Last Call
The rag moved in slow circles over the mahogany, and Yuna Claire let her mind drift the way it always did during the lull before eleven, when the bar existed in that strange suspended hour between arrival and consequence. The Blind Hour breathed around her—low amber light pooling over bottles arranged like soldiers on glass shelves, the hum of conversation not yet loud enough to drown thought, the click of heels against reclaimed wood floors that had absorbed two decades of secrets into their grain.
She liked this part of the night best. Before the crowd thickened into something unpredictable. Before the air turned electric with whatever currents ran beneath this place, currents she'd learned to read the way sailors read weather.
The bar occupied a converted warehouse near the harbor district, all exposed brick and Edison bulbs strung across the ceiling like captured stars. From outside, it looked like any upscale establishment catering to a clientele with more money than patience—the kind of place where a cocktail cost more than most people's hourly wage and nobody blinked at that arithmetic. But Yuna had worked there long enough to understand the deeper architecture, the way…
