You are sure that you hear noises in the apartment next to yours sometimes. It is always at odd hours of the night; times when no one should be awake. Sometimes it is snatches of a woman singing, while other times it sounds like someone dancing. Once, you think you heard someone whistling.

This is Nimue's Bar.

Kaia skips through her apartment door, doing a little twirl before tripping over her bed. She gets up, cursing good-naturedly, and starts puttering around the kitchen, taking out knives to make herself dinner. It had been a good night. She had absolutely trounced Nimue in a game of pool, something which, due to Nimue's impossibly good eye-hand coordination, has never happened before. Ernie had almost remembered her nickname when she brought him his drink, and the dent in the bar had finally been repaired. The only twinge of regret she has is that she and Dirk are still awkward around each other, but she tries not to let it bother her too much. They've had disagreements before; it would all be fine. She turns around to grab some ginger from her alphabetized spice drawer.

“Nice place you have here,” Officer C says.

He is sitting on her bed, which due to the size of her apartment means he is sitting within arm's reach of Kaia. She springs backwards, flattening herself into the corner of her kitchen.

He raises a hand and taps his sunglasses, behind which she can dimly see red points of light. “Hey now, I'm not going to hurt you.” The way he says it, she can practically see the word “yet” dancing around his head.

Kaia nods, not moving from her corner. “What are you doing in my house?”

“I was wondering if you had thought about my offer,” he says, picking up the picture by her bedside and examining it. His movements are languid and self-assured. While Kaia quivers in fear, the policeman is the picture of compete ease.

“Don't touch that,” Kaia says sharply, before she can stop herself.

“My deepest apologies.” He sets it down, but at an angle, so that it does not line up with the edge of the desk. This bothers Kaia more than it should.

“I've thought about what you said,” Kaia says. She bites her lip. Even though she's been so adamant about this with Dirk, now that the decision is here in front of her it's suddenly so much more real. Can she really work for the Circle? They have been oppressing people like her best friend for years.

Then she thinks about having people able to remember her face again, and it's all worth it. “Yes. I'll do it. What will I be doing?”

“Exactly five days from now, you will receive a package in you mailbox, and a slip of paper with an address and a time. Go to that address at the given time and deliver the package to a contact who will be waiting there.”

“That's it? Why me?”

Officer C grins. “This delivery isn't exactly something I want people knowing about, if you catch my drift. You know better than I do that perhaps one in a thousand people can recall any details about a shade after leaving their presence. You're very useful.”

It irks Kaia to be referred to as “useful,” but she doesn't say anything. Officer C gets to his feet and steps over to the window, whistling Turkey in the Straw as he goes. “One last thing,” he says, and hooks his ring finger around the edge of the blinds. Kaia feels cold sweat bead all across her body. He tilts his finger, and the weak light of dawn begins to inch across her apartment. “Because of your status as a shade, you're the only one that will remember this deal other than me. That makes you both a liability and liable for what happens.” He continues to pull on the blind and the sunlight continues to sweep across her room, creeping over her bedspread and bouncing off the neat stacks of plates. Kaia works herself farther into the corner, breathing heavily. “If you attempt to double cross me or somehow mess this up, there will be no one to stop me from making your life a very permanent Hell. Do I make myself clear, Miss Sommers?”

Kaia nods rapidly, not daring to make a sound. The light has almost reached her legs.

“I'm glad we understand each other.” Officer C lets the blinds drop back into place with a crash, sending bars of light dancing across the room. Kaia screams and throws herself behind the bed, desperately trying to cover her exposed skin.

When she forces herself to look nearly ten minutes later, Officer C has gone, and her blinds have returned to their normal position. She unsteadily gets to her feet, adjusting the paint-covered picture back to its original position. She returns to the counter to make dinner, hand shaking as she wields the knife. When she turns on the radio to distract herself, a crackling rendition of Turkey in the Straw fills the apartment.