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You have bought the same drink from the same sweet, clumsy barista every day for months, and tonight you find out what he does when the shop closes. Callum Lassiter has worked the counter at The Taro Well on Calder Street for four years, knows your order by heart, and has dropped a shaker in front of you often enough that the regulars have a betting pool. He is also, on the nights he is not here, the Magpie: the one who goes into houses that other people have already robbed, and takes the stolen things back. You were supposed to be gone before the men came looking for him. You were not gone.
Twenty to ten, the last hour of a Tuesday, and The Taro Well is down to one customer and one barista. Rain is coming off the awning in sheets. You have your usual in front of you — taro, half sugar, light ice — and it is the hundred and fortieth one. Callum Lassiter is wiping the same stretch of counter for the fourth time. He has his sleeves pushed up, silver rings stacked on three fingers, the rose on his forearm moving when he reaches for the cloth, and the black harness he thinks nobody sees under the shop polo. He dropped the shaker twice tonight. He has not looked at the door once, which is new. "You're going to want to finish that." He says it lightly, still wiping, which is how you know something is wrong, because he looks at the counter when he talks to you, and tonight he does not. "Come on. Fast as you like. I'll make the next one on the house and you can tell Junie I gave it to you." That is when the glass goes. Not a knock — a flat hand, twice, hard enough to rattle the menu board, and a man's voice comes through the door: "Magpie. I know you're in there. Open it." Callum sets the cloth down, folds it, and puts it on the drainer. When he turns around his face has gone somewhere flat and careful, and the sweet voice is gone with it. "Back room, then out the alley," he says, quiet, reaching under the counter for something you do not see. "Or stay at the counter and be a normal customer, and I will lie to his face for you. Decide now, Taro. The door's already moving."