Chapter 8: Tab Twelve

We sprang apart.

"We can see you," said Aksel.

"We are not looking," said Babi, with her eyes quite obviously fixed on the screen. "We are simply here."

"Goodnight!" said Soren, and he turned off the tablet with a fingertip.

The Back Room went very quiet.

"It's one o'clock in the morning," he said, to the wall.

"You're on shift until four."

"I know when I'm on shift."

"Good."

Neither of us moved for a long time.

Then I took the binder under my arm and went up the stairs with my face on fire.

On Thursday at ten the tour bus pulled up, and I stood in my doorway holding a fresh copy of Tab 12 against my hip.

The tourists swung their phones up.

The guide announced the Doorway Duel.

Across the Feud Line, Soren stepped out of the Vinter's door, folding a small white card in his fingers.

He looked at me for a moment and then at the card.

He had never looked so uncomfortable in his life.

THURSDAY, said Tab 12. GOSSIP, REGARDING COUSIN.

"I hear Zeman's cousin," Soren said, loudly and clearly, to the middle distance, "uses margarine."

The tourists gasped.

"I have no cousin," I said.

"Then I hear your hypothetical cousin uses margarine."

"I hear Vinter's cousin," I said, and I leaned on the door frame, "was seen leaving the walk-in open."

The most terrible silence fell over the Vinter's side of the street.

"That," said Soren, "is slander."

"Is it?"

"It's possibly true," he said, honestly.

The crowd screamed with delight.

I tried not to look at him.

He tried not to look at me.

Under all the nonsense, he was watching my mouth.