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The Nighthowl Saloon is quiet under the desert night. The neon signs hum and flicker in the windows, throwing pink and blue light across the dimly lit room and reflecting in the smoke-darkened glassware behind the bar. Hoot stands under the light, cleaning the tumblers in slow, practised circles as he talks lazily to Buzz at the counter. Buzz lifts his whisky now and then, the amber liquid catching the light, but his eyes keep wandering to the old photographs behind the bar.
At the tables closest to the wall lamps, the regulars go through their usual routines—gossiping, arguing, exchanging polite smiles and trading remarks sharp enough to cut through the clinking glasses. Lazlo Curious talks to Crystal Vu with his whole body, waving his hands as if tracing constellations no one else can see, while his brother Vidcund keeps his attention on the piano.
Erin Beaker and Kristen Loste are at the table next to theirs, close enough that their voices mix with those of Chloe and Lola Curious-Smith. Their argument rises and falls against the background noise, shifting from sharp to teasing, then dulled by the clink of glasses and the dry rustle of chair legs on the floor. Annie Howell moves smoothly between them, with the weary ease of someone who knows every crooked board, picking up the glasses left behind and wiping the sticky rings from the tables.
I’ve been in Strangetown longer than most people are willing to admit. They claim it is a place where people come to disappear, since the desert erases names as readily as it erases footprints, and the night sky keeps its secrets close. It attracts UFO seekers, ghost hunters, and true believers of all sorts of strange and desperate beliefs. I have seen babies grow into old souls under that harsh white sun. I have watched men and women vanish into graves, legends, and silence.
I’ve lived in Strangetown a very long time.
Except I’m not alive. Not in any way that matters.
My fingers still obey me. They remember what the rest of me has forgotten. They can find the old notes in the dark, strike the same ivory keys, coax the same aching rhythm from the battered piano in the corner. They can make music delicate enough to hush a room and beautiful enough to pull tears from men too proud to wipe them away. Technically, I may be the finest pianist on this filthy little planet.
And yet, every song I’ve played for the last hundred years has carried the same hollow ache beneath each note.
Soul.
You can play the notes, keep perfect time, and for a moment the room can believe that some part of you still burns.
But you can’t play with soul if you no longer have one.
“Hey, Virginya.”
My fingers falter on the keys, and the final chord hangs in the air like smoke reluctant to rise. It trembles through the hollow belly of the old piano before fading into the low murmur of the saloon. I turn and find Hoot watching me from behind the bar, one elbow planted on the polished wood, a damp rag slung over his shoulder like a tired flag.
“Can you play something a little less depressing for a change?” Hoot says, jerking his chin toward the scattered tables and their half-empty glasses. “These people are trying to have a good time.”
Vidcund opens his mouth, a faint protest catching somewhere behind his teeth, but whatever he means to say dies before it can reach the room. He closes his lips again, turns back toward Lazlo and Crystal, and folds himself once more into the blurred warmth of their conversation.
I force my throat to move in the old, human shape of a swallow, though there is nothing in me that needs air, water, or courage. “Erm, yeah. Sure.”
I shuffle through the sheet music spread out over the piano’s weathered lid, the yellowed pages rustling beneath my fingers. I look for something more cheerful, something with a faster rhythm and a smile hidden within the lines, something that could be called “less depressing”. My dissatisfaction grows as I turn page after page. Waltzes, laments, funeral marches, lonely little nocturnes—the evidence is damning.
“Struggling to find something decent, Ginny?” Annie’s voice drifts over my shoulder, light as a match struck in the dark.
I turn toward her, one hand still resting on the yellowed music. “Please stop calling me that.”
Annie is standing directly behind the piano bench, having tucked an empty tray under her arm so the dull metal edge catches a streak of neon from the window. One of her pigtails has come loose and curls against her cheek, while the rag she had been using to wipe the tables is now abandoned at the bar.
She tilts her head, considering the mess of sheet music with a bright, unbothered smile. “Why don’t you play that one written by the deaf guy?”
I stare at her for a beat, letting the silence stretch just long enough to become pointed. “Do you mean Beethoven?”
She snaps her fingers, triumphant, and points at me as though I’ve solved one of Strangetown’s lesser mysteries. “Yeah, that guy.”
I glance back at the piano keys, their worn ivory faces gleaming faintly beneath the saloon’s dim lights. “It’s a little short.”
Annie lays a hand on my shoulder, gentle and unafraid. The warmth of her skin slowly filters through the fabric of my clothes, spreading over the cold place where my body still thinks it belongs. “I always enjoy it when you play that one.”
Something small and unfamiliar tugs at the corner of my mouth before I can stop it. “You do?”
I’d blush if my blood still remembered how to rise.
A strand from Annie’s pigtail brushes my ear as she leans closer, smelling faintly of soap, dust, and the sugared drink someone spilt three tables over. “I do. I don’t know; there’s something about the way you play it.” She pauses, studying me with a softness that makes the room seem quieter around us. “You look almost happy when you play it.”
If she knew what I was, would she still lean in so closely? If she understood how clearly I could hear the bright, living drum of her pulse beneath her skin, would her hand remain so warm and steady on my shoulder?
I turn to look at her. She is smiling softly at me, close enough for the coloured light to catch in her eyes and for the warmth of her breath to stir the dead air between us.
Would she still like me if she knew I was a monster? If she knew about the hunger I keep chained behind my ribs, about the careful little rituals I perform each night to stop myself from tearing this sleepy desert town apart?
I play Beethoven exclusively for her and no one else. The first notes come gently from the worn piano, starting hesitantly before growing brighter as they move through the smoky air. Annie pulls a bar stool near the piano and sits down on it, placing her tray over her knees and watching as if the entire saloon had shrunk down to the space between my hands and her face. While I play, her eyes never leave me; they remain fixed on me, steady and warm, as if she can hear something in the music which I have spent a century believing was lost.
As the last note of the song fades, the sound lingers for a moment before the saloon comes to its senses. Hoot calls Annie back to work, nodding toward tables littered with lipstick-marked glasses, crumpled napkins, and the wet rings left by the melting ice. I turn and notice that Erin, Kristen, Chloe, and Lola have left their seats, leaving behind nearly empty drinks, chairs pushed back at careless angles, and a scattering of Simoleons shining under the neon light as a tip.
At the bar, Lazlo orders another round for himself, Crystal and Vidcund, leaning forward excitedly as he talks to Hoot about some new rumours concerning the Night Beast. The moment he starts speaking, the atmosphere sharpens. Hoot’s jaw tightens, and his hands stop moving; shortly afterwards he begins to speak in low, restlessly hurried remarks about arranging a hunt. Lazlo listens with bright, fascinated eyes and is more interested in studying the Beast than in destroying it. They talk as though monsters make their presence known through claws, tracks, and blood left on the sand. I know better. The oldest monsters learned to stay quietly in familiar rooms.
Annie glares as she walks by, holding her tray against her hip, and her stare is sharp enough to cut glass. Buzz stays slouched at the bar, quiet as his gaze drifts over the faded pictures on the wall while a weak advert goes on from the television above.
The night continues, heavy and uncomfortable. I attempt to get the piano to play some brighter classical music, but every happy phrase sounds wrong. Following his talk with Lazlo, Hoot moves too rapidly, dries the same glass twice, and keeps glancing toward the dark windows.
Hoot slides the last of the now lipstick-free glasses beneath the bar, setting it down with more force than necessary. “Buzz, I don’t suppose Division 47 knows anything about this Night Beast?”
Buzz does not look away from the amber pool of whisky in his glass. He turns it slowly between his fingers, letting the liquid catch the neon in dull, molten flashes. “I’m not at liberty to discuss Division 47’s operations with you.”
“Aw, c’mon, Buzz. How long have we known each other?” Hoot leans across the bar until the wood creaks softly beneath his weight, his voice dropping into the coaxing tone he usually reserves for customers debating one last drink. “Can’t you do an old friend a favour?”
Buzz finally turns his head. His expression barely changes, but something cold and official settles behind his eyes. “If the Night Beast was of any interest to Division 47, do you think you’d have even heard of it?”
Hoot stares at him for a long second, mouth flattening beneath his moustache. Then he tilts his head, irritation sharpening into something almost affectionate. “You are a prick; do you know that?”
Buzz lifts his whisky and takes a measured sip, unhurried as a man signing paperwork over someone else’s grave. The ice clicks once against the glass. “I’ve been called worse.”
Buzz rises from his stool at the first thin notes of my next song, leaving his whisky behind in a ring of amber light, and disappears through the door to the men’s toilets without a word. No one asks where he is going. The saloon is too busy turning restless.
Annie cleared the worst of the mess, then drifted back toward the bar, where Hoot was still talking about the Night Beast. She lowered her voice, kept her tray tucked securely beside her ribs, and said that the creature was nothing but nonsense, a tale told around a campfire with claws added every time anyone repeated it. Hoot, who was wiping the same spot on the counter until it was shiny, maintained that the Beast was the reason why the Nighthowl had only had half a dozen customers on a Friday night. Lazlo and Vidcund started to argue among themselves, Lazlo with a bright look in his eye and full of enthusiasm, Vidcund with a tight mouth and sceptical, while Crystal tried to put reason between them. Still, none of them paid any attention for long.
I continue to play, even though the melody is unevenly woven through the voices that are rising behind me. The piano keys feel cold under my fingertips, some smooth and others rough with age, each note a minor effort to hold the room together as the living tear it apart with fear, curiosity, pride, and disbelief.
Humans can be rather amusing at times. They are so passionately devoted to all sorts of different things: to secrets, to monsters, to rumours, to pride, and to the desire to be correct. Their hearts beat ahead of them, just as lanterns do in the dark—bright, reckless, and painfully alive.
I once was like that, or at least I think I was.
Somewhere behind me, the men’s toilet door creaks open. Buzz does not return to his stool. His footsteps cross the warped floorboards, slow and deliberate, moving closer to the piano.
As I continue to play, I sense a presence behind me. I glance back and see Buzz standing, looking at the photographs above the piano, upright and motionless. He looks from one photograph to the next slowly and deliberately. He does not seem surprised. It is this that terrifies me most; he looks as though a man who already suspects that the answer is correct is checking it. Then his eyes stop.
His face is calm. His pulse is not. It beats faster than it did at the bar, sharp beneath the chatter, too loud in my ears.
I make my mouth arrange itself into something like a smile. The music slips beneath my fingers. “Any requests?”
He glances down at me. The saloon seems to tighten around us.
“Not a fan of classical music?” I ask, aiming for lightness and landing somewhere closer to panic.
Buzz says nothing. His gaze returns to the wall. I know which photograph has caught him: Hoot, Annie, and me behind the bar. Hoot young and grinning—Annie as a child with pigtails and a soda bottle. Me beside them, wearing a different dress and a different hairstyle, but the same face I wear tonight.
Shit.
“You’ve been in Strangetown for a while,” he says.
I keep my eyes on the keys. My fingers keep moving. “My family has.”
The lie is thin. Buzz shifts behind me. One floorboard creaks.
“Your family?” He pauses. “That isn’t your photo on the wall?”
“It’s my mother.”
“Your mother?” he says. “You bear an incredible resemblance to her.”
“I suppose her genes were working overtime.” My voice is too quick.
He doesn’t believe you.
“Virginya Feng,” Buzz says quietly.
My fingers stop, only for half a note; it’s barely anything, but he hears it.
“That was the name on an old town registry,” he continues. “Same street. Same saloon. Same woman in the photograph.”
The room seems to tilt beneath me.
“Strange thing,” Buzz says. “No death certificate.”
The name lands hard. Virginya Feng. My first name. My buried name. No one in Strangetown has said it aloud in a very long time. No one living, anyway.
The piano does not stop. I make sure of that. My hands keep moving. The melody thins, but it survives.
So do I. Barely.
Buzz steps into my peripheral vision. Close. Too close. His eyes leave the photograph. They settle on my face.
I fake everything. Breathing. Blinking. Nervousness. I force my fingers to stumble over one note, just enough to seem human.
Then I realise the mistake. I have been breathing too evenly. Buzz’s eyes drop to my chest. Less than a second. Enough.
I let the next breath catch. Make it flawed. Make it late. His mouth hardens anyway.
Buzz has always been a suspicious man. He’s not always loud or cruel. But he’s built like a locked door. He is one of the few humans in this town I have ever truly feared. Not because I could not kill him.
I could. But killing Buzz would only summon other men with sharper questions, brighter lights and cleaner tools.
“How long have you played piano?”
I answer too quickly. “Since I was five.”
Buzz waits before looking at my hands and then my face. “And how long ago was that?”
The music stops. I look up slowly. “Twenty years ago.”
His eyes narrow. Around us, the saloon keeps arguing. No one looks over.
He chose his moment well.
He reaches for my face. I catch his wrist. His skin is warm and human, and his pulse jumps beneath the surface. He can sense it: my cold fingers, my still skin, the dead thing wearing a woman’s face.
I’ve made a mistake.
He tries to pull free. For one ugly second, I imagine breaking his wrist. Then I let go. Buzz draws his hand back and rubs the place where I held him.
He gives me a small, courteous nod. “Until next time, Virginya.” He pauses. “I’ll bring the rest of the file.”
I give a single nod since I don’t think it’s safe to speak. Buzz is the one to turn away first; he goes back to the bar at the same steady pace he had maintained throughout the night, puts something down next to the whisky he had barely drunk, and then exits through the saloon doors. The saloon doors close behind him with a weary creak of wood and the desert darkness engulfs him.
Buzz has spent his life studying the sky for monsters—things with green skin, silver ships, and distant invasions. Tonight, perhaps at last, he has remembered to look downwards. Occasionally danger doesn’t come with a burst of unnatural blue light; sometimes it is there among the same neon lights as everybody else, plays sad music on a worn piano, and keeps its hunger quiet in the corner of a familiar room.
I set my fingers back on the piano, but no music came. For once, the silence sounded more honest than anything I knew how to play.
Before it could swallow me whole, I pushed back from the bench and crossed to the bar. Talking with Hoot and Annie usually helped me remember how to behave like a person. Annie laughed at something Hoot muttered, bright and unaware, and the sound hurt more than Buzz’s threat.
Instead, I saw what Buzz had left beside his whisky glass.
Not Simoleons.
A photograph.
I knew it before I touched it: the faded border, the cracked corner, the ghost-pale figures standing beneath a sun-bleached sign.
Me, from another lifetime. Same face. Same red hair. Same crooked half-smile. Different name written on the back in a stranger’s careful hand. Buzz had not discovered me tonight. He had come to confirm me.
My reflection hovered faintly in the whisky glass, warped by amber and neon, but present all the same.
And somewhere beyond the saloon doors, Buzz’s car still had not started.