The Count That Answered

Odessa left the door open because closing it would not put the party outside again. The thirteenth rule had made that plain. The red line beneath the threshold had faded to the color of old rust, but the numbered figure remained just inside it, close enough that she could see the dried gray fibers clinging to its sleeves.

Roy was still on his knees beside pump four. One hand pressed against the pavement. The other lay across his chest, empty fingers curled around nothing.

“Roy,” Odessa called.

His head lifted. His face looked older than it had a minute earlier. “Don’t come out.”

“I’m not asking what you want.”

“That’s good.” He tried to stand and failed. “Wanting is how it gets a direction.”

The party turned toward him. The black marks on its face shifted in narrow columns. Odessa could not read them now. They moved too quickly, correcting and recopying themselves beneath the skin.

“Carrier remains outside,” it said.

Roy looked at Odessa. “That’s not me talking.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

She did not answer. The question had not been the one. It had been ordinary, and that was what made it dangerous. The Nightjar had always hidden its teeth inside ordinary questions.

Femmie came around the counter carrying the coffee urn. She stopped three steps from the party and held the handle with both hands. The machine behind her hissed again. Its reservoir was visibly empty, the glass marked with a dry brown line. Still, dark coffee filled the urn, rising without a sound.

“Serve it,” the party said.

“To whom?” Odessa asked.

Femmie shot her a look. “Dess.”

The party’s head tilted. “The party has arrived.”

“That tells me where you are,” Odessa said. “It doesn’t tell me what you drink.”

“Whatever is owed.”

Odessa studied its hands. The fingertips were hers in shape but not in color, each one marked with a small black numeral. The remainder from Roy’s cup had joined it, or had been swallowed by it. She had felt the thing strike her chest. Since then, the party had lost the shallow resemblance to her face. It had become something assembled from names and leftovers.

She took a mug from the rack. Her hand did not shake, though the handle scraped against the saucer when she set it down.

“Coffee,” she said. “Fine.”

“Don’t,” Femmie said.

“If it’s owed, it gets served.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Odessa filled the mug. The coffee was black and hot enough to send up a thin veil of steam. She put it on the counter between them, not close enough for the party to reach without taking another step.

The figure did not move toward it. Instead, it looked past the mug at the laminated card.

“Who is keeping count?” it asked.

Its voice had changed. The first time it had spoken, the words had sounded like a message played through a bad speaker. Now the voice was Odessa’s own, taken from some private place she had never heard recorded. It had her clipped vowels. It had the slight upward turn she used when dealing cards to a drunk who thought he had been cheated.

Odessa kept her mouth shut.

Femmie’s fingers tightened on the urn. Roy called something from outside, but the glass and the pumps broke it into pieces. The phone behind the counter rang once.

Nobody moved.

The party touched the mug. Its fingers stopped an inch above the handle.

“Who is keeping count?” it asked again.

Odessa looked at the card. The thirteenth rule sat beneath the others in black ink. No fourteenth line appeared. Not yet.

“Take the coffee,” she said.

The party lowered its hand. “That is an answer.”

“No. It’s service.”

The phone rang a second time.

Femmie turned toward it, then stopped herself. Her eyes stayed on Odessa. “The third one means we’ve gotten something wrong.”

“I remember.”

The party’s fingers closed around the mug. The porcelain remained intact, though the black marks on its hand spread onto the handle like wet ink.

“It is keeping count,” the party said.

The card lifted from the counter.

Odessa moved before she could think better of it and caught the edge. Femmie grabbed the opposite corner. The fresh ink appeared anyway, dark strokes pressing through the laminated surface from within.

THE COUNT MAY NAME ITS KEEPER.

Below it, a blank space opened. The list seemed to be waiting for a name.

Femmie pulled the card toward herself. “Don’t let it finish.”

“How?”

“Make it choose.”

The phone rang a third time.

Every light in the store went out. The coffee machine stopped. The pumps vanished behind the windows, leaving only the red glow at the threshold and Roy’s pale shape on the pavement.

Odessa dropped behind the counter. Femmie was already there, crouched beside the register. The card lay between them, its unfinished line faintly visible in the dark.

Something touched the front door from outside.

It sounded like Roy’s knuckles. Then like Femmie’s. Then like Odessa’s, tapping the exact rhythm she used when waiting for a blackjack player to decide whether to hit.

“Count,” Femmie whispered.

Odessa pulled open the drawer. The till was still there, though the bills had become unfamiliar, their faces blurred into pale ovals. Coins filled the compartments. She counted by touch, refusing to look toward the windows.

“One dollar. Two. Three quarters. Four. Five…”

The tapping changed to scratching.

At twenty-seven, she found the doorway coin. It was hot enough to burn her fingertips. She nearly dropped it, then held on. The tiny stamped door had opened in the metal. Beyond it lay not darkness but a strip of desert under a white, impossible sky.

The party spoke from behind the counter. “You are counting what belongs to me.”

Odessa continued. “Six. Seven. Eight.”

“That is not the true number.”

She reached the pennies. One was dated 1959. Another had no date at all. Beneath them lay a black plastic token stamped with a numeral she could not identify.

“Thirty-six,” she said.

The scratching stopped.

For the first time since arriving, the party seemed uncertain. Odessa heard it in the silence that followed. Not fear. A pause in its accounting.

Femmie leaned close. “What did you count?”

“Thirty-six pieces.”

“That isn’t the question.”

“No.” Odessa closed her hand around the doorway coin. “But it made it ask again.”

The lights returned.

The party stood on the customer side of the counter. The mug was gone from its hand. Coffee ran in a thin line from the corner of its mouth, though it had no visible lips now, only a seam beneath the nose.

The card lay flat. The unfinished rule had completed itself.

THE COUNT MAY NAME ITS KEEPER, BUT THE KEEPER MUST BE PRESENT.

Under that, in smaller writing, someone had added a name.

ODESSA LARKIN.

The phone began to ring again.

Before anyone could move, the front door opened. Mrs. Gable entered carrying a folded umbrella despite the clear desert sky. She wore the same blue coat as always, buttoned to the throat. Her gaze passed over Roy, the open doorway, and the marked party without stopping on any of them.

“Four o’clock?” she asked.

The wall clock showed 4:00.

Femmie straightened. “You’re early.”

“No, I’m not.” Mrs. Gable placed two old coins on the counter. “Ticket.”

Odessa took one from the rack. Her fingers felt numb around it.

The party turned toward Mrs. Gable. “Who is keeping count?”

Mrs. Gable looked at Odessa. “Not you, if you can help it.”

The answer was too close. Odessa reached for the scratch ticket and held it out.

Mrs. Gable did not take it. She listened to the phone ringing behind them. Once. Twice.

“Let it ring,” she said. “It knows the clerk now.”

The third ring began.

Mrs. Gable folded the ticket in half and pressed it into Odessa’s palm. “Make the thing say its own name before dawn.”

Then she placed one cold coin over the ticket. Its surface fogged the plastic wrapper from beneath.

Odessa looked down. The coin bore no face, no date, and no doorway. It bore a single word pressed into the metal so deeply that the letters had split apart.

COUNTER.

The party leaned over the counter. In Odessa’s voice, it asked once more, “Who is keeping count?”

This time, something behind the store answered.