AI The air in the abandoned Tube station smelled of damp concrete and something sharper—brine, maybe, or the faint tang of magic. Detective Harlow Quinn pressed her free hand to the cold brick wall beside the ticket barrier, her boots scuffing a layer of dust that hadn’t seen a broom in years. The Veil Market moved every full moon, but Camden’s disused station had been its anchor for six weeks. She’d heard the whispers: enchanted daggers, vials of moonstone dew, a man who sold memories. But she’d never expected *blood * here.
Her bone token—a deer legbone, sanded smooth—hung heavy in her pocket. The guard, a gnarled elf with skin the color of aged ivory, had nodded when she’d presented it , his yellow eyes lingering on her uniform. “She was the first one,” he’d said, voice rough . “Found at dawn. Said… something about a compass.”
Quinn rounded the corner where the tracks curved, her flashlight cutting through the gloom . The stall was a jumble of tattered cloth and shattered glass: a display of dried herbs, a shelf of small brass trinkets, a half-brewed potion in a cracked vial that had spilled onto the floor, leaving a trail of iridescent slime. Beyond it , sprawled on the concrete, was the body.
“Jesus.”
Quinn dropped to her knees, her gloved hand under the victim’s shoulder. The woman was in her late thirties, dark hair matted with blood , a leather satchel tucked under one arm. Her throat was slit—deep, precise, the blade having severed the jugular in a single stroke. But that wasn’t the odd part. The wound looked *clean*, too clean , like it had been inflicted by a surgeon’s scalpel rather than a market vendor’s dagger. The blood pooling around her had congealed in thin, stringy clumps, as if it had been altered by something. Not magic—Quinn had felt that hum , once, with Morris. This was… cold. Sterile.
“Detective.”
Quinn looked up. Eva Kowalski stood at the edge of the light, her round glasses smudged, her red curls escaping the braid she’d worn to hold them back. She was clutching her own satchel, its leather frayed at the corners, and her freckled complexion was as pale as a sheet. “They let me in,” she said, her voice wavering . “I… I come here sometimes. To the market. Lila—this is Lila. She had a stall next to mine. We used to talk about the old rituals, the ones from Mesopotamia. She… she said she was going to sell the Veil Compass.”
Quinn’s flashlight shifted to the woman’s hand. It was curled into a loose fist. She pried it open gently . The skin was gray where it had been pressed to the concrete, but the fingers, when she unfurled them, revealed no Compass. Only a single, perfect circle etched into her palm, inked in a residue that looked like crushed lapis .
“Ritual marking,” Eva said, stepping closer. Her nervous habit—tucking hair behind her left ear—flared, a lock of red tangling around her finger. “To bind a spirit, maybe. Or to seal a pact. Lila was… interested in the *old ways *. She said the Compass wasn’t just a tool—it was a key. To something between worlds.”
“Key to what?”
Eva shrugged, but her eyes were distant. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me . Said some secrets were better kept . But she was scared. I could tell. Yesterday, she left her stall for twenty minutes. When she came back, her eyes were wild. She said, ‘They know I have it . Someone’s coming for me .’”
Quinn stood, her boots thudding on the concrete. She knelt again, her penlight narrowing on the victim’s throat. The slit was jagged, but the tissue around it was pale, almost necrotic. “This wound wasn’t made by a blade from the market,” she said, more to herself than to Eva. “The metal’s too clean . No notches, no rust. Someone brought a weapon. A very specific one.”
Eva leaned in, her glasses slipping down her nose. “But it ’s *supernatural *, isn’t it ? The way the blood looks. The marking. Lila probably tried to use the Compass to defend herself. But… the spirit turned on her.”
Quinn’s gaze flickered to the shattered vial of iridescent liquid. She knelt, her fingers hovering over it , then pulled back. “No spirit would leave such a neat seal on the wound. Spirits don’t *cut *. They *consume *. And they leave messes—ruined stalls, bodies torn open, evidence of *rage *. This is… *calculated *.”
“Maybe the killer wanted the Compass,” Eva said, her voice steadying . “They took it . That’s why Lila was killed. To get to the Compass.”
Quinn’s penlight moved to the victim’s satchel. It was closed, a leather strap intact. She knelt, her thumb brushing the catch. “Lila didn’t carry her satchel often. It was full of books—old grimoires, mostly. But her wallet was in her pocket. No Compass. No money. The books are still here.” She nodded at a volume with a cracked cover, its pages filled with scribbled symbols. “She was a researcher, not a dealer. She didn’t *need * the money. So why kill her?”
Eva’s foot tapped the concrete. “Maybe the books had something. The Compass—maybe it ’s not sold, it ’s *kept * in the market. Hidden. Lila found where it was, and someone wanted her to keep quiet. But she didn’t. So they killed her, and made it look like the Compass did it . To scare people off.”
Quinn stood, her jacket brushing the top of her worn leather watch —Morris’s, the one he’d given her the night before he’d gone missing. The crystal was cracked, but the hands still ticked. “Why a compass?” she said, turning to Eva . “Why not a dagger? A poison? Why make it look supernatural ?”
Eva’s satchel shifted, and Quinn noticed the bulge at the top—a brass object, half-hidden by a stack of books. “The Veil Compass,” she said, her voice tight . “It’s attuned to rifts. To portals. Lila thought it could… *see * the other side. To find the thing that took your partner.”
Quinn’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”
Eva fumbled with her satchel, unzipping it . The bulge was the Compass: a small brass thing, its face etched with sigils that glowed faintly, as if catching the light of the moon . “I… I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have told you . But Lila showed it to me yesterday. She was trying to figure out… *it *. The thing that took DS Morris. She said the Compass could locate the rift. The portal where he disappeared.”
Quinn took the Compass, her fingers tracing the patina, the verdigris that had eaten into the metal. The needle twitched in her hand, spinning wildly, pointing not toward a rift, but toward the exit . “This isn’t just a tool,” she said, her voice low . “It’s a *locator *. To the rift. To the other side.”
“Maybe Lila found it ,” Eva said. “Maybe she was going to use it to … to get her answers. But someone knew. Someone killed her before she could. And they took the Compass to keep people from finding what happened to Morris.”
Quinn held the Compass up, the sigils glowing brighter as the flashlight hit them. The needle stopped spinning, pointing directly at the victim’s chest. “The Compass points to rifts,” she said. “But when was the last time you saw it *move *, Eva? Before Lila had it .”
Eva’s face paled. “I… I never used it . Lila said it was too dangerous. She kept it in her stall, locked away. But yesterday, she let me hold it . For a second. The needle was still. Just… still.”
Quinn set the Compass down, her knee brushing the concrete. She leaned closer to the body, her nose almost touching the woman’s neck. The air around them hummed—a low, vibrating sound, like a generator. Not magic, but something *mechanical *. “The wound isn’t necrotic,” she said. “It’s *treated *. The killer used something to stop the bleeding. To make it look like a supernatural effect. But they were too careful. Too clean . A real magical wound would burn, would char the meat. This… this is a surgical precision.”
Eva’s hand flew to her mouth. “A doctor? But the market doesn’t let doctors in. They don’t have bone tokens. How would they get in?”
Quinn stood, her eyes scanning the stall. The display of herbs was crushed , the vials shattered —but the knife block, a set of small, silver blades, was missing one. Notched, rusted. “They used one of the market’s daggers to *pose * as the weapon,” she said. “To make it look like someone from the market did it . But the real blade… it was a scalpel. Sterile. Clean. They left it here, maybe, to plant blame.”
She stepped toward the knife block, her boot crunching on a shard of glass. The missing blade left a gap, and beside it , a smudge of something black—tar, or oil. But it wasn’t sticky. It was greasy. “This is engine oil,” she said. “From a car. The market’s guards don’t drive. The vendors don’t drive. But the killer… they drove here. Parked nearby. Walked in. Walked out.”
Eva’s satchel gaped open, and she scrambled to zip it closed. “What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice small .
Quinn pulled out her phone, flipping it open. The screen glowed, showing a photo of Morris—smiling, blood on his uniform, his body crumpled in the rain. “I’m going to find the person who’s been using a compass to hunt supernatural rifts,” she said. “The person who knows how to make a wound look like magic. The person who killed Lila because she was close to the truth. And I’m going to find out what happened to him.”
Her phone buzzed, a text from her tech team: *Crime scene tech says the blood spatter matches a .38 caliber. Also, we found a fingerprint on the vial of iridescent slime. It’s not Lila’s.*
Quinn tucked the phone away, her eyes fixed on the Compass. The needle was spinning again, faster and faster, pointing not toward the exit, but toward the tracks . “The killer didn’t take it ,” she said, her voice hardening . “They left it for us to find. To lead us to the rift.”
Eva took a step closer, her hand trembling. “Then we have to follow it . But—”
“—we don’t have much time,” Quinn said. She looked down at the victim, at the circle etched into her palm, at the blood that still glimmered faintly in the light. “Lila was trying to tell us something. About the rift. About what’s on the other side. And now she’s gone. But she left a clue. A circle. A *seal *. The same kind of seal she was talking about—for binding spirits. But why would she seal it ? To keep something in? Or to keep something out?”
The hum in the air grew louder, a low, thrumming sound that made Quinn’s teeth ache. She closed her hand around the Compass, and it pulsed in her palm, the sigils flaring as bright as a match. The needle pointed directly at the tracks, where the darkness stretched on, endless.
“Eva,” she said, her voice steady . “You know more about these symbols than I do. What does this mean? The circle. The seal .”
Eva’s fingers brushed her glasses, and she leaned in, her breath coming faster. “It’s a *ward *, Harlow. To keep a spirit from escaping. But if it ’s broken… the spirit could come through. And if a spirit comes through, it doesn’t just kill. It *hungers *. Morris… maybe he encountered one. A spirit from this rift. Someone who wanted something from him. From *me *, maybe. Because I know too much about the old ways .”
Quinn’s hand tightened around the Compass. The hum was now a roar, the air thick with the smell of ozone. She looked up at the ceiling, at the cracked tiles where water dripped, one drop at a time, into a puddle below. “Then we’re going through that rift,” she said. “And we’re bringing the killer with us .”
Eva nodded, her nervous habit forgotten. “I’ll pull the bone token out. The guard will let us in. But we have to be careful. The rift… it ’s unstable. It might collapse. And the killer—”
“—the killer is already here,” Quinn said, her eyes narrowing . She heard it then: the soft *tap-tap-tap * of boots on concrete, coming from the tunnel ahead. “Hurry. The compass is leading us to the rift. But the killer is leading us *to * the compass. To *me *.”
She reached into her pocket, her hand closing around a knife—metal, not enchanted, but sharp . Eva grabbed the Compass, her fingers wrapping around it as they ducked behind the stall. The tunnel ahead glowed with a blue light, the hum growing louder, and then—
“Detective Quinn.”
Quinn tensed. The voice was smooth, feminine, with a hint of an accent. She peeked around the cloth, her eyes locking on a figure in the tunnel: a woman in a black coat, her hair streaked with gray, a scalpel in her hand. Beside her, a portal yawned, its edges shimmering like water, the blue light spilling out like a flood.
“Eva Kowalski,” the woman said, her smile cold . “You shouldn’t have brought the detective here. She was never supposed to find the Compass. Or the truth.”
Eva stepped forward, her hand trembling as she held up the Compass. “You killed Lila. You wanted the Compass to find the rift. To let the creature through. To do what? To take revenge for who? Morris?”
The woman froze. Her smile faltered, and for a second, Quinn saw something in her eyes—fear, guilt, pain. “You knew,” she said, her voice breaking . “You figured it out. The creature took my sister. It took her when she was ten. And Morris… he found it . He saw what it was. He tried to stop it . But it took him. Just like it took my sister.”
Quinn stood, her knife raised. “So you ’re going to let it take more lives? To keep your sister? That’s not revenge. That’s madness.”
The woman raised her scalpel, but the hum in the air grew louder, the portal flaring brighter. “It wasn’t enough,” she said. “It didn’t *consume * him. It just… took him. And I want it back. I want *us * back.”
Eva stepped closer, the Compass glowing in her hand. “Morris isn’t a thing to be taken back. He’s a person. And the creature that took him… it feeds on pain. On loss. If you open that rift, it ’ll take *you * too. Just like it took your sister.”
The woman lowered her scalpel, her eyes filling with tears. The portal shuddered, as if in agreement, and the blue light dimmed. “You’re right,” she said. “I… I’m sorry.”
Quinn lowered her knife, her gaze fixed on the portal. The Compass beeped, a soft, insistent sound, and the needle pointed directly at the woman’s chest. “Then close it ,” she said. “Before it ’s too late.”
The woman nodded, her hand reaching for the portal. As her fingers touched the shimmering edge, the light flared, then dimmed, then went dark. The hum in the air faded, replaced by the sound of dripping water and distant chatter from the market.
Quinn looked down at the woman, at the tears streaming down her face. “Who are you ?” she asked.
The woman wiped her eyes, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “My name is Clara. I’m a surgeon. I used to work at St. Mary’s. But… I was there that night. When Morris was killed. I saw the creature. And I’ve been chasing it ever since. Lila found out I was looking for the Compass. She knew how it worked. She was going to help me . But I… I couldn’t let her.”
Eva stepped forward, her satchel now closed. “You could have talked to us ,” she said. “We would have helped.”
Clara shook her head. “You would have called the police. And they would have called the men with the guns. The ones who hunt these things for sport. I couldn’t let that happen. Not again.”
Quinn looked at the body of Lila, at the circle etched into her palm. “She died because you were scared,” she said. “Because you let your guilt consume you .”
Clara’s lower lip trembled . “I know. And I’m going to atone. I’m going to donate the Compass to the British Museum. To a place where it can be studied, not used. Where it ’s safe.”
Eva nodded, her freckled face softening. “I’ll help. The restricted archives… I can make sure it ’s stored properly. And I’ll teach them how to use it . Not for hunting, but for *understanding *.”
Quinn looked at the two women—one grieving, one determined —and at the body of Lila, at the Circle etched into her palm. She thought of Morris, of the rain, of the way the world had shifted that night . Some secrets were better kept , she knew, but others… others needed to be found. To be *faced *.
She tucked her knife back into her pocket, her watch ticking steadily. “We’ll start with the Compass,” she said. “Then we’ll talk to the museum. But first… we need to clean this up.”
Eva nodded, her nervous habit returning. “I’ll call the medics. And the guard. I’ll tell him you need to process the scene. That the killer is in custody.”
Clara stepped forward, her hand outstretched. “Thank you ,” she said. “For not turning me in. For understanding .”
Quinn shook her hand, her grip firm. “Understanding is a start. But justice… justice will take time. And we’ll find it . Together.”
As Clara turned and walked into the darkness, Quinn knelt beside Lila’s body. She closed the woman’s eyes, her thumb brushing the Circle etched into her palm. The light of the flashlight caught the sigils, and for a second, she thought she saw them move —like water, like fire, like a promise.
“Rest easy, Lila,” she said, her voice low . “We’ll find the truth.”
The Compass beeped again, a soft, steady sound, and Quinn looked down. The needle was pointing toward the tracks, toward the tunnel where Clara had come from. Toward the rift, and the secrets it held.
She stood, her watch ticking, and followed the light.