AI Detective Harlow Quinn squeezed through the rusted turnstile, her worn leather watch digging into her wrist at 2:17 a.m. The brick wall behind it was damp, dripping cold onto her calf. She ignored the chill . Looked up. The Tube station’s ceiling was a jagged gap in the night, graffiti peeling like scabbed skin—*Kill the light, feed the void *—painted in neon green that glowed even under the moon. Camden had never smelled like this: sage mixed with rot, a hint of something metallic that bit at her tongue.
A shadow detached itself from the ticket booth. A man in a gas mask, his uniform caked in grime. “Token.” His voice came through the mask, muffled, like a growl in a barrel.
Quinn slid the bone token across the counter. It was a wolf’s hipbone, etched with the market’s sigil—three intertwined circles, each containing a star. The guard’s eyes lingered on it, then he stamped it with a red inkpad and slid it back. “Five minutes. They move at midnight.”
“Five’s enough,” she said.
The station opened up like a mouth. Stalls lined the platforms, their awnings made from old curtains and animal hides, glowing with candlelight and magic. A vendor sold what looked like coal but crackled when she touched it—*living coal *, she thought, from the market’s black list. Another handed out vials of fog that reeked of seaweed; Eva had told her once that was locator mist, used to track missing Shades. The air hummed, a low thrumming in her teeth. Supernatural energy. Strong here, thicker than usual.
Then she saw the body.
It hung from a meat hook above the old ticket office, its legs splayed, blood pooling dark on the concrete. The throat was slit, but not with a knife. The wound was black, oozing something that looked like liquid shadow . The face was turned up, eyes wide, but the whites were clouded over—*no iris, no pupil *. Just milky white.
Quinn moved closer. Her combat boots crunched on broken glass. The body was a man, mid-30s, maybe. His shirt was open, revealing a tattoo on his chest: a compass, its needle pointing right. *The Veil Compass *, she thought. She’d seen one before—Eva had a replica, carved from boxwood. This one was real, she could tell. The brass casing was tarnished, verdigris creeping like mold, and the face was etched with sigils, not the usual protective ones. These were *restrictive *—seal, bind, contain.
“Jesus Christ,” a voice said.
Quinn turned. A woman in round glasses, her curly red hair escaping its loose braid, stood behind her. She clutched a satchel to her chest, freckles visible even in the dim light. Her left ear was red, like she’d been tugging at her hair. “You’re late.”
“Quinn.” She extended a hand .
The woman hesitated, then shook it. “Eva. Kowalski. Aurora’s friend.”
Quinn knew Aurora. The girl from the missing persons case three years back. The one whose body was found in the Thames, her throat slit, but with no wound—just the same white eyes. Morris had been on that case. Had died six months later, found in a field in Dorset, his eyes white, a black ooze around his mouth.
“Kit found the body,” Eva said, nodding at a man in a blue jumpsuit, leaning against a stall, playing with a shiv. “Him and his team. Thought it was a gang hit. Slit throat, typical.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the nervous habit, Quinn noticed. “But the mark—”
“I see it,” Quinn said. She knelt, tilted the body’s wrist. A bruise ringed it, shaped like a compass. Not the tattoo on his chest—*another * compass.
“Gang was using the market last week,” Eva said, fumbling with her satchel, pulling out a notebook. “Heard talk about a new supplier. Local crew, the Camden Cutthroats. They’d been pushing into supernatural goods, but the market’s rules—”
“Rules,” Quinn interrupted. She ran a finger over the black ooze on the man’s throat. It tasted like iron. *Magical iron *, she thought. Not from a blade. From a spell.
“Yeah. No violence inside the market. No humans killing humans. The old-timers enforce it with Shades.” Eva’s voice dropped. “Shades are—they’re spirits, bound to the market. They do the dirty work when the vendors can’t.” She paused, then added , “You didn’t hear that from me.”
Quinn stood. “Vendors don’t usually kill their own. Too much bad press. Word gets out, the bone tokens dry up.”
Eva tensed. “What if it was a human?”
“Then why the white eyes?” Quinn said. She turned to Kit, the crime scene tech, who’d wandered over. “Any prints? Fibers?”
“Nada,” he said, lighting a cigarette . “The slit’s clean, but the burn—weird. Like the blade wasn’t metal. The blood’s gone, too. Disintegrated, maybe.” He exhaled, the smoke curling around his face. “Probably a message. ‘We don’t play.’”
Quinn walked to the edge of the platform, where a stall still had its awning down. She pulled back the fabric. Inside: a broken vial, its contents spilled onto the floor. The glass was etched with sigils—*warding sigils *, not a gang’s. A single coin lay beside it, copper, with a portrait that wasn’t a king or queen. It was a Shade.
“You know what this is?” Eva asked, appearing at her shoulder.
Quinn picked up the coin. The Shade’s face was familiar —pale, with black veins under its skin. “I’ve seen these before. How do they work? The vials, I mean.”
“To trap Shades,” Eva said, her voice tight . “If you break the vial, the sigils weaken, and the Shade breaks free. But why would someone…?”
“Frame the Cutthroats,” Quinn finished. She turned to Kit. “Bring the vial to the lab. Test the contents. And check the body’s pockets. No phone, no wallet. Typical gang move to make it look like robbery, but they never take the wallet. Too much heat if the ID’s found.”
“Got it,” Kit said, heading back to his truck.
Eva was staring at the body, her lower lip between her teeth. “He was a vendor, wasn’t he? The Compass mark.”
Quinn nodded. “The market’s vendors are the only ones with those tattoos. To show they’re bound to the rules. If he was a vendor, he broke one. Why?”
“Maybe he was selling something he shouldn’t,” Eva said, finally meeting her eye. “Something the Shades don’t want out. Or… someone.”
“Someone else,” Quinn corrected. She wiped her gloves on her trousers—they stank of ozone now. “Who benefits from the market moving? The vendors need new locations to avoid humans finding them. The Shades need to stay close to the rifts. If the market moves, the rifts shift. Maybe someone wanted the vendors busy, so they could… take something.”
Eva’s satchel strap slipped. She fumbled to adjust it. “Aurora used to say the market’s got a heart. A core that keeps it moving. If you take that, the market falls apart. Shades get loose. Humans find it.”
Quinn’s blood ran cold . Aurora had mentioned the market’s heart in her journal. “Did the victim have a Satchel?” she asked.
Eva’s face paled. “Aurora’s satchel? She—she left it in my flat when she went missing.”
Quinn drew her gun. “Where is it?”
“Camden, in my flat—”
“Wait.” Quinn held up a hand, listening. The hum in the air had shifted. Higher. More urgent. She turned toward the tunnel that led to the next platform. The paint on the walls was peeling faster now, revealing writing underneath: *It’s in the compass. The needle points home *.
“The Compass,” Eva whispered. “It’s not just a tool. It’s a key. To the heart.”
Quinn ran, her boots thudding on the concrete. The tunnel was dark, a single bulb flickering overhead. She reached the platform, skidded to a stop. The body was gone .
“Quinn!” Eva called, breathless . “Look at the tracks!”
Quinn knelt. The metal rails were etched with fresh sigils—*not the market’s *. They wound around the rails, forming a shape. A compass, its needle pointed straight up.
“The rift,” she said. “That’s where the body went. To the market’s realm.”
Eva grabbed her arm. “You can’t follow it. It’s dangerous. Shades—”
“Shades don’t kill humans who know the rules,” Quinn said, yanking her arm free. She pulled the bone token from her pocket, held it up. The sigils glowed. “This works because I respect them. The Cutthroats probably stole it. Or took it from the victim.”
“Then we have to get it back,” Eva said.
Quinn smiled, sharp and cold. “We’re already too late.”
A noise behind her. A low, guttural growl. She turned. A figure stood in the tunnel, its body made of shadow, its eyes glowing red. It held the bone token in one hand, crumpled like paper.
“The token’s not yours,” it said, its voice a chorus of voices . “It belongs to the vendor. And you, detective—you’re here to *watch *.”
The shadow reached for her. Quinn backed away, her gun lifting. The world spun. She saw Morris, his white eyes, the black ooze at his mouth. *Watch *, he’d said, just before he died. *Watch and remember*.
The shadow lunged. Quinn fired. The bullet hit it in the chest, and it hissed, melting like wax. The bone token fell from its hand, uncrinkled.
Eva grabbed it, pressed it into her palm. “Run!” she shouted.
They ran, the hum in the air rising to a shriek. Behind them, the tunnel crumbled, the platform collapsing into the tracks. Quinn didn’t look back. She just ran, her watch ticking, counting the seconds until the market moved again.
Somewhere in the dark, a voice laughed.
And she knew, deep down, that the game had just begun.