Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFEVTBF050EZ5ZSSKYXBCG

The air in the disused Camden Tube station was a physical presence, a cocktail of ozone, damp brick, and something sweetly metallic that made the back of Detective Harlow Quinn’s throat itch. The Veil Market, usually a chaotic sprawl of supernatural commerce, was unnervingly still. Yellow police tape cordoned off a stall where awnings of faded velvet were stained with something dark that wasn't oil. Harlow moved with the tight, economical grace of her military training, her worn leather watch a familiar weight on her wrist. Her sharp jaw was set, her brown eyes missing nothing. The local uniforms had done a decent job of holding the perimeter, but their faces were pale, their eyes skittish. They felt the wrongness of the place, even if they couldn't name it. The body lay sprawled behind a counter littered with broken vials, their contents seeping into the grimy floor tiles. A Shade artisan, his grey skin now mottled with the pallor of death. The official report would call it a botched robbery. A struggle, a fall, a fatal blow to the head. The shattered glass, the overturned table, the spilled wares—it all pointed to a simple, brutal narrative. But Harlow’s gut, honed over eighteen years of seeing the stories evidence *really* told, twisted in disagreement. “Quinn.” The voice came from the shadowed archway that led to what was once a service tunnel. Eva Kowalski emerged, her curly red hair a shock of color in the gloom. She pushed her round glasses up her nose, her freckled complexion looking wan under the harsh portable lights. She clutched the worn leather strap of her satchel, a nervous tic Harlow had come to recognize. “Kowalski. They called you in?” Harlow’s tone was flat, professional. The British Museum’s pet occult researcher was a necessary, if irritating, consultant on cases that bled into the preternatural. “Who else were they going to call?” Eva’s voice was a little too bright, a little too quick. She tucked a stray curl behind her left ear. “It’s a mess. Poor Kael. The Market Elders are furious. They want it swept under the rug. ‘Human problems,’ they’re calling it.” “Is that what you see?” Harlow asked, not taking her eyes off the body. “Human problems?” Eva shifted her weight. “Look at it. The place is ransacked. His stock is gone. His money box is empty. It’s a tragedy, but a straightforward one. Desperate people do desperate things, even to get their hands on cheap glamours and scrying mirrors.” Harlow finally turned to look at her. Eva’s green eyes were wide behind her lenses, earnest. Too earnest. “Desperate people,” Harlow repeated softly. “They broke in during market hours? The place was teeming with witnesses. They managed to overpower a Shade—creatures who are notoriously difficult to surprise—without a single vendor or customer noticing the ‘struggle’ until it was over? And then they took the time to empty a cash box but left that?” Harlow pointed a gloved finger not at the body, but at the floor a few feet away. A small, disc-shaped object lay half-under a scrap of black cloth, its brass casing gleaming dully in the light. It was no larger than a pocket watch, etched with intricate, swirling patterns. Eva’s breath hitched almost imperceptibly. “It’s just junk. Part of his stock.” “Is it?” Harlow knelt, careful not to touch anything. She used the tip of her pen to gently nudge the cloth aside. The object was a compass, its face etched with protective sigils she didn’t recognise, its casing marked with a patina of verdigris. The needle wasn’t pointing north. It was spinning in a slow, lazy circle. “This looks like quality work. The kind of thing a ‘desperate’ thief would grab first.” “Maybe they missed it,” Eva offered, her voice tightening. “In the panic.” “Maybe.” Harlow stood up, her gaze sweeping the scene again. The narrative was too neat, too *constructed*. The violence was performative. The overturned table was on the wrong side of the body—if he’d been standing behind the counter when attacked, it should have fallen toward the aisle, not back onto himself. The broken glass was concentrated in one area, as if vials had been swept off the counter in a single, deliberate motion, not knocked over in a frantic fight. Her eyes kept returning to the compass. The spinning needle was a silent scream in the quiet room. “You knew him,” Harlow stated, turning her focus back to Eva. It wasn’t a question. Eva’s hand went to her satchel again. “I’m a researcher. I know a lot of vendors. He had fascinating texts on dimensional theory.” “What does it do?” Harlow asked, nodding toward the compass. “It’s a navigational tool. For… specific routes.” Eva was choosing her words with the care of someone walking through a minefield. “Routes to where?” “Places that aren’t on any map.” Eva’s nervousness was morphing into something else—a defensive tension. “Detective, this really isn’t relevant. The evidence points to a robbery. The Market Elders want it closed. Why are you making this more complicated than it needs to be?” “Because three years ago, my partner walked into a room following ‘straightforward’ evidence and never walked out,” Harlow said, her voice low and hard as iron. “The report called it ‘unexplained circumstances.’ I call it a lie that papered over a truth no one wanted to see. I won’t do that again.” She watched Eva closely. The researcher flinched, her gaze dropping to the body of the Shade artisan. Guilt. She was feeling guilt. Harlow’s mind, a machine of deduction, began to recalibrate the scene, stripping away the false narrative. This wasn’t a robbery. It was a message. A warning. The “thief” hadn’t been after money or common charms. They’d been after something specific. And they’d torn the place apart looking for it, staging the violence after the fact to hide their true purpose. The compass. They’d been looking for the compass. But they’d failed. They’d missed it. Or perhaps… they’d been interrupted. Her eyes snapped to Eva’s satchel. “You didn’t just ‘get called in,’ did you, Kowalski? You were already here.” Eva’s face went ashen. “I don’t know what you mean.” “You’re his contact at the Museum. He had something for you. Or you had something for him.” Harlow took a step closer, her height imposing. “You came for your delivery. You found him like this. And you panicked. You called it in, but you’re lying about why. What were you here for?” The silence stretched, thick and heavy. The spinning needle of the compass seemed to hum. Eva’s shoulders slumped. The fight went out of her. “It points to rifts,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “To thin places between worlds. Kael was the only one who could make them. He was supposed to give it to me tonight. I was… I was going to try to find out what really happened to your partner, DS Morris. His casefile… the location data… it didn’t make sense in our world. I thought maybe…” The confession hung in the air, recontextualizing everything. The mess wasn’t from a struggle. It was a frantic, violent search for a tool someone else desperately wanted. A tool that could find doors to other places. A tool a detective with unanswered questions would kill for. Harlow looked from Eva’s horrified, guilty face to the spinning compass, then to the body of the artisan. The crime scene wasn’t wrong. She’d just been reading the wrong story. The story wasn’t about a robbery. It was about a key. And now, she realized with a cold chill, she was holding it.