The café smelled like burnt sugar and cheap espresso — the good kind, where bitterness sat under everything like a second coat. It was the sort of place people went when they wanted to look like they were doing something important: laptops open, emails half-read, knees crossed over knees, wrists flashing watches. Perfect, Vera said once, for reading a room.
They sat in the back, a wobble-legged table between them. Vera had ordered two coffees and a plate of something flaky that left crumbs like confetti. She slid a small notebook across the table and closed her hand on the pen like it was part of a ritual.
"First rule," she said, watching Ava as if she were watching a wild bird settle on a hand. "Shut your mouth."
Ava rolled her eyes. "Noted."
Vera's lips twitched. "You're allowed to ask one question every ten minutes. Not about the person — about yourself. You ask if you're seeing too much. You ask if your fear is doing the reading instead of your eyes. Anything else, you write."
Ava's fingers hovered over the notebook. "So this is a class."
"This is the first thing you need to get right. People tell you everything without saying a word. You just have to stop talking long enough to hear it."
They sat like that, two silhouettes in the half-light. Outside, through the café's steamed windows, the city moved in a liquid blur: suits, a woman in a red coat arguing into her phone, a cyclist threading through morning traffic.
Vera tapped the pen on the table. "Look."
Ava turned her head, eyes sweeping the room. There were seven people in plain sight — a man in a navy suit at the corner table, a woman with an expensive tote, a pair of students arguing about what looked like film theory, an older man with a cheap tie, a barista who washed the same cup again and again like ritual. The moment stretched.
"What do you see?" Vera asked.
Ava blinked. She had been watching the man in the navy suit — the way he kept resettling his wrist as if checking a watch that wasn't there, the faint salt-and-pepper at his temple, the way his phone screen reflected stock tickers when he scrolled. She saw posture, micro-shifts; she saw how his tie was pinched where a handkerchief had been. He was a man who liked control but currently didn't have it.
"Investor," she said. "Or at least finance. Watches a lot of charts. Probably on a call with someone who hates his guts." She pointed. "He's wearing a wedding band, but he keeps glancing at the door like he's waiting for someone to leave. He's not hungry. He eats to fill silence."
Vera's eyebrows rose. Then she pursed her lips. "Give me more."
"He's nervous. Not the rich-man-nervous — the man-about-to-get-rapt-nervous. He's hiding something in his bag. Papers. Maybe a contract. He slips his hand there like it's a comfort move. And—" Ava smiled, cold in a way she rarely let herself be. "He's going to be easy to bait if you make him feel like the only man who understands risk."
Vera's pen stilled. The woman with the tote had, meanwhile, laughed at a text, then smoothed her skirt. Ava watched how her thumb drummed the metallic logo on her phone case — a status tick, small, deliberate. "That woman's married too," Ava added. "But she's not secure about it. She's practicing smiles. She's primed for flattery."
Vera's jaw tightened. "All right," she said. "Write it down. And describe their weakness in one sentence."
Ava wrote. Her hand moved fast, neat. She'd been practicing notebooks in her head for weeks, though she'd never admitted it out loud. Her eyes kept darting, cataloguing, assembling the little truths into a shape.
They ticked through people. The students were hungry for argument — ideal for distraction. The old man with the tie had lost weight recently and kept rubbing his hands like they hurt; he was the kind who would pay for sympathy, or buy a miracle if it had the right packaging. Ava's voice grew steadier with each person.
Vera watched her like someone watching a match being lit. "Okay," she said finally. "Now I want you to pick one and tell me what you'd say to them in thirty seconds to get them to reveal a real small piece of information."
Ava's eyes narrowed. She should pick easy — the students, the laughing woman — but there was a hairline thrill in the quieter risk. She pointed to the old man.
"What do you say?" Vera asked.
Ava hesitated twice, then stood as if she'd made a decision. She walked over with the confidence of someone stepping into a room they already owned. The old man glanced up, polite but fragile. Ava smiled soft, a practiced soft that she'd borrowed from other women she'd watched in doorways. She sat, careful to keep her knees in a measured angle. She didn't reach, didn't invade. She just let herself be an island of warmth.
"Lovely day," she said, simple.
The man chuckled. "Isn't it though."
"You look like someone who appreciates a good story," Ava said, leaning a hair closer. "Do you come here often? I'm trying to figure out where to find the best tales."
He blinked as if the question surprised him, then softened. "I used to — lived here most of my life. Now I'm always on the move. Difficult to keep roots."
Vera sat with her mouth half-open, not interfering.
Ava's hand found the old man's fingers lightly on the table and she asked, almost incidental, "Where did you move to?"
He told her, name of a neighborhood, a hospital nearby. She listened, nodding, and then tilted her head as if pondering. "Doctors?" she asked.
"Ah," he said, and then the voice went lower. "Yes. Old bones."
"Ah," Ava said again. "I'm sorry to hear that. My brother—" she stopped herself for a beat, softening the lie into something that fit the room — "he's been having trouble. It's been tough. People don't always know how to help."
The old man's face folded and opened like paper. He told her about a specialist who took the trouble to call back, named a number, mentioned a clinic and a tired nurse. It was small stuff, not money, just a thread. Ava got what she needed. She thanked him, left like she'd been rebuffed, and walked back to the table.
Vera's fingers drum-mocked applause on her knee. "You got more than I expected," she said.
Ava slid into the chair, calm. "Nothing he had that could be useful for a mark. But he trusts people who sound broken. That's the point."
Vera's face was a fraction of a motion — part admiration, part containment. "Good," she said. "Now answer me frankly: was that you, or was that me?"
Ava blinked. "What do you mean?"
"You're still copying me, kid. You learned how to sit, the softened voice. But the way you baited him, the choice of the angle… that was yours. That moment came from you."
Ava shrugged. "Maybe."
They sat in the quiet after that. Ava's notes were a tidy chaos of words — "frank? hiding?" — underlined and circled.
"You're fast," Vera said after a while. Her voice had a different edge. Not anger. Not exactly pride. Something like fear wrapped in it.
Ava gave a small grin. "I had to be."
Vera watched the man in the navy suit again. She'd been ready for him — a test in her mind, the sort of man the Institution loved to sink into. He was younger than she'd guessed, not as sharp, but dangerous because he had money and impatience. "We'll run a small exercise," she said. "You watched, you engaged, you took a thread. Now you have to record his pattern. Who will he call first today? What distracts his attention? How long before he checks his phone again?"
Ava's head bent over her notes. "Ten minutes," she said. "He'll check for a short notification at three. He doesn't want to be there; he's meeting someone who'll apologize and then ask for forgiveness."
Vera closed her eyes for a second. "Okay. If you're right, we escalate. If you're wrong—"
"If I'm wrong, you tell me why and we run the drill again," Ava interrupted. "I learn faster that way."
Vera's mouth twitched into a smile that wasn't warm. "Confident, aren't you."
"You told me to stop talking," Ava said. "I'm listening, not talking."
They watched. The man's knee bounced, then stopped. A text came; he read, thumb flicking. He exhaled; he typed. Ava's head had the almost-annoying certainty of someone with their fingers on the pulse.
Three minutes after, he looked up; he didn't check his phone again. Twelve minutes later, he stood, smoothed his suit, and left with a little cussing under his breath.
Ava had been wrong by two minutes. She didn't flinch. "He left early," she said flatly. "He's pissed. He's gone."
Vera's jaw worked. "Two minutes off isn't bad," she said, but she sounded like she was negotiating with herself.
They left the café later, the rain having eased into a sheen that polished the city. On the steps outside, Ava tucked her notebook into her coat. Vera watched her with a kind of precarious attention.
"You're learning like a sponge," Vera said. "Faster than I expected."
Ava met her eyes. "You taught me how to look. The rest I figured."
Picture
"Right. The rest you figured." Vera's voice had a thinness. She looked away at the passing pedestrians, at the way someone laughed too loudly into a phone. "You know what makes me afraid?"
Ava waited.
"You're not afraid, not really," Vera said. "You approach things like they're puzzles. You don't have the same weight in your jaw I learned to have after years. You don't feel it yet. You're quick and that makes you dangerous."
Ava's laugh was small. "Dangerous how?"
"Dangerous to us," Vera said simply. "For the same reason I'm proud. Because you'll outgrow me. Because you won't be the kind who stops. You'll be the kind who keeps going."
There was admiration in it, but a low, bitter undercurrent — a twinge that tasted like envy. Vera folded it into something else and said, "Tomorrow we practice mirroring. You keep this up? People will be noticing. And when they notice, the Institution notices. They don't like surprises."
Ava closed her hand around the notebook, thumb rubbing the margin where she'd written, learn. learn. learn. She felt a small thrill that had nothing to do with morality. It buzzed under her skin like electricity.
They walked back to the apartment in the rain's afterglow. Ava wanted to say more, to ask about how far it went, about the men who didn't forgive, but Vera's shoulders had that new hardness to them — the shape of someone who'd seen too much and learned to keep quiet.
Inside, Tess was still asleep. Ava sat by the window for a long time after, the city lights bleeding down the glass. She opened the notebook and wrote: "Observation: they tell you everything. Skill: listen." Then, in a smaller hand, she added, If this is the path, I don't want to walk it like someone begging. I want to walk it like I was born to it.
On the other side of the room, Vera stood at the kitchen sink, the water running over her hands. She watched Ava's silhouette and felt something like both pride and a bruise. She had taught her the first lesson, but in teaching it she had also made a spark. She could already see what the flame might do.
She rinsed her hands, the water running cold.
The air between them was different now — sharper. Ava had learned. Vera had seen it. The line had shifted.
Pride and unease lived together like two old enemies who'd agreed to a truce for the moment, both waiting for the other to make the first move.