The Black Lotus Debt Agnes Frost sat in the pawnshop at midnight with the black lotus vase on the counter before her. The shop was on Buck's Lane in Whitechapel, three rooms downstairs and a sleeping alcove upstairs that she rarely used. The vases came every three months. This was the seventh one. Each was identical: black porcelain, a single lotus flower painted in faded gold on the lid, a crack running from the base to the rim that she had never been able to fix. The first time one arrived, she had opened it out of curiosity. Inside was a small amount of black powder. She had tasted it the way you taste something you aren't sure is food. It was bitter. After that, she could see things—memories that weren't hers, or maybe memories that were hers and she had simply forgotten. She picked up the spoon. It was iron, heavy, with a handle carved like a serpent. The vase lid was slightly ajar. The powder inside shifted, as if something beneath it was breathing. She did not want to open it. She wanted to take it to the Thames and throw it in. But the note that came with it—the same note that came with every one—said: Pay within three months. Interest compounds on refusal. She had refused once, two years ago. The interest had been her childhood dog's face. She had woken up one morning and known she had owned a dog and could not remember what it looked like. She had cried for an hour and then gone to work at the shop. The spoon touched the powder. It came away black. She put it in her mouth. The memory hit her like cold water. She was twelve years old. Her mother is sitting at the kitchen table, and her mother's face— Agnes dropped the spoon. She sat on the floor of the pawnshop, breathing hard, the memory already fading like ink washed by rain. She could feel it going. Her mother's face was dissolving. She grabbed the memory by the edges and held on, but it was like holding smoke. When it was gone, she knew she had had a mother. She knew her name was Margaret. She knew she had died when Agnes was seventeen. That was all. She stood up. She swept the spoon into a drawer. She locked the drawer. She went upstairs to the alcove and lay on the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling and counted the cracks in the plaster. There were seven. She had counted them every night for three years. Seven cracks, seven vases. She wondered, not for the first time, what would happen with the eighth.