When everyone disappeared, it wasn’t the hotel clerk who waved them over.

Instead, a woman stepped out onto the balcony of the hotel above the ROOMS sign and lifted her hand like she was hailing a friend across a street she owned.

Her smile was the first thing that Sera noticed. Bright, easy, it was the kind you remembered from years when things made sense. Her skin smooth as porcelain, not a pore to be seen. Her hair was pinned back in a bun neatly, and her eyes reflected more light than they took in.

Sera liked her right away.

"Don’t mind him," she called out, tipping her head toward where the sheriff had disappeared back into his office. "He’s always like that."

Sera didn’t move at first, just continued to watch the girl like she had found a previously undiscovered species. She didn’t quite know what to do with her, but didn’t want to look away just in case she disappeared.

The street stayed empty. Doors shut. Curtains still. Zubair kept the engine idling and watched the angles.

Elias folded his map and tucked it under his arm. Lachlan chewed the last of his jerky and didn’t spit the tough bit into the dust.

Alexei stood with his rifle low, the barrel turned off the street and toward the hotel windows, like he expected those to shoot first.

The woman laughed softly, as if something private had just pleased her. "We don’t get many outsiders. Or really any. But that’s fine. We have you now." She added a half-curtesy as if remembering manners too late. "I’m Mae."

Sera started up the steps with Luci at heel. The boards didn’t creak under their combined weight. Instead, they felt like they were made out of a material a thousand times stronger than mere wood.

Mae leaned on the balcony rail and waited for Sera to make her way up.

"You’re older than you look," Sera said.

Mae’s smile widened, then calmed. "You’re sharper than you look."

Alexei reached the top step a breath behind Sera and set himself off her shoulder, watching Mae’s hands, then her throat, then the shift of her weight.

"Everything about this is a trap," he grunted, his tone barely conversational and flat. "How can it be the twenty-second century down the road, but here it’s a museum? Either everyone is lying, or we’re insane."

Mae’s eyes sparkled, amused. "We can’t lie," she said lightly. "So my vote is insanity." Her tone tilted. "Or the sheriff loves the eighteen-hundreds and makes us act in his play."

Lachlan snorted. "That tracks."

Sera tipped her head. "Can’t lie?"

"Nope. It’s next to impossible for us to," Mae said happily with a shrug. "But we can twist things to our advantage. Can’t give people too much leverage against us, now can we?"

Zubair stayed at street level, one hand on the wheel, the other on the door. He didn’t call up to them. He didn’t need to. His posture said: count, measure, leave when it turns.

Mae lifted a palm, the welcome settling into something more precise. "All joking aside," she continued, "I need you to listen to this part and don’t forget what I say. When you enter your room, don’t leave. No matter what you hear, no matter what you think you see out the window, you stay in your room. Only come out when you hear the church bell."

"Not even for you?" Sera asked, curious, not mocking.

Mae’s smile thinned. "Especially not for me."

"Why?"

"Because the ears play tricks," Mae said. "The bell doesn’t."

Elias came up the stairs, map under his arm, eyes on Mae. "Who set those rules? The Sheriff? You?"

Mae shook her head. "The town. We keep what keeps us."

Alexei’s gaze slid to the curtains behind Mae. "What about the windows?"

Mae’s voice softened. "Stay away from them. Leave the curtains alone."

Sera’s mouth tugged. "That’s like telling a child not to open the closet that has all the good secrets and all the good cookies."

"It’s not a closet," Mae said. "It’s the wrong side of a mirror. You look for too long and it looks back. Then you won’t know which side you’re on when the bell rings."

Luci’s ears twitched. He turned his head toward the church, then back to Mae. He didn’t growl. He didn’t wag.

"What happens between now and before the bell?" Elias asked.

Mae exhaled. Happiness dropped out of her face like someone had pulled a string.

For a moment there was nothing cute about her at all. She looked like a person carrying weight and trying not to show it. "You won’t see it. If you do what I said."

"And if we don’t?" Alexei asked.

"Then you’ll see it, and it will see you," Mae replied. "And that is more permanent than you think."

Sera tasted the air. Same wrong stillness. Same held pressure. "You’re strung tight," she observed.

"Everyone is," Mae replied, her smile returning. "It’s how we stay in one piece."

The clerk opened the lobby door downstairs, as if he’d been waiting for a cue. "Rooms are ready," he said, voice steady as a metronome. "Ring once if you need sheets."

"Not until the bells," Zubair called out from the street.

Mae’s eyes flicked to him and back. "He’s a smart one."

Sera leaned an elbow on the balcony rail, close enough to Mae to read the skin at the corner of her eye. Not a line. Not a pore. "What’s the price, Mae?"

Mae blinked once. "Price?"

"There’s always a price for everything," Sera explained, cocking her head to the side. "You give a warning. You get something back."

Mae glanced toward the sheriff’s office. "I don’t want your names on the wrong list."

"Which list is the right one?" Sera asked. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"The one you keep yourself," Mae answered.

Alexei’s mouth tilted, not quite a smile. "She’s dancing around the truth," he said in his mother tongue.

Mae’s eyes cut to him. "I told you," she said in English, bright again. "We can’t lie."

"That isn’t the same as telling the truth," Alexei replied.

Mae accepted that with a small nod. "It’s the same enough for you to stay alive."

Elias lifted the map like proof of something. "Perdition isn’t on anything printed in the last hundred years."

Mae laughed softly. "I don’t think we fit on paper."

"Or time?" Elias pressed.

Mae glanced at the fixed sun and shrugged. "Time minds its own business here. You should, too."

Down on the street, two men in dusters crossed from the saloon to the feed store.

Their steps matched exactly.

Their hats tipped the same degree when they passed under the hotel’s shadow.

"Show us the room," Sera said at last. "We’re not going anywhere."