AI Quinn ducked under the sagging strip of police tape and caught the constable’s elbow before he could recoil into the wall.
“Hold your ground.”
“It moved, ma’am.”
“It’s a tunnel. They move.” She released him and stepped past, boots crunching on grit that sounded too loud in the narrow throat of the station.
A second strip of tape fluttered from a rusted sign that still promised trains that never came. Someone had scrawled over the map in marker, black lines like veins. Beyond it, the air thickened, not with damp, but with spice and hot metal and something older, like a church cupboard that had never been aired .
Quinn checked the worn leather watch on her left wrist, a habit that calmed her hands when her head ran ahead of the room. The minute hand shook from the vibration of distant trains. That, at least, obeyed rules.
“Where’s the body?”
A young officer, helmet clipped to his belt as if that would help down here, pointed with a shaking finger.
“In there. Market’s still open, ma’am. Sort of. They, er, they don’t like us.”
“They’ll manage.”
Quinn walked into the mouth of The Veil Market.
Stalls had been hammered together from scavenged doors and pallet wood. Tattered curtains cut the space into crooked lanes. Glass jars glimmered with things that refused names. A woman with a scarf over her hair watched Quinn without blinking, her pupils too wide. A man fanned incense over a tray of dull coins, each stamped with a face that didn’t match any monarch.
The market sat inside an abandoned Tube station beneath Camden, but it pretended it belonged to somewhere else. Sounds came wrong, too, as if the place swallowed noise and returned only what it chose. Traders whispered. Chains clinked. A kettle hissed behind a curtain. No one raised their voice at the police tape. No one smiled, either.
DS Rafiq Patel waited at the centre, beside a ring of evidence markers and a pair of white-suited forensics. He looked out of place in his suit jacket, as if it had been dragged through a hedge.
“Quinn. You picked a charming day to join us.”
“Brief me.”
Patel jerked his chin towards the ground.
“Male. Late thirties to early forties. No ID. No witnesses willing to go on record. First response got called because someone screamed and then clammed up. Standard Camden.”
Quinn stepped closer and saw the man laid out between two stalls, his limbs arranged with care, palms up, like an offering. His clothes belonged to no office or building site. Long coat. Heavy boots. A belt with pouches stitched from something that looked like hide but held the sheen of old paper.
His skin had a waxy tone. Not pale. Not bloodless. Just wrong, as if the colour sat on top instead of beneath.
A chalk circle enclosed him. Not police chalk. Someone had drawn it with ground bone, the line thick and unbroken. Inside the ring, small objects marked points like a clock. Coins, teeth, seeds. A child’s marble , cloudy with age.
Forensics had photographed the arrangement but left it in place, which told Quinn Patel had told them to. Patel ’s face showed he disliked that decision .
“What’s his cause of death?”
Patel flicked a glance at the nearest forensic officer.
“Dr Lyle says no visible wounds. No stabbing, no gunshot, no blunt trauma. No ligature. No signs of a struggle.”
Quinn crouched, careful not to cross the bone line. The smell hit her then, copper and cloves. Blood and cover-up.
“No visible wounds.” She leaned closer . The man’s lips had cracked, not from thirst, but from pressure . His tongue pressed against his teeth as if he had bitten down on a secret.
Quinn looked at his fingernails. Dark crescents, not dirt. Ink.
“What about blood loss?”
Dr Lyle, masked and tired, lifted a swab as if it might answer for her.
“Not much on the scene. That’s the odd part. There’s some under him, but not enough to match the pallor.”
Patel pointed at the ground.
“Staged. They love their theatrics down here. He probably died somewhere else and they carried him in.”
Quinn traced the edge of the circle with her eyes. The bone powder sat clean on the filthy concrete. No smearing. No scuff marks crossing the line.
“Carried him in without disturbing this.”
Patel ’s mouth tightened.
“They drew it after.”
Quinn stood and let her gaze travel. The nearest stall displayed small brass compasses, their faces etched with tiny sigils. Another sold bottles of thick oil that caught the low light and bent it. A third had a board of paper slips pinned up like notices in a village hall, each one written in a hand that worked hard to look careless.
A woman stood beyond the tape, round glasses catching reflections, a worn leather satchel hugged to her chest as if it might shield her heart. Curly red hair escaped a clip and she kept tucking it behind her left ear, over and over, until her fingers went pink.
Eva Kowalski did not belong in a murder scene. Yet she held her ground like someone used to restricted rooms and older dangers.
Patel followed Quinn’s stare and swore under his breath.
“You know her?”
“I’ve read her name.” Quinn kept her voice level. “British Museum. Restricted archives.”
Eva’s gaze snapped to Quinn’s face, then to the watch , then away. She looked at Patel with a kind of forced calm.
“I’m not here by choice. One of your officers dragged me out of the back of a stall and told me a man had died inside a binding circle.”
Patel spread his hands.
“Civilians don’t enter crime scenes.”
Eva’s mouth curled.
“Neither do half the people in this market. Yet here we are.”
Quinn stepped towards Eva, stopping at the tape.
“Why were you here?”
Eva’s fingers tightened on her satchel strap.
“Research.”
“On what?”
“On markets that move.”
Patel made a sound that tried to be a laugh and failed.
“Right. And I’m here to buy a cursed necklace.”
Quinn ignored him.
“You recognised the circle.”
Eva looked past Quinn, towards the body, and swallowed. Her freckles stood out stark against her skin.
“It’s not a summoning circle.”
Patel folded his arms.
“Of course it isn’t.”
“It’s a seal.” Eva’s voice gained strength, the cadence of someone who had defended footnotes in hostile seminars. “The bone line, the points marked with teeth and seed, the coins. It’s meant to keep something in.”
Quinn’s jaw tightened.
“Keep what in?”
Eva’s eyes flicked to the stalls, to the watching traders, to the dim gaps between curtains.
“That depends on what was placed at the centre.”
Patel scoffed.
“A body.”
Eva shook her head.
“A lock.” She glanced at Quinn . “Someone used him.”
Quinn returned to the corpse and crouched again. The man’s belt pouches tugged her attention. Not police kit. Not tourist junk. Tools.
“Open those,” Quinn said to Dr Lyle.
Patel ’s voice sharpened.
“We don’t rummage without-”
“Open them.”
Dr Lyle pulled on fresh gloves and knelt, careful at the bone line. He opened the first pouch and tipped it onto a sterile tray.
A handful of brittle paper scraps fell out, each one covered in cramped writing, black ink, the letters slanted like they had been chased by a shaking hand. Beside them lay a small brass compass, verdigris patina clinging to its casing like mould to bread. Protective sigils etched its face. The needle didn’t settle. It dragged itself in tiny jerks, as if it had a pulse .
Quinn’s throat tightened. She had seen photographs of things like that in a file stamped CLOSED, a file that belonged to DS Morris and to the three-year hole his death had torn through her unit.
Patel leaned in despite himself.
“A compass?”
Eva’s breath caught.
“That’s a Veil Compass.”
Quinn did not look away from the needle.
“You’ve seen one.”
“I’ve catalogued references.” Eva’s voice dropped. “They don’t come topside. They point to rifts.”
Patel straightened.
“Rifts. Right. And what, he fell through one and died from magic?”
Quinn held up a hand. Patel stopped, though his shoulders stayed rigid. Military discipline recognised itself even in people who didn’t wear it.
Quinn pointed at the compass.
“Bag it.”
Dr Lyle hesitated.
“It’s evidence, Detective.”
“Bag it anyway.”
The moment the compass lifted from the tray, the needle swung hard, not north, not towards the tunnels, but towards a section of tiled wall behind the body , where old station adverts peeled in long strips. The compass strained as if it wanted to escape the glove.
Dr Lyle’s eyes widened behind his mask.
“It’s pulling.”
Quinn stepped towards the tiled wall. The market noise thinned around her. Traders watched like they had seen this scene before and disliked its ending.
The tiles looked ordinary at first, cracked cream squares grouted with soot. Then Quinn saw the detail her eyes usually skimmed. A thin line ran between two tiles, too straight to be a crack, too dark to be dirt. It cut the grout in a clean slice.
She knelt and ran a gloved finger along it. The line felt cold. Not damp. Cold, like metal pulled from a freezer.
Patel hovered.
“You’ve got a cold wall. Congratulations.”
Quinn ignored him. She studied the floor beneath it. Dust lay thick everywhere else, ground into the concrete by hundreds of boots. Here, the dust formed a fan shape, swept outward in a neat arc, as if something had pushed air through the space and polished the ground with it.
“Dragged body,” Patel muttered, but his voice lacked conviction now.
“No drag marks.” Quinn pointed. “No heel scuffs. No weight trails.”
Dr Lyle spoke from behind her.
“His shoes are clean. Too clean for this place.”
Eva shifted closer, stopping at the tape like it could burn her.
“The seal matters,” she said. “It’s not decoration. If the circle stayed intact, no one carried him in over it. They placed him inside before they closed it.”
Patel rubbed a hand over his face.
“So what, then? They built a circle around him and he died politely in the middle?”
Quinn stood and scanned the body again. The cracked lips. The ink under the nails. The lack of blood.
“Check his mouth.”
Dr Lyle paused, then leaned in. He used a small torch and a tongue depressor.
“There’s something lodged under the tongue.”
Patel stepped forward.
“Let me see.”
Dr Lyle used forceps and drew out a small object, slick with saliva. A token. Bone, carved into a disc with a hole punched through it. The edges looked worn by fingers, passed hand to hand. One side carried a symbol like a door. The other carried a number scratched deep.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed .
“Entry requirement,” Eva whispered. “A bone token. That’s how you get in.”
Patel stared at it, then at the market.
“You’re telling me this place has membership cards made of bones.”
Eva’s voice held a thin edge.
“I’m telling you someone fed him his way in.”
Quinn watched the traders. They did not react like people hearing police chatter. They reacted like people hearing a lock pick.
A man behind a curtain shifted. The chain on his stall clinked. A woman took a step back, then another, her hands sliding beneath her shawl.
Quinn turned to Patel .
“Your first response officer said someone screamed.”
Patel nodded.
“Yeah. Then silence .”
Quinn pointed at the chalk circle.
“Who screamed?”
Patel frowned.
“No one will say. They all speak in riddles, or they speak in prices.”
Eva swallowed.
“They screamed because the seal broke.”
Quinn looked at the bone line again. It sat neat, unbroken.
“It didn’t.”
Eva’s hands trembled as she tucked her hair behind her left ear again.
“It did, then someone repaired it.”
Patel ’s patience snapped.
“That’s convenient.”
Quinn shifted her weight , listening. The market’s low hum carried on, but a new sound threaded through it, a faint tick-tock that did not match any clock. It came from the wall.
Dr Lyle held the bagged compass up.
“The needle’s spinning.”
Quinn stepped close to the tiles again and pressed her palm flat to the cold line. The chill bit through her glove and climbed her arm.
The line pulsed under her hand.
Patel grabbed her shoulder.
“Don’t touch that.”
Quinn shrugged him off.
The tiles did not sit flush anymore. They seemed to breathe, the edges lifting by a hair, settling, lifting again. The gap darkened, not with shadow, but with depth, as if the wall had learned to open .
Quinn looked back at the body inside the seal.
“A lock,” she said. “He didn’t die here. They made him die here. They used him to shut something.”
Eva’s voice came thin.
“And something’s pushing back.”
A trader shouted in a language Quinn did not recognise. Stalls rattled as people yanked curtains aside and began to move, fast and purposeful, away from the body, away from the wall. A child cried out and got dragged by the wrist. A jar smashed somewhere, glass snapping like teeth.
Patel raised his voice.
“Police! Everyone stays where they are.”
No one listened. The market flowed like a school of fish avoiding a hook.
The tick-tock grew louder, then stopped.
For a heartbeat, the whole market held still.
The bone line around the body shivered. The powder lifted from the ground in a thin, spiralling thread, as if an unseen mouth inhaled it. Coins inside the circle rattled and flipped, clinking against teeth and seeds. The chalk points slid a fraction, ruining the careful geometry.
Eva’s face drained of colour.
“It’s unravelling.”
Patel drew his baton, then hesitated, as if he had realised how useless wood and rubber felt down here.
Quinn reached for the evidence bag holding the compass. The brass casing jerked against the plastic like it wanted out. The needle pointed straight at the seam between the tiles and held there, rigid.
The wall opened with a sound like fabric tearing.
Darkness spilled through, not empty, not flat, but thick, layered, alive . It carried a smell that punched Quinn’s sinuses, damp earth and old smoke and something like burnt hair . The tiles bent outward as if pressed from the other side by a hand the size of a manhole cover.
From the centre of the seam, a shape pushed through, slow at first, then with a sudden force that made the nearest stall collapse in a crash of splintering wood.
Patel swore and stepped back.
“What the hell is that?”
Quinn raised her torch and the beam caught on something that did not reflect light so much as drink it. A limb, jointed wrong. A slick surface that looked like skin until it flexed and showed a pattern, sigils etched in living flesh.
The body inside the circle jerked once, hard enough to snap its head to the side. Its mouth opened and a sound crawled out, not a scream, but a wet gasp that carried words no one spoke aloud.
The bone token clattered from Dr Lyle’s forceps and rolled across the floor, straight towards the opening in the wall.
Quinn lunged for it, and the darkness lunged back.