Priscilla was already rolling when Rhea got the back door open.
She threw herself onto the seat and pulled the door shut as Lola took them around the corner with the headlights off.
The speed would have frightened anyone who didn’t know her, especially in an old Mercedes that needed repairs.
Somehow, though, Lola still managed to make the taxi do as she pleased.
Lola drove it at night for a living.
She kept an open bag of seeds in her lap, cracking them one-handed while holding the wheel loosely with her other hand.
“Babe,” she said, without turning around.
“You’re bleeding on Priscilla.”
Rhea pulled the mask down around her neck and looked at her hand.
There was indeed a cut across her palm, with blood on her sleeve and, inevitably, on Priscilla’s precious seat.
As usual, Lola took the long way around the hill in case anyone was watching the shorter route.
Rhea opened her fist to examine the ring, which had left a small red mark on her palm, just above the cut.
The star in the stone appeared each time they passed under a streetlight, then disappeared again.
It was the right ring, and she knew she should have felt good about that.
Somehow, though, she didn’t.
“Was it the one?” Lola asked without taking her eyes off the road.
“It was the one.”
Rhea closed her hand again.
Lola drove on, letting her sit quietly for another few streets.
“So?” Lola eventually asked.
“There was somebody else there.”
“Somebody else? Who?”
“A man. He wanted the same thing, and we kind of… argued about it.”
Lola cracked a seed.
“Did you hurt him?”
“I bit him.”
“Babe…”
“He had the box. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have time to discuss it.”
“Was he… reasonable about it?”
Rhea thought about that.
“He apologized.”
“What for?”
“For throwing me into a desk, I guess. It was weird.”
Lola laughed so suddenly that the car drifted toward the center line.
She corrected it without looking.
“Oh, I like him.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I like him a little.”
Rhea looked out at the dark lake, where the lights from the far shore were reflected in long, broken lines.
She had meant to leave the next part out, though she found herself wanting to say it aloud.
“He said my mother’s name.”
Lola stopped eating the seeds.
It had been years since anyone had said that name aloud to Rhea.
Even Lola, who usually said whatever came into her head, had always been careful about mentioning it around her.
“How would a burglar know your mother’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
She had been turning that question over ever since leaving the room.
He hadn’t said the name until he saw the knot, which she remembered clearly.
Then he’d looked at her as though she was her mother.
He must have known her mother, and more than that, he must have thought she could still be somewhere out there, alive.
It was the first reason anyone had given her to hope in twelve years, yet thinking about it also made her feel sick.
She couldn’t quite decide which feeling was stronger.
Lola left her at the tram depot at a quarter past three.
“Put something on that hand,” she said through the window.
“Fine.”
Her room was above the old ticket office, reached by an outside staircase that rang under her feet however carefully she climbed.
Inside, it was narrow and very tidy, with a bed, a table, a sink and a kettle.
The only window faced the lake.
From there she could see the seven stars on the roof of the Voss.
The hotel’s sign stayed lit all night, its seven white lights brighter than anything else across the water.
She had chosen the room for that window, with the rent only a secondary concern.
She drew back the curtain covering the wall opposite her bed.
Behind it were seven photocopied photographs pinned in a row, their edges worn from handling.
She set the ring on the table beneath the matching picture, then went to wash her hand.
Afterward, she sat on the bed with her back against the wall, leaving the light off.
She held her phone in her good hand and found the voicemail.
She had kept it for twelve years, transferring it each time she changed phones and saving copies in three different places so it wouldn’t be lost.
She knew exactly how long it lasted and where every breath fell, though that didn’t stop her from playing it again.
Her mother was speaking quickly, with a car engine audible in the background.
She had lowered her voice, as she usually did when she didn’t want someone nearby to hear.
“Rhea, listen. If anything happens tonight… Victor Voss…”
The recording stopped there, without even a click at the end.
Rhea let the phone rest on her knee.
On the nights her mother wasn’t working, they had sat at the kitchen table under the yellow lamp while she taught Rhea about locks.
Her mother had taught her about knots too.
She had been only eight, though she still remembered how pleased she’d been when she finally managed to tie them on her own.
She looked out at the seven stars on the roof of the Voss again and remained there for a long time.
***
She slept for three hours, then woke up thinking about putting the kettle on.
By eight she had showered and ironed a white blouse on a towel spread across the table.
She also changed the bandage on her palm.
The cut had closed into a thin red line overnight.
If she kept that hand turned inward, nobody would notice it.
A letter stood propped against the kettle, where she had left it a week ago.
Across the top were the same seven stars that appeared on the hotel’s sign.
*THE VOSS.
Interview for the position of night concierge.
Nine o’clock.
Please ask at the front desk for Mr.
Graff.*
Although she knew it by heart, she went over the details again, then put it in her bag.
She still had to decide what to do with the ring.
Having broken into so many rooms herself, she couldn’t feel comfortable leaving it there.
After standing with it in her hand for a moment, she took off her left shoe and slipped the ring beneath the insole.
It was uncomfortable, but she decided she could manage.
She usually turned on the small television on the counter only to check the weather.
This morning, though, the news was showing footage of the villa she had broken into just hours earlier.
A police car was parked in the drive, and someone had placed tape across the gate.
A reporter in a camel coat stood outside, apparently delighted to be there.
“Police believe two intruders entered the property during the night,” the reporter said.
“One of them left what has become a familiar calling card. A chocolate, on the pillow.”
So he was the Gentleman.
Rhea had read about him, of course, as everyone had.
He stole from people who had more than they needed and gave what he took to those who didn’t, which the papers seemed to find admirable.
Even his name suited him.
For some reason, that annoyed her more than anything else that had happened all night.
Next came a young man in a crumpled suit, whom the caption identified as DETECTIVE LEO FARROW.
“The second intruder was extremely quick,” he said.
“Very quiet. Honestly, they moved like a nightjar. You don’t see them until they move.”
“A nightjar?” said the reporter.
“It’s a bird.”
Along the bottom of the screen, the headline already read NIGHTJAR STRIKES AT DEAD DEALER’S ESTATE SALE.
Rhea set down her cup.
“I did not,” she told the empty room.