EVENING SHIFT THAT SAME DAY.
Ivy arrived at 6:50, same as always, nodded through by the attendant, coat off and jacket straightened before she reached the floor. Mira was at the entrance with the tablet and the expression she wore when the night was going to be busier than usual.
"Full house. Private booking in room three." She didn't look up. "You're running it."
"Alone?"
"You ran your section alone last week without incident. Yes, alone." She made a note on the tablet. "Four guests. High profile. Don't talk more than necessary and don't pour less than perfectly."
Ivy took the brief and read it twice on her way to room three.
The room was already set. She walked the table anyway, adjusted two things that were technically fine but felt slightly off to her, and was standing correctly when the door opened at seven-fifteen.
Four guests. Two men, two women. They came in with the ease of people who'd been in this room before, settled without being shown where to sit, ordered without looking at anything written down. Ivy worked the first course cleanly. Second course. Drink refills timed well. She was finding the rhythm of private rooms, the particular attentiveness they required, present without being intrusive, anticipating without hovering.
She was clearing the starter plates when one of the women looked up at her.
The woman was somewhere in her late forties. Dark hair, grey wrap dress, the kind of composed that came from years of practice rather than ease. She'd barely spoken during the meal, which Ivy had noted. The quietest one at the table was usually the one paying the most attention.
"You're the one Aiden hired directly," the woman said.
Ivy kept her expression neutral. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Of course not." She studied Ivy for a moment in a way that was assessing without being unkind. "You look like her around the eyes."
Ivy's hands stayed exactly where they were on the plates.
"I'm sorry?" she said.
But the woman had already turned back to the table and the conversation had shifted and Ivy was standing there with two plates and something cold moving through her chest that she needed to put somewhere it wouldn't show on her face.
She finished the service. Professionally. Nothing dropped, nothing said wrong. But when she stepped out of room three her pulse was doing something unreasonable and she stood in the corridor for three seconds just breathing.
'...You look like her around the eyes...'
Her.
---
She found Mira at the service station twenty minutes later.
Mira looked up. Clocked Ivy's face immediately. "What happened ?"
"The woman in room three. Dark hair, grey dress." Ivy kept her voice low. "She said something to me."
"A guest spoke to you and you responded appropriately and moved on. That's the job."
"She said I look like her around the eyes." Ivy held her gaze. "I think she meant my mother."
Mira was still for a moment. Then she set the tablet down with the careful deliberateness of someone making a decision. "Her name is Catriona. She's been coming here for years." A pause. "She knew Claire."
"Does she know what happened to her."
"That conversation goes through Aiden."
"Mira..."
"I mean it. Not my lane." She picked the tablet back up. "Finish your section. Don't go back to room three unless they call for you."
Ivy nodded. Turned to go.
"Ivy." Mira's voice was quieter. "You handled that room well tonight. All of it."
She walked away before Ivy could respond to that, which was very Mira.
Ivy went back to her section and worked the rest of the floor with her face arranged correctly and her mind turning the name over and over.
Catriona. Who knew her mother. Who looked at Ivy and saw something familiar in her eyes.
---
Aiden found her at ten-fifty.
East corridor, final restock. She heard him and kept doing what she was doing.
"Catriona spoke to you," he said.
"She said I look like my mother around the eyes." Ivy closed the cabinet and turned. He was standing in that way he had, close enough to be present, far enough to be deliberate about the distance. "You knew she'd be here tonight."
He didn't answer. Which was its own answer.
"Did you put me in that room on purpose," she said.
"I wanted to see how you handled unexpected contact." He said it plainly. "You handled it well."
"Stop testing me without telling me I'm being tested."
"Alright."
"I mean it Aiden."
"I know you do." Something in his expression was different tonight. Not softer exactly. More present, like he'd moved something aside to be here in this specific moment. "Catriona has agreed to speak with you properly. She has information about your mother, about the period before she disappeared, that I either don't have or can't give you myself."
Ivy looked at him. "Why can't you give it to me yourself."
"Because some of it was told to her in confidence. By Claire." His voice was even. "It's not mine to repeat."
She thought about that. About the careful way he held things that didn't belong to him.
"When," she said.
"She's still in the building. East lounge. She said she'd wait if you wanted to talk tonight." He paused. "It's your choice entirely."
"What's the catch."
"Catriona is many things. Trustworthy isn't straightforwardly one of them." His eyes held hers. "She cared about your mother. That's real. But she's also a woman who understands the value of information and how to use it." A beat. "Don't give her more than she asks for."
Ivy absorbed that. "You're sending me to talk to someone you're warning me about."
"I'm making sure you go in with your eyes open." The corner of his mouth shifted slightly. Not quite a smile. "Which is more than most people get in this building."
She looked at him for a moment longer than she needed to. Then she straightened her jacket.
"East lounge," she said.
"East lounge."
She started down the corridor. His voice came after her, quiet.
"Ivy."
She stopped.
"She's going to tell you things that are difficult." He said it carefully. "Come find me after. Before you leave tonight."
She didn't turn around. Just nodded once and kept walking.
---
Catriona was exactly where Aiden said she'd be.
Sitting in one of the curved leather chairs with a cup of tea, unhurried, like she had all the time in the building and none of it was being wasted. She looked up when Ivy walked in and something in her face settled, like she'd been uncertain Ivy would come and was quietly relieved that she had.
"Sit down," Catriona said.
Ivy sat.
They looked at each other for a moment. Two women in a warm quiet room, one carrying sixteen years of questions and one apparently carrying some of the answers.
"You look like her," Catriona said again. Softer this time, without the table of guests around her. "Around the eyes and something in the way you hold yourself. Like you're always slightly ready for something."
...My mother stood like that too..
"Tell me about her," Ivy said.
Catriona wrapped both hands around her cup. "Claire was one of the most perceptive people I've ever met. She could read a room before she'd fully entered it." She looked at Ivy steadily. "I imagine that's familiar."
Ivy said nothing. Which was its own answer.
"She was frightened the last time I spoke with her properly. Not visibly, she was too controlled for that. But I could feel it underneath everything she said." Catriona paused. "She told me she was going to run. She didn't say where. She said there was one person she trusted to keep something safe for her." A beat. "She meant you."
"She meant Aiden," Ivy said.
"She meant the promise she'd asked him to keep." Catriona looked at her. "But yes."
The lounge was quiet around them. Outside this room Velvet House continued its late evening rhythms.
"There's something else," Ivy said. She could feel it. The shape of something being held back.
Catriona set her cup down.
"Yes," she said. "There is."