Ravens at the Midnight Bar - Part 1

By Mireya Sloan There are invitations a journalist accepts because they might advance her career, invitations she accepts because curiosity has overwhelmed good judgment, and invitations written in black ink on thick crimson paper that arrive without a stamp, without a return address, and with a single raven feather pressed beneath the words: Come at nine. Do not bring anyone. Vespera dislikes surprises. That was how I found myself standing beneath the iron awning of a narrow townhouse on the edge of the city, watching rain slide across windows so dark that they reflected nothing, not the passing headlights, not the streetlamps, and certainly not the increasingly nervous woman waiting on the doorstep. The woman was me. Before I could knock, the door opened. “You must be Mireya.” Celia Arden stood in the entrance wearing a soft cream blouse, dark tailored trousers, and no shoes, which immediately made her appear far more ordinary than any woman living with the creature responsible for the incident now called the Midnight Bar Panic. “I was told not to arrive early,” I said. “You are forty seconds late.” “I thought that might be safer.” Celia smiled. “It probably was.” She stepped aside, allowing me into a hallway lined with black wood, antique mirrors, and framed paintings in which ravens appeared so vividly rendered that I found myself checking whether their eyes followed me. They did. At least one of them did. Celia noticed. “Don’t stare at that one for too long,” she said. “Why?” “She becomes competitive.” I looked away immediately. The house was not the grotesque lair I had expected, but something far more unsettling: a beautiful, carefully maintained home filled with warm lamps, old books, expensive furniture, and little signs of shared domestic life—a pair of reading glasses beside a half-finished novel, two coffee cups resting on a tray, and a black silk shawl draped untidily across the arm of a chair. “That belongs to Vespera?” I asked. “The shawl or the book?” “The shawl.” “Yes. She leaves things everywhere and then accuses the ravens.” “And the book?” “Mine. Vespera claims novels are stories written by mortals who are afraid to admit what they really want.” “What does she read?” “Obituaries.” Celia said it so casually that I laughed before realizing she was serious. She led me into a vast sitting room where tall windows overlooked the rain-soaked city, and where three ravens perched silently along the mantelpiece, each one watching us with the focused attention of suspicious relatives. “This is where you live?” I asked. “This is where we argue, reconcile, entertain, threaten officials, and occasionally watch television.” “What do you argue about?” Celia considered the question. “Noise, mostly. She likes thunderstorms indoors. I do not.” A raven clicked its beak. “And the terrorizing of public places?” “That too.” Celia poured tea into a delicate cup and handed it to me, although I noticed she did not pour one for herself. “You were with her at the Midnight Bar,” I said. “I was.” “Did you know what she intended to do?” “I knew she was angry.” “That is not quite the same thing.” “With Vespera, it often is.” She sat opposite me, drawing one leg beneath herself, her posture relaxed even as the ravens shifted above her. According to official accounts, the evening had begun with a disagreement between Vespera and the bar manager, although the surviving witnesses could not agree on whether the dispute concerned an insult, a refused table, or a man who had placed his hand on Celia’s back. “It was the hand,” Celia told me. “He touched you?” “He guided me aside as though I were furniture, and Vespera saw it.” “And then?” “She asked him to apologize.” I remembered the photographs: shattered glass, overturned tables, red-black smoke curling around chandeliers, and hundreds of ravens pouring through a ceiling that had never opened. “He refused?” “He laughed.” “That seems unwise.” “It was profoundly unwise.” Celia’s expression changed then, not into fear exactly, but into the distant look of someone replaying a familiar disaster and wondering whether she had forgiven it or merely learned to live beside it. “Vespera stood very still,” she continued, “and that is always the moment people misunderstand her, because they believe stillness means restraint, when usually it means she has stopped considering restraint.” “What did you do?” “I touched her arm and said, ‘Not everyone in the room, darling.’” “Did that help?” “It reduced the number of ravens.” “From how many?” Celia looked toward the mantelpiece. “One thousand, perhaps.” One of the birds gave a proud little shake of its feathers. “You sound almost amused by it,” I said. “I wasn’t amused that night.” “But you stayed.” Her eyes met mine. “Yes.” “Why?” The room seemed to grow quieter, although the rain had intensified beyond the windows. “Because the version of Vespera strangers meet is not the woman I wake beside,” Celia said. “They see the horns, the eyes, the birds, the temper, and they assume there is nothing beneath any of it except cruelty, but I know the woman who once spent three nights trying to repair a music box because it had belonged to my mother, and the woman who pretends she dislikes my cooking while eating every bite, and the woman who sits beside my bed whenever I am ill because she does not sleep and cannot understand why I would want her to leave.” “That does not erase what she does.” “No,” Celia said quietly. “Love does not erase anything. That is one of the difficulties.” For the first time since entering the house, she looked tired. “Are you frightened of her?” “Sometimes.” The honesty of her answer unsettled me more than denial would have. “When?” “When she is angry and I cannot reach her. When she disappears for hours and returns with blood on her sleeve that she refuses to explain. When she becomes so ancient that I can hear it in the way she speaks, and I remember that my entire lifetime is a brief inconvenience compared with hers.” “And she accepts you speaking publicly about this?” “She invited you.” “That is not the same as permission.” “No,” Celia agreed. “It is closer to curiosity.” “About the article?” “About you.” A sound came from the upper floor—not footsteps, but the slow scrape of something sharp moving along the railing. Every raven in the room turned its head toward the staircase. Celia did not. “Is she here?” I whispered. “She has been here the entire time.” I set down my tea, suddenly afraid that the shaking cup would betray me. “You said you were showing me the house.” “I am.” “And Vespera?” “She wanted to know whether you would ask honest questions before she decided whether to meet you.” A shadow crossed the upper landing. It was too tall to be Celia’s, too narrow to belong to any ordinary person, and crowned by the unmistakable curve of horns. I felt fear then, pure and cold, but beneath it came something more shameful and impossible to deny: excitement, the terrible thrill of realizing that the story was no longer about a demon I had researched from a safe distance, but about a woman standing just beyond the light, listening to every word I said. Celia rose and held out her hand. “Would you like to see the rest of the house?” I stared at the staircase. “Is she waiting upstairs?” Celia’s smile was affectionate, nervous, and just a little wicked. “Yes.” “And what happens when I meet her?” “That,” she said, “depends entirely on whether she likes the article.”