AI The alley reeked of stagnant water and rot. Harlow Quinn’s boots slid on a patch of oil, but she didn’t slow. The suspect—*anonymous*, forensics called him—had nicked a courier outside the Old Bailey an hour prior, left a trail of stolen ledgers with *clique * scrawled on the margins. Clique. The shadowy network of supernatural traffickers she’d been chasing since Morris’s body turned up in the Thames, eyes black as oil, throat torn like a sacker’s sack. Three years. She still woke up gasping, the memory of his quiet *“Quinn”* as the water closed over him.
Rain sluiced down, turning the streetlights to blurs. The suspect darted left, between a stacked pile of crates and a graffiti-tagged wall. Quinn swerved, her shoulder slamming into a bin. Plastic crinkled. Shit. He was faster, lean, legs working like springs. *Paramedic *, she thought. The scar on his forearm—she’d seen it in the surveillance footage. A knife, maybe. Or something sharper.
He hit the alley mouth, skidded. Quinn skidded too, skidding to a halt a foot from his retreating back. He turned.
Eyes. Alert as a fox. Skin olive, hair curly dark, a saint Christopher medallion bobbing under his shirt. *Tomás Herrera *. The paramedic who treated the clique ’s “accidents”—cuts that wouldn’t heal, burns that didn’t scar. The one who vanished from his flat six weeks ago after the first ledgers went missing.
“Tommy,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, wet with rain.
He smiled. A wolf’s smile. “Detective. Thought you’d given up. That floodgates case… you looked like you might drown yourself.”
“Morris wouldn’t let me,” she said. The words came out harder than she meant.
Herrera spun away. This time, he didn’t run toward the street. He ducked, pressing himself against a brick wall. The wall moved.
Quinn froze. The tiles shifted, hissing, revealing a gap no wider than a coffin. A rusted iron grate, half-buried in weeds, slid open with a *screech *. He stepped through, then paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Hurry, Harlow. The market’s *hungry * tonight.”
The grate clanged shut.
Quinn sprinted. Rain stung her cheeks, blurring her vision. She slammed her shoulder into the grate. Nothing. She pulled at the bars—cold, solid. *Bone token *, she realized. His medallion. He’d used it, hidden in plain sight.
The market wasn’t on any map she’d seen. The Veil Market. They said it moved every full moon, burying itself in a new tunnel. Tonight was the full moon.
She glanced up. Camden High Street was quiet, a few drunks slouched outside pubs, a street sweeper humming along to a radio. No one noticed the grate. No one ever did.
She ran to the nearest lamppost, ripped a chunk of cast-iron from its base, and smashed the grate’s hinges. The metal crumpled like tin. She dropped the pole, crawled through.
The tunnel below was a world apart.
Rain seeped through cracks in the concrete, but the air was thick, cloying—like overripe fruit and burnt sugar. torches flickered in wall niches, casting long shadows over cluttered stalls. A vendor with horns coiled like ram’s, selling vials of glowing liquid, didn’t look up. A man in a duster, face hidden by a hood, haggled over a cage of winged rats. A girl with scales along her jaw bartered for a bone pendant, her tail flicking behind her.
Quinn drew her service pistol. The stallholders didn’t even flinch.
Herrera was gone . But the trail was fresh—footprints in the mud, a smudge of something silver (mercury? magic?) on the stone. She followed, her boots squelching. The tunnel curved, growing narrower until it opened into a cavern.
The Cauldron, the traders called it. A collapsed Tube platform, its ceiling caved in, letting in a sliver of sky. Torches mounted on the walls now burned with green flame. Stalls lined the edges, selling enchanted weapons, dried herbs that repelled ghosts, a vial of “eternal youth” that the vendor admitted “might make your skin fall off.”
At the far end, Herrera stood beside a man in a tailored suit, his back to her. They were talking to a woman with a snake for a necklace.
“…she’ll bring heat,” the suit was saying . “Quinn’s got a nose for leads. If she smells the market, she’ll dig.”
Herrera laughed. “Let her dig. I’ll be gone by then. The moon’s high—“
“—the market moves at midnight,” the necklace woman said. Her voice was a whisper , like sandpaper. “You know the rules, Tomás. Once the moon crosses the meridian, even bone tokens won’t keep you in.”
Quinn took a step forward. The ground trembled .
Herrera spun. “You followed me.”
The suit’s head snapped up. His eyes were milky, no whites, no pupils. He smiled,露出 sharp, pointed teeth. “Detective Quinn. What a *surprise *. I was hoping to avoid you. For a little while, at least.”
The necklace woman hissed, her snake rearing. The horned vendor stood, his hands glowing gold. The winged rats took flight.
Quinn backed up, pressing her back to a stall. The snake woman uncoiled, sliding toward her. The suit advanced, his hips swaying like a dancer’s. Herrera crossed his arms, watching.
“Morris,” she said. Her voice was steady, even. “He told me about the market. Said you were… *connected *.”
Herrera’s smile faded. “Morris was a good man. Too good. He asked too many questions. That’s why he’s at the bottom of the river.”
The suit stopped in front of her, his breath smelling of sulfur. “You shouldn’t have come here, Harlow. We’re not like the others. We *help * the ones the world forgets. The ones the law would eat alive.”
“Liar,” she said. “You killed him. And you killed the courier. And you’re going to sell those ledgers to the highest bidder.”
Herrera pushed off the wall. “The ledgers? They’re maps. To the crossroads. To the gate.”
The gate. Morris had mentioned it in his final report—a rift, a gateway between worlds. A rumor, at the time. Now, her partner’s face flashed in her mind, the way his eyes had glassed over, the way he’d whispered, “It’s *hungry *,” before the water took him.
The snake woman struck.
Quinn raised her gun. Bullets. The clique ignored bullets. She dropped the weapon, ducking as a clawed hand swiped at her throat. The horned vendor lunged, a mace in his hand. She dodged, grabbing a meat cleaver from a stall. It clanged in her hand.
Herrera moved toward her, his medallion glinting . “Don’t do this, Harlow. Leave. Now.”
“Or what?” she said.
“Or I’ll make you watch,” he said. His voice was cold, no warmth left. “The gate. It’s not for the living. It eats *souls *.”
The snake woman coiled around her ankle, squeezing. Pain seared up her leg. The suit gripped her shoulder, his fingers digging into bone.
Quinn brought the cleaver down. Straight through the snake’s head. It let out a shriek, dissolving into black smoke.
The horned vendor swung. She ducked, slashing at his thigh. He howled, blood gushing. The winged rats dive-bombed, pecking at her arms. She swiped with the cleaver, slicing through a wing. They scattered.
Herrera was gone . The suit was pushing her toward the Cauldron’s edge, where a stone slab lay, cracked, revealing light from below.
“Midnight,” he said. “The market’s leaving. And we’re not taking you with us.”
Quinn drove the cleaver into his chest. He laughed, blood bubbling from his lips. “Stupid girl. The gate—”
The ground shook harder. The torches flickered out. In the darkness, she saw it: a crack in the stone, wider and wider, smoke curling up from it, thick and black, reeking of rot.
Herrera was still smiling. “You shouldn’t have come, Harlow. But now you *are * here. And the gate’s *hungry *.”
The stone slab split.
Quinn hit the ground, rolling. The black smoke engulfed the Cauldron. She could hear screams—human, inhuman—mixing with the roar of wind. The suit’s body dissolved, melting into the smoke like wax.
A hand grabbed her arm. Warm. Familiar.
Tomás Herrera . His skin was paler, his eyes glowing. “Run,” he said. “Run while you can. And tell them… tell them to *pray *.”
The smoke surged. Herrera was pulled in, his arm vanishing. Then, silence .
Quinn stumbled to her feet. The market was gone —just a tunnel, the grate already starting to slide shut. She ran, pounding through the dark, until she burst into the alley, rain drenching her.
Behind her, the grate clanged closed.
She fell to her knees, gasping. The meat cleaver slipped from her hand.
Somewhere, a clock struck midnight.
And somewhere, in the dark, a door opened.