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She holds my gaze, and I think she’s going to share her plan for paying back the debt or at least apologize for sticking me with it, but then the person with the puppy walks by and she's gone again, cooing with tears in her eyes.

I pay the lunch check, obviously. Thirty-five dollars for two bowls of veggies, two kombuchas, and one slice of vegan carrot cake, and I don't even flinch, which is how you can tell how far gone I am. On the sidewalk, she hugs me too long, the way she has since we were small and it was just the two of us and a rotating cast of apartments and schools and Mom’s boyfriends. She says into my hair, "I love you so much, Big Sis. You always fix everything. You're more of a mom to me than Mom ever was."

She means it as the kindest thing a person can say to another person, and that’s why I always get sucked in.

“Love you too, Bird. Go home and set an intention."

She laughs and I laugh too, a real laugh, one that gets out before I can button it back into my oatmeal cardigan. She floats off down the sidewalk, trailing sage and the slap of her sandals, most likely planning the next time she can pitch her candle idea to me.

Myself, I stand on the corner, just me and everything I owe.

Tonight, I work again. Not Agnes. Diablo.

I get back from lunch smelling faintly of Birdie, her usual herbs and messed-up choices, and slide behind the front desk at Ardent Capital, where I turn back into furniture.

There's a trick to this, and I've had years to perfect it: the oatmeal cardigan, the flats that make no sound, the name tag that says AGNES in a font chosen by someone who hated receptionists or life or both. I sit here like a coatrack that answers phones, and the load-bearing beauty of it is that not one person who comes through that glass door will ever remember I was here.

On camera last night, nineteen strangers held their breath when I moved. Or rather, when Diablo moved.

Here, a courier drops a package on my desk for "somebody" and leaves without once looking at my face.

The partners, our resident masters of the universe, are back from their own lunches, which they take the way they do everything else, according to their personalities.

Beck Cross sweeps through the lobby toward the conference room, dark suit, no tie, handing out that smile like a man running for office. "How we doing?" he chirps to anyone in earshot, even if there is no one around. "Conference room mine at three?"

"All yours, Mr. Cross."

He's already past me.

Elias Thorne doesn't say anything, because pleasantries are not his thing. He crosses the lobby, drops a stack of signed documents on my desk without slowing down, and is behind his office door before I've got a hand on them. Fourteen months I've worked here. I'm not convinced he knows the desk is staffed.

Theo Marsh trails last, because Theo stops for things. Right now, it's the intern's name, which he repeats twice so it'll stick, and a "Hey, Agnes" aimed my way, genuinely kind and completely weightless, the way you'd greet a nice mailbox. Of the three, Theo's the only one who's ever pointed a whole sentence at me. Not one of them has ever been about me.

Three men. I keep their calendars. I know when they fly, who they're dodging, whose assistant quit, and whose wife stopped calling. I know everything about their days, and they don't know I have a face.

Which is exactly how I want it. You can't recognize a woman you never bothered to look at.

Then Sloane comes back from wherever Sloane goes, and the whole lobby changes temperature.

Sloane Whitaker is an associate, which means she's twenty-eight, genuinely brilliant, and dressed like the after photo in every ad ever made. She crosses the floor in heels that cost my rent and hair that moves like it's blown by a fan only she can afford.

Beck reappears out of the conference room like he's been paged. "There she is. How'd Hollis go?"

Elias passes by reception and notices Sloane. "Hey, Whitaker. My office when you have a moment."

Theo slows as he approaches the conference room, and our sprightly college intern forgets his own name.

I watch all of them turn toward Sloane like houseplants turn toward a sunny window.

In spite of this, I am absolutely, truly, not jealous of Sloane Whitaker.

I used to think I would be. Sitting here, all beige and forgettable, watching the good light land on her. But that was before Diablo. Before I learned exactly what it costs a man to look at me, the number, in real dollars, that three strangers paid to watch me not take my robe off.

Sloane gets looked at for free.

I get paid.

So I sit behind my desk in a cardigan the color of a saltine, and I let them fawn over her, and I think, You have no idea. Not one of you. The most dangerous person in this building brings your coffee.