((Thanks to the player of Wild Card))

It smelled like bacon. Like hash browns fried in yesterday?s oil. Like buttered onions and medium rare steak and eggs over easy drowned in Steve's Special Sauce. The stench of coffee was overwhelming and welcoming at the same time. When the door swung shut, the bell above it chimed a second time. Somewhere beneath the din of conversation, paper crinkling, and dishes clanking--a waitress cackled like a hyena.

Bodies speckled the stools lining the bar, others filled space in red vinyl booths. Leena reached beneath a messy tail of pale hair to pinch the back of her neck with two fingers. The noise rarely bothered her, comforted in the most mundane way. Tonight was no such night. Her head pulsed with exhaustion, worn out veins aching for another fix.

Hardly paying attention but noticing everything, she strode through the slim aisle for a booth tucked back along the wall. A view of the door with a route to another, always waiting for her. It had been the same one for years.

Years.

He sat there with his back to the door, to her. The table was already mostly taken up with a large platter of eggs and bacon and pancakes, with a steaming cup of coffee beside. It looked untouched, though a pale hand was stirring the coffee in a slow fashion. The other hand was holding a newspaper and his head was bowed, he seemed to be reading intently. His skin was paler than it should have been, appearing almost sickly. He was listening to the sounds of the patrons coughing, laughing, and cussing at each other. He heard the ringing of the bell and sat up a little straighter, turning only when Leena was close enough to be spotted out of his peripheral vision. He still did not turn to look at her directly or speak. Instead he sat and waited. Waited for the revelation to come.

Augustin was sitting alive and well in that booth. He seemed no worse for wear, save his pallid skin and maybe a hollow look to his eyes. He was not smiling, though, which was uncharacteristic of a man who seemed to view life as one great joke that he was playing on everyone else.

The diner was a busy place nestled in the heart of a port that never slept. Any number of things constantly happened at once. Time was just a passage for them to travel. Tangled sunshine arched with a sweep of her hand as gun metal silver eyes lifted to mark a seat claimed. Claimed by someone else whose profile she?d sketched in her head hundreds of times in the dark with sheets twisted around her legs. And her heart in her throat.

All noise blanked out into a muffled white echo. A hand that was not there reached into her chest and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. Leena had stolen time still, standing not three feet away from a dead man walking.

Well, dead man sitting.

He folded the newspaper in half and set it on the seat beside him. He set the spoon he?d been using to stir the coffee down and brought the cup up toward his lips. He didn?t drink, but he inhaled deeply as though to savor the aroma. Then he turned just a little more and looked at her directly. There was no mistaking the wrongness in his appearance. He seemed a ghost. A body in a coffin, with all the unsettling air of a corpse dressed up by the mortician. He wasn?t himself, at least not outwardly, and his pale lips curled in a smile that seemed to mock her.

?We need to talk. Have a seat.?

Whatever color she had disappeared. She was as much of a ghost as he. But that was as far as it went. The sharp burn in her chest found little relief with the small intake of air she fed it. A few fingers on her left hand fluttered. Sound roared into a vortex that exploded in a landslide of noises, all of them a jumble that made little sense. Augustin?s words rode the wave, crashing into a surreal reality. A waitress breezed by Leena, bumping her shoulder to shoulder. It was either move or be moved.

She took a step and then another, forced and pulled. Three feet stretched into miles. Seconds felt like minutes. She sank onto the very edge of the booth seat opposite, back straight and pressed into red vinyl. Not a word, afraid to blink.

He watched her take a seat at the booth opposite him wordlessly, giving her a brief once over in the process.

?You?re looking...well,? he said awkwardly when she had settled in.

He set the cup of coffee down and gestured toward the small feast that took up most of the table between them. ?Hungry? Help yourself. I didn?t want any of this, I just like the smell.?

The tick back and forth of her chin was minute. She hadn?t even glanced at the table. Beneath it, she was pinching the skin on her forearm. Everything remained as it was; fried food, coffee, conversation, clanking dishes, and Augustin across from her. It wasn?t real, it wasn?t. She tried speaking, an inhale that produced nothing when it exited.

?Look, this is weird. I get that,? he said. ?But I?m not sure how much time we have so you?re gonna have to get it together and talk to me. And eat, because I can?t and this would be a waste otherwise.?

?I?m not hungry.? Had she said that? It was so quiet that he would have had to strain beneath the noises surrounding them to hear it. Her hands remained beneath the table. Time. ?Time?? It might have been the first time she blinked.

Augustin scowled across the table at her. It looked more sinister than he meant, with his sunken eyes and the way his skin seemed to cling to his face and left the impression of a gaunt, skeletal reflection of the man he had been. He leaned onto his elbows and brought his hands together in front of his face, his eyes closing. For a time he sat like that and thought, then he said, ?Leo?s in town, Leena. And he?s the reason I?m here...I think.?

?Something big is about to happen and I suspect he?s got plans for you. I can feel it. So whatever you?ve got going on just...just be prepared.?

When he swayed over the table in a lean, Leena pressed back into the seat. ?I--? It was a hardy try, but a fail none the less. She shook her head, staring. Rhydin was a town full of magic and mystery and deceit darker than the color black. People reappeared time after time. But not for her, not like this. Not like him.

?Leo?? That was a name she hadn?t heard in months, not since she?d picked apart his inner circle one bullet at a time. ?Where??

?Hell if I know,? he shrugged and sat back, throwing both of his arms up over the top of the booth in a casual manner. Like he wasn?t a literal ghost to her. ?But if I?m here then it means he is, too. And I can?t imagine that bodes well for you. So...I don?t know. Split town, I guess? Things didn?t exactly end well last time we dealt with him and seeing as I?ve already...well, you know.?

He glanced out the window into the street and frowned. ?You need to run.?

Augustin?s movements were familiar. The tone of his voice. The nonchalant expressions, actions, and reactions. Everything she remembered--from before. His frown was mirrored by her own. And when his attention shifted, hers remained on him. ?They?re all gone. He has no one.? Words that weren?t quite true. There were a few left, the smart ones, with greedy hands and black hearts.

?You don?t know the half of it, Leena,? he stretched his arms overhead and slipped from the booth.

?It was good to see you again.?

Augustin turned and flashed the passing server a smile as he headed for the door.

She had half a mind to follow him. It was a thought that was smothered as she twisted in the booth?s seat to watch him go. Leave. Gripping the edge of the table, she used it to pull herself up. ?Augustin.?

He paused and looked over his shoulder at her. Seeing her stand, Augustin turned around and tilted his head expectantly. He said nothing.

A waitress passed. Two customers came in and took seats at the bar. Someone dropped a plate. The distance between them was time passing. What she wanted to say was not what she did. ?How long??

?Who can say??

Augustin smiled at her and it was then that he looked most like his old self. Though his skin was dry and tight, there could be no mistaking the lackadaisical look in his eyes. He lifted a hand and his thumb and pinky stretched out and he mimed a phone up against his ear with the digits.

?I?ll be in touch, Leena. Stay safe. And take a shower. You look awful.?

She felt displaced, a pawn set down in the wrong dream. Saying nothing, she only stared. A fraction of her attention slipped for a glance outside the window where life went on with the start of a new day. She looked back.

And he was gone.