AI The rain fell in silver sheets, washing the sodium glare of London’s streetlamps into oily rivers on the pavement. Detective Harlow Quinn moved with a predator ’s grace, her boots slapping against wet concrete, her breath a steady plume in the chill air. Ahead, a shadow—a man in a dark coat—ducked around the corner of a shuttered music shop in Soho. He was fast, but Quinn had eighteen years of chasing shadows. She’d memorised his gait, the hitch in his right shoulder, the way his head swivelled like a frightened bird’s.
This one was different. Not some common mugger or drug peddler. He was a courier for the Veil Market, or so her informant’s shaky whisper had claimed. Her informant was now in the ICU, his throat slit with something that left edges too clean for any steel she knew.
She followed, her hand resting on the butt of her service weapon beneath her waxed jacket. The streets were nearly empty, the downpour driving sensible people indoors. Her sharp jaw was set, her brown eyes scanning not just the fleeing man, but the windows, the alleys, the overflowing bins . She’d learned the hard way that the obvious threat was rarely the only one. The memory of Morris—his laugh, the sudden silence where it should have been—was a cold stone in her gut. She’d never found what took him. Only a crime scene that made no sense, and a case file that was now classified above her pay grade.
The courier vanished down a set of greasy, wrought-iron steps leading to a service door for the Camden Town tube station. Not a main entrance. A maintenance hatch, painted a grimy black. Quinn paused at the top, the worn leather strap of her watch tight against her wrist. Following him underground, alone, at night, was a violation of a dozen protocols. It was also, possibly, the only way to get answers.
She went down.
The door was unlocked, left slightly ajar. A faint, coppery smell hit her, underneath the damp and mildew. Not blood. Something else. Metallic, but sweet. She drew her pistol, holding it low and tight as she slipped inside.
The service corridor was narrow, lit by sputtering fluorescent tubes that cast more shadow than light. The sound of the rain faded, replaced by a distant, rhythmic dripping and the hum of machinery. She could hear footsteps echoing ahead, moving fast. She followed, her military-precise steps silent on the grimy floor tiles.
The corridor opened abruptly into a vast, cathedral-like space. An abandoned tube platform. But it was not abandoned now.
Quinn stopped, her back against a tiled pillar, and stared.
The Veil Market was a riot of clandestine life. Stalls constructed from scrap wood and moth-eaten velvet lined the curved walls where advertisements for Bovril and wartime bonds had faded to ghosts. Caged bioluminescent fungi hung from the arched ceiling, casting a sickly, pulsing green light over everything. The air was thick with the scent of strange incense, ozone, and the earthy smell of wet fur. Figures haggled in low tones—some looked human, others… weren’t. A woman with skin like polished bark, a man whose shadow moved independently of his body. The courier she’d been chasing melted into the crowd, turning once to glance back in her direction with a smirk before disappearing behind a stall selling what looked like bottled lightning .
Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was it. The hidden layer. The place Morris’s notes, scribbled in his frantic final days, had alluded to. *‘Not a place on any map. A bazaar for things that shouldn’t be.’*
A hand touched her elbow. She whirled, pistol coming up half an inch before she registered the man in front of her. He was human, or seemed to be. Olive skin, warm brown eyes framed by worry lines. He had short, curly dark brown hair, damp from the atmosphere. A faint scar ran along his left forearm, visible where his sleeve was rolled up. A Saint Christopher medallion gleamed at his throat.
“Easy,” he said, his voice low, carrying a soft Spanish accent . “You are holding that like you know how to use it. That will draw attention you do not want.”
“Metropolitan Police,” Quinn said, the authority in her voice automatic, though it felt absurd here. “Who are you?”
“Tomás Herrera. I am a medic.” His eyes flicked to her badge, then back to her face, assessing. “You are a long way from your jurisdiction, Detective.”
“I’m pursuing a suspect.”
“The man in the grey coat? He is gone. Into the Warrens.” Tomás nodded towards a dark archway at the far end of the platform, from which even the strange green light seemed to shy away. “You do not want to follow him there. Not without a guide. And not without a token.”
He held up a small, off-white object. It looked like a domino, but pitted and aged . A bone token. Her informant had choked out those words, too, before the blood filled his mouth.
“Why help me?” Quinn asked, her gaze unwavering . She’d learned trust was the first thing to get you killed in situations that defied reason.
Tomás’s expression tightened. “I was a paramedic. NHS. I lost my license because I treated patients who could not go to a regular hospital. People caught on the edges of… all this.” He gestured at the market. “I help who I can. And you look like someone who has seen the wrong edge of something. You have the eyes.”
*Morris’s eyes, in the morgue, staring at nothing.* Quinn shoved the memory down. “What is this place?”
“A crossroads. A grey market. You can buy a love potion, a cursed lock of hair, or information on how to kill a creature that has no business living.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “The couriers run messages and packages for the powerful. Your suspect, he is a small fish. But the package he carries tonight is for a very big, very nasty fish. If you take it, or him, you will have that fish’s attention forever.”
The choice crystallised before her, cold and stark . She could turn back. File a report no one would believe, mark the case another dead end in a career that was becoming defined by them. Or she could step forward, into the green, pulsating light, and finally see the thing that had been lurking in the periphery of her life for three years.
“The man I’m looking for,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper . “My partner. His name was Morris. Did he come here?”
Tomás’s face changed. The professional neutrality faded, replaced by a deep, weary sorrow. He glanced around before leaning closer. “I remember a detective. Loud, friendly. Asking too many questions about bone tokens and a place called the Raven’s Nest. He bought a map of warding sigils from a stall run by a Haint. He never came back.”
The Raven’s Nest. Silas’s bar. She knew it. Another place from Morris’s notes. It was all connected, a sinister web she’d only been brushing against.
“The courier,” Quinn said, decision hardening in her veins like ice . “Where is his drop?”
Tomás studied her for a long moment. He saw the resolve , the grief, the precision. He sighed, a sound of surrender. “The alchemist’s stall. By the old ticket booth. He is making the exchange now. If you move, you must move like you belong. Do not look surprised by anything. Do not stare. And for God’s sake, put the gun away. It is useless here against what you might actually need to shoot.”
Quinn slowly holstered her weapon. The weight of it was a comfort, but Tomás was right. It hadn’t saved Morris. She needed something else now. Knowledge.
“Stay close to me,” Tomás said, palming the bone token. “You are with me. You are… a new client. In need of specialized remedies. Understood?”
She gave a sharp nod. Together, they stepped out from the pillar and into the flow of the market. The sensory assault was immediate. A vendor hissed at her, offering dried nightshade in a velvet pouch. Something small and many-legged skittered over her boot. She kept her eyes forward, on Tomás’s back, on the Saint Christopher medallion bouncing against his collarbone.
Ahead, by a boarded-up ticket booth reinforced with iron bands, the courier stood at a stall draped in black cloth. The proprietor was a gaunt figure whose hands seemed to be made of moving glass and mercury, pouring a viscous silver liquid into a vial. The courier was handing over a sealed parchment scroll.
This was it. The package. The information. Maybe the key.
Quinn broke from Tomás’s side. She didn’t run; she walked with purpose, cutting through the crowd, her salt-and-pepper hair plastered to her skull from the rain above. The courier looked up, his eyes widening in recognition and panic. He snatched the vial from the alchemist’s mercurial hands and bolted, not towards the Warrens, but back the way Quinn had come —towards the surface.
She gave chase, the strange market a blur of green light and staring eyes. Tomás called out behind her, but she was already at the service corridor, pounding up the steps after the clattering footsteps . The rain hit her face like a slap as she burst back out onto the street. The courier was twenty yards ahead, slipping on the wet pavement, righting himself.
“Stop! Police!” she yelled, the familiar call a talisman in the unfamiliar night.
He glanced back, terrified, and hurled the silver vial into the open mouth of a storm drain. It vanished with a faint, sizzling plop. He then darted into an alley beside a familiar building—one with a distinctive green neon sign buzzing against the brickwork.
The Raven’s Nest.
Quinn skidded to a halt at the alley’s entrance, chest heaving. The courier was gone , presumably through a back door. The green light from the sign above painted the raindrops falling through its glow an eerie emerald.
She could go in. Confront Silas. Demand answers.
But she remembered Tomás’s warning. *‘You will have that fish’s attention forever.’* The courier had destroyed the package. The direct link was gone . She was standing on the threshold, soaked and alone, with only the ghost of her partner and the word of a disgraced medic to guide her.
Going into the Nest now would be walking into a spider’s parlour with no proof, no backup, and no understanding of the rules.
Harlow Quinn stood in the downpour, the worn leather of her watchband digging into her skin. She looked from the green neon sign to the dark gape of the storm drain where the evidence had vanished. The detective in her screamed to pursue, to break down the door. The survivor, forged in the unexplained loss of Morris, counseled a sharper, more patient strategy.
She took a deep breath, the cold air and rain clearing the last of the market’s strange incense from her lungs. She turned her back on the Raven’s Nest and walked away, into the anonymity of the rain-washed night. She wasn’t retreating . She was regrouping . She had a name now—Tomás Herrera. She had a location—the Veil Market. And she had finally seen the world she needed to investigate.
The chase was over. The hunt, however, had just truly begun.