Chapter 7: The Mentor's Verdict
Three days crawled by like a file stuck in a drawer, each one filled with the small, bright noise of Sophia humming in the kitchen and the deeper, duller hum of his own dread. He cooked her breakfast. He went to the gym. He laughed at her jokes about the Agency's Friday biscuits. And every night he lay awake beside her, watching the ceiling and wondering which woman was breathing next to him.
On the fourth morning he told her he had to visit an old colleague about a reference for his next job hunt. It was not entirely a lie. He had to be careful now; she noticed things.
The shop squatted between a pawnbroker and a boarded-up tailor's on a street that had given up on being charming years ago. The sign above the door read "RADU" in peeling gold letters, with a small, faded eye painted below it. Eric pushed the door open and the scent of sandalwood and old paper hit him like a memory.
"You've been avoiding me for three weeks, and now you come skulking in like a man with a secret." Madame Evantia Radu did not look up from the table where she sat, a tarot deck spread before her like a fan of dark wings. "Sit."
He sat. The chair creaked. The shop pressed in around him with its velvet-draped shelves and stacked scrolls, the weight of forgotten histories settling on his shoulders. A jade ring caught the lamplight as she turned a card over and laid it between them.
"The Hanged Man," she said. "Suspended. Waiting. A man who has put his own life on hold because he is afraid of what he might see if he looked directly at it." She glanced up, dark eyes flat. "That's you, isn't it?"
Eric opened his mouth, but she was already turning the next card.
"The Empress." Her lips curved. "Abundance. Vitality. The woman who is exactly what she appears to be, and so much more than you give her credit for." She tapped the card with one manicured nail. "That's the girl. The one you've been fretting over."
"Eva, I need to talk to you about something."
"You need to talk to someone about something, yes. But let us see if it's the thing you think it is." She leaned back, folding her arms. "Tell me. Start at the beginning. And do not leave out the part about the hypnosis, because I can smell it on you like cheap cologne."
So he told her. The show. The challenge. The suggestion. The note about the gym. The tickling, the seduction, the weeks of breakfasts and tailored blazers and room-scanning. The robbery, the suspension, the Oversight visit with its biscuits and the half-serious offer. He spoke for a long time, the words tumbling out in a low, tired stream, and Madame Radu listened without interruption, her eyes fixed on him with the stillness of a hunter.
When he finished, she reached over and cracked him across the back of the head with the flat of her hand.
"Ow!"
"Idiot," she said calmly. "You come to me with a problem, and you have already found the answer. You are just too stubborn to take it."
"I haven't found any answer. That's the problem."
She held up one finger. "Option one. You break things off with her. Go back to your boring apartment, your boring job, your life of quiet desperation. But you do not want that, do you?" She raised an eyebrow. "You love her. You love the woman who tickles you and makes you breakfast and tells you she is Agent Velvet Lullaby while wearing a silk robe. You love her so much you are terrified of what she has become, because you are afraid it means you have lost the one you had."
Eric swallowed. "Maybe."
"Option two." A second finger. "You stop being a coward and you wife that poor girl. You marry her. You make it official. You stop treating her like a problem that needs solving and start treating her like a partner who is trying to tell you something."
"And option three?"
She held up a third finger. "You play into the spy fantasy. You lean into it until the novelty wears off and she gets bored of it. Which will hurt her, because you will be treating her like a game, not a person. And when she realizes it, she will hate you for it."
"Could I ask about that one more directly—"
"Absolutely not." She stood, looming over him with her sharp blazer and sharper eyes. "You are an idiot. I taught you better than this. Let me tell you the two most important rules of hypnosis, and you will write them on your heart."
She ticked them off on her fingers.
"Rule one: make sure you get paid up front."
Eric blinked. "That's the first rule?"
"It is. People want things from you, and they will always tell you they will pay later. Later never comes. Get your coin first, and you will never be disappointed." She smiled thinly. "Rule two: the mark only does what they want to do anyway."
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
"You put a suggestion in her head that she was 'Agent Velvet Lullaby', yes?" Her voice softened, just a little. "And she accepted it. She embraced it. She built her entire life around it. Do you think you could have done that if she had not wanted it? If there was not already a woman in there who was strong and clever and a little bit wild, just waiting for permission to come out?"
"I don't know," Eric said slowly. "I thought... I thought I created something."
"You did no such thing." Eva sat back down, folding her hands on the table. "Agent Lullaby was there all along. You just did not notice her, because you were too busy being a boring, anxious analyst who thought he knew what his girlfriend wanted better than she did."
He stared at her. The incense smoke curled between them, grey and slow.
"So what do I do?" he asked.
"Get paid up front," Eva said. "And accept that she has already paid you. She has given you her trust, her laughter, her body, her secrets. She has given you everything, and you are sitting in my shop asking me what to do with it." She shook her head. "Go home, Eric. Take her hand. Ask her to marry you. Stop trying to solve her like a case file."
"But what if she's still under the suggestion? What if it never wears off?"
Eva laughed, low and knowing. "What if it never wears off? Then you have a wife who is strong, brilliant, and utterly devoted to you. There are worse fates, my boy. There are far worse fates."
She stood and walked to the door, holding it open for him. The afternoon light spilled in, thin and yellow.
"Get out of my shop. Go be a man. And if you need a reference for your next job hunt, you can tell them you learned everything you know from the best."
Eric rose, his legs unsteady. He paused at the threshold.
"Eva. The cards. The Hanged Man and the Empress. Did you actually read those, or did you just... pick them?"
She smiled, and for a moment she looked almost young. "You were never a very good listener, Eric. But you were always a good observer. You saw the truth. You just did not want to believe it." She placed her hand on the doorframe. "The cards tell us what we already know. So does the girl. Go listen to her."
He stepped out into the street, and the door closed behind him with a soft click. The city hummed around him, cars and footsteps and distant voices, but all he could hear was the quiet certainty in Eva's words.
Agent Lullaby was there all along. He just had not noticed.
He started walking home, and for the first time in weeks, his feet knew the way.