T TURN IT OFF. THE DARK REMEMBERS ME.
Alex frowned.
She did not remember that line from the show.
Then the screen flickered gold.
Only once.
The card beneath Alex’s hand twitched.
Behind her, Hector stopped speaking.
Levi came back to the doorway.
Across the bar, Mr. Ochoa lowered his glass.
The television cut to a Gala advertisement: clean music, candlelight, white flowers, Aurelian Knox’s golden face, Celeste Lumos smiling beside him as an adult.
REDLINE REMEMBRANCE GALA — TWO DAYS AWAY
HOPE RETURNS HOME
No one in The Broken Halo spoke.
Not for three full seconds.
Then Alex looked down.
The jack of spades had slid halfway out of the deck again.
This time, she had not touched it.