Ireland smells like bread and old stories.
On my second morning, the bakery downstairs opens before the sun even bothers and warm air climbs the stairwell like a rumor. I make coffee in a chipped mug I bought for one euro because it has a crack that looks like a coastline. The window sticks, the way everything sticks here—doors, wet hair, grief. If I jiggle the latch just right, the pane sighs, and the alley outside exhales damp.
I stand there for a long time with the mug between my hands, watching gulls heckle a delivery truck and pretending I'm the kind of person who watches things without measuring exits. The river is three blocks away and loud when the wind wants it to be. The church bells don't ask permission; they tell you what time it is in a voice that assumes you'll obey.
The flat is small: bed, lamplight, chair that squeaks like an opinion. Travis's photo sits in its secondhand frame on the sill. I keep catching it with the corner of my eye and thinking I've seen him move. That's what memory does when you feed it too often—it learns your habits and reaches for them.
I say the new name out loud, just to hear the lie settle. It's tidy. Capable. Paper. It doesn't taste like rust. Good.
Today I need a job.
It turns out you can only live on adrenaline, hospital blood, and spite for so long before your hands want something to do besides shake. I circle ads in a free paper and pretend the ink on my fingertips is a decision. Late-night work helps—keeps my hours aligned with the life I learned to live.
The pub I pick is the kind that smells right: wood polish, spilled stout, rain in coats, laughter like a dare. The sign outside insists on heritage with a kind of theatrical sincerity. Inside, a man my age with a beard that's sworn oaths to gods I don't believe in polishes glasses. He glances up at me and sees what I want him to see: a woman who needs a chance and has a backbone that will carry her through Friday rush.
"You serving or collecting?" he asks.
"Both," I say. "Whichever gets me hired."
He grins. "I'm Declan."
We shake. His eyes do the quick scan people in cities learn early—are you trouble, are you afraid, will you run? He decides I'll carry trays without breaking them and jerks his head toward the back.
By evening, I've learned the register codes and the trick with the tap that keeps it from spitting. My apron smells like a thousand dinners. There's a family that orders chips like it's a sport, a pair of old men conducting a theological debate with coasters, and a woman at the end of the bar who flirts with the idea of flirting with me, then thinks better of it. I like the noise. Cities cover their own heartbeats with it.
"You're quick," Declan says after the first rush, laying a pint the exact way it wants to be laid. "Where'd you work before?"
I offer the version of truth that fits on a napkin. "New York. Nights. Tips were good; people were loud."
He laughs from somewhere honest. "Welcome home, then."
There's a rhythm to service that feels like music nobody hears—eyes on hands, hands on plates, plates finding tables like constellations. Between orders, I practice not flinching when a door opens behind me. I practice smiling like it's a muscle, not a weapon.
Around midnight, two men slip in out of the rain and take the corner booth as if it was waiting for them. I know what they are before the door closes. Not because of fangs—they've learned the human trick of hiding edges—but because the air makes space for their quiet. Predators make rooms notice them, even when the rooms pretend not to.
One has hair like a raven breathed on it, sleek, precise. The other wears his charm like a leather jacket. They don't order for a while. They drink the room first. When I go over, tray light on my palm, the raven-haired one watches my face the way a musician watches a metronome.
"What'll it be?" I ask.
"Whatever you recommend," Leather Jacket says, Irish vowels softened by time somewhere else.
"Stout for him," I say, nodding at Raven, "and whiskey for you—the mean kind."
Leather Jacket laughs. "Ah, she's good."
Raven tips his head the slightest degree, like he's filed me correctly. "And you are?"
"New," I say. Names are a currency I'm saving.
"Welcome to the corner," he says, and he doesn't mean the booth.
When I bring their drinks, they make room on the table by moving nothing. It's a test. I set the glasses down without spilling, without shaking, without making a sound. Raven's mouth does something microscopic that counts as approval.
"First week?" Leather Jacket asks.
"First day."
"To firsts," he toasts, and they drink the way our kind learns to drink: like we've already read the ledger and know what it'll cost.
I pass by the booth enough times to learn their cadence. They don't feed here; the room wouldn't stand for it. They talk in a code the old men with coasters would recognize: history filed under jokes, danger disguised as story. Closing rolls around, rain hammers harder, and they stand without scraping the bench, nodding goodnight like we've promised nothing and everything.
Raven's gaze lingers half a beat. "If you need a locksmith," he says—and it's not a non sequitur—"there's a woman off Lower Abbey who'll change the bolt without asking your name."
I don't say I already changed it. I say, "Thanks," because thanks is a bridge even liars can walk.
I take the long way home. The city wears wet well. Streetlamps turn puddles into moons and the river carries them like a magician who hoards tricks. I check my reflection in pharmacy windows and try to see a person instead of a collection of alarms.
The stairwell to my flat is meaner in the dark. I count steps, test the air, listen through the door before I open it. Inside, it's small and mine. I press two fingers to Travis's photo, a quiet ritual, then take the spare key from my pocket and flip it over my knuckles to prove my hands are steady. They are not, but the key cooperates anyway.
Days learn my shape. The pub, the river, the hospital with the night guard who thinks I'm someone's girlfriend waiting out a shift. I am careful and I am hungry in manageable ways. I learn where to stand on the bus so I can see my own face in the window without seeing anything behind me.
Declan starts giving me extra hours without making a big deal of it. He teaches me how to break up a fight with a towel and a tone. "You do it like you're their disappointed aunt," he says, and one night when two men square off over football and ego, I try it. It works. They apologize to me and to the towel.
Raven and Leather Jacket—whose names, I finally learn, are Ciaran and Padraig—become fixtures in the corner booth. They tip like they're laundering penance. They never leave with anyone, but sometimes a woman will try the edge of their quiet and find it sharp. On my fourth night seeing them, Ciaran asks, almost idly, "You're feeding safely?"
He doesn't ask like a cop. He asks like someone counting exits with me.
"Safely-ish," I say, because bold fits better than afraid. "You?"
He smiles with his eyes only. "Always."
Padraig leans in, conspiratorial. "You should come to a thing."
"A thing," I repeat, unimpressed.
"Not a church," he deadpans. "A gathering. Old house, good music, better whiskey. People who won't make you pretend you're not holding your breath."
I pretend to think about it because pretending is a muscle too. He writes an address on the back of a beer mat and slides it toward me with two fingers. The ink bleeds a little into the paper. The date is a week away. My name is nowhere on it, which is how it should be.
"What's the dress code?" I ask, because asking about clothes is a way to ask about blood without saying the word.
"Black," Ciaran says. "And something you can dance in."
Heat pricks the back of my neck at the thought of music and rooms where I don't have to make myself small to fit the thing inside. I pocket the mat and say, "Maybe."
"Maybe is yes with stage fright," Padraig says, delighted.
I lock up with Declan, exchange the ritual goodnights, and step into the river's breath.
Halfway home, the air changes—bitter, wild, known. My stomach drops out like a trapdoor. I turn too fast and see only rain and the crown of a bus shelter surfing a puddle.
"He's an ocean away," I tell my animal. "He's an echo."
The echo does not answer.