AI The air below Camden smells of damp stone and something sharper, metallic, coppery—too clean for blood, but not quite. Detective Harlow Quinn pauses at the mouth of the Tube entrance, her boots sinking into mud that isn’t mud. It’s old, crumbly, like the station’s been swallowed by the earth for decades. The sign above the turnstile is bent, *“Camden Town—Next Stop, Euston,”* painted over with something newer, yellow letters peeling to reveal *“No Admittance.”* She tugs at her collar; the leather of her watch creaks against her wrist, the time reading 2:17 AM. *Eva.*
Of course. The best friend who moonlights as an occult researcher would have known she was coming .
Quinn ducks under a loose piece of plywood, the sound of her breathing loud in her ears. The tunnel beyond is pitch-black, but her eyes adjust—scales of moonlight leak through the cracks in the concrete, gilding the graffiti scrawled on the walls: *“Beware the Veil ,”* *“They take what you lost.”* Below it, a newer mark: three dots in a triangle, ink still fresh.
Halfway down, she hears it: a soft *shush *, like a finger pressed to a child’s lips. Eva.
“Took you long enough,” the smaller woman says, emerging from the gloom . She’s wearing a thrifted overcoat, sleeves rolled up, round glasses smudged with... *ash *? Her curly red hair, always a wild halo, is sticking up on one side, and she’s tucking a strand behind her left ear—nervous habit, the one Quinn knows so well. “Marcus didn’t make it. Again.”
“Who *is * Marcus ?” Quinn asks, but she already knows. The dead merchant with the penchant for cursed jewelry, last seen haggling with a “traveler” from Edinburgh. The one who’d bragged, *“Veil’s the only place where you can sell a ghost and sleep at night.”*
Eva leads the way, her satchel bouncing against her thigh. “He ran the ‘Hearth’ stall. Sold protection charms, ward stones—” She pauses, gesturing to the wall ahead, where a metal gate has been welded shut, a bone token dangling from the latch: a wolf’s skull, teeth filed to points. “—but he was branching out. Told me he had a client who wanted a *binder *.”
Quinn’s jaw tightens. She doesn’t like binders. They trap spirits, keep them from moving on. Used right, they’re a tool. Used wrong, they’re a prison. And prisons have a way of *breaking *.
The gate creaks open. Beyond it, the market is chaos—bales of velvet , overturned crates of dried herbs, a stall selling glowing vials of “moonwater” lies shattered , the liquid seeping into the floor, eating it away. But at the center, a heavy oak door is ajar, and the air there hums, like a live wire.
Quinn steps forward, her hand going to her holster, but Eva beats her to it. “Don’t. The wards are still active—”
“Wards don’t *hum *,” Quinn says, pushing past her. The door is carved with sigils, looping and intricate , glowing faintly silver. Normally, protective wards are geometric, sharp—angles, runes that bite . These are fluid, almost organic, like veins pulsing under skin.
Inside, the room is small, stone walls lined with shelves. On the floor lies Marcus Voss.
He’s in his fifties, by the look of him, with a face like weathered oak and a neckerchief tied around his head. His eyes are wide, frozen open, and there’s a dark, spreading stain on his chest—*not * blood, but something black, roiling, like oil that’s alive. His hands are curled into fists, nails split, and in the circle he’d drawn (or tried to draw) with a silver marker, the lines are incomplete, jagged, as if he’d been interrupted mid-ritual.
“Medical examiner says cause of death is ... *exsanguination *,” Eva says, quiet . “But look at his veins. They’re *pale *. No blood there to bleed.”
Quinn kneels, her gloves cracking against the stone. She touches his wrist—no pulse , skin cold as a corpse’s. But there’s something else: a faint, sweet scent, like jasmine, under the copper. Poison? Magic?
Her eyes flick to the shelf behind him. A single vial is missing: green, with a stopper of bone. The label is gone, but she recognizes the shape. *“Mist of the Dying Sun,”* Marcus had called it once. *“Burns the spirit from your bones. Safe, if you know the price.”*
“It’s not a rift ,” Eva says, beside her. “Not that I can see. The Compass would’ve gone haywire if it were.”
Quinn’s head snaps up. “You brought the Compass?”
Eva flushes, tucking the brass case from her satchel. The patina is dull, almost dead. “I... I thought it might help. The market’s energy messes with it, but—”
Quinn snatches it, her fingers closing around the cool metal. The needle twitches, spinning wildly, then locks. It points *directly* at Marcus’s chest.
“What the hell is that?” she says, but she already knows. The Veil Compass isn’t supposed to point at people. It’s supposed to point at *rift *s—cracks between worlds, where magic leaks through. That it’s fixated here...
Her gaze drifts to the sigils on the door, the ones she’d thought were protective. Half of them are inverted . *Inverted *, not broken. Someone didn’t destroy the wards—they *perverted * them.
“Eva,” she says, voice low . “When was the last time you were here, before you called me?”
Eva hesitates. “Last Tuesday. Marcus said he was having trouble with a client—someone who wanted the binder , but didn’t want to pay in gold. ‘Wants payment in *time *,’ he joked. I told him he was daft—” She cuts off, biting her lip. “I didn’t think—”
Quinn stands, her boots scuffing the stone. “He saw something he shouldn’t have. The binder . Or the client. And the client didn’t want to pay in time . They wanted to *take * something.”
She kneels again, closer to Marcus . His mouth is slightly open, as if he’d been about to speak when he died. His left hand is fisted, but his right is open, palm up. In the dirt, there’s a single coin: copper, with a wolf’s head on one side, and a symbol Quinn doesn’t recognize on the other.
“The bone token,” she says. “Eva, how do you get in here?”
“Bone token,” she repeats. “Marcus traded his sister’s for access. Said it was ‘worth more than a lifetime of good luck.’”
Quinn picks up the coin. The symbol is a circle with three dots, like the one she’d seen on the tunnel walls. *Three dots in a triangle.* A summoning sigil, or a protection? Or both?
Her watch buzzes. A text from the ME: *DNA’s clean. No traces of magic on the body. But that stain... it’s not anything we’ve seen. Like it’s feeding on him.*
Quinn’s thumb rubs the edge of the coin. *Feeding.* That’s a word. Vampires feed. But vampires don’t use binders. Witches? Maybe. But the veins—pale , exsanguinated—*spirits * feed on blood, too. But spirits don’t need to sell cursed trinkets on the Veil Market.
She stands, the coin in her palm. The compass is still pointing at Marcus , needle trembling. “Eva, when you said Marcus was branching out... what did he *really * tell you?”
Eva tugs at her glasses, her nervous habit flaring. “He said the buyer was ‘from out of town.’ Didn’t want to meet in the market—wanted a private room. ‘Like a business deal,’ he said. I told him that’s how people get killed in here. He laughed. Said, ‘Detective Quinn’s on my side.’”
Quinn’s chest tightens. Morris had laughed like that, too. *“Harlow, what are you so scared of? It’s just a ghost.”* Then he’d called her from a private room, and the line had gone dead.
The market hums again, louder this time . Quinn looks up, the coin falling from her hand. The sigils on the door are *moving *, shifting, as if the stone itself is breathing.
“Eva,” she says, slow . “How do you break a perverted ward?”
Eva’s face goes pale . “You don’t. You *banish * the energy. But it takes a—”
“—bone token,” Quinn finishes. She drops to her knees, scanning the floor. There, behind a crate, a fragment of bone: white, polished, with a chip out of the edge. *His sister’s.*
She picks it up, the chip digging into her palm. The hum sharpens, a sound like a thousand voices whispering. Marcus ’s body twitches, his fingers curling into a claw. The stain on his chest spreads, black tendrils coiling up his throat.
“Quinn—” Eva’s voice is high, panicked. “The binder . It’s not a trap. It’s a *key *. To open the rift .”
The needle on the compass spins, a blur. The rift isn’t far.
Quinn stands, the bone token in her right hand, the compass in her left. The sigils on the door split apart, revealing a blackness beyond—pitch so thick it *shimmers *, like oil on water.
“Marcus didn’t want to sell the binder ,” she says, to no one. “He wanted to *close * the rift . But the client—they knew. They perverted the wards, fed the spirit, and now it’s loose. And the rift —” She looks at the compass. It’s spinning faster, faster, then stops.
It points at the door.
“The client’s already through,” she says.
Eva grabs her arm, her fingers cold. “What are you going to do?”
Quinn smiles, sharp and hard, the same smile she uses on perps. “I’m going to give them a *receipt *.”
The hum becomes a scream. The blackness crawls toward them, oozing through the split in the wards. Quinn raises the compass, the bone token in her other hand. The sigils on the casing glow, etched into something ancient, something alive.
“Bring him back,” she says, to the ghosts in the machine. “All of him. And I’ll let you pass.”
The tendrils on Marcus ’s body recoil, his eyes fluttering. The stain dims, black turning to gray.
The client steps through the rift .
Quinn doesn’t flinch. She knows that face now—pale , with eyes like flint. A man she’d seen once, in a café near Westminster, carrying a briefcase that *vibrated * with static. Morris had asked about him, once. *“Looks like a banker,”* he’d said. *“But his hands shake like a junkie’s.”*
The man sees her, freezes. “You’re not supposed to be here—”
“I’m the one who *is * supposed to be here,” Quinn says, and the compass in her hand booms, a sound like thunder. The bone token glows, white hot, and the rift *snaps shut *, the door sealing with a roar.
The man screams, his body dissolving into smoke. The hum dies away, the sigils on the door melting back into place, calm and protective.
Marcus ’s body goes still. Eva kneels, pressing two fingers to his wrist. “He’s alive. Barely. The binder —” She looks at the shelf, where the vial should be. It’s back, the label now visible: *“Mist of the Returning Sun.”*
Quinn picks up the coin, the symbol on it vanishing, leaving only the wolf’s head. She tucks it into her pocket. Morris’s missing file, she thinks. The one with the case notes, the witness statements, the photo of the circle he’d found in a warehouse. The circle with three dots in a triangle.
“Eva,” she says, soft . “I need you to get me those Marcus Voss’s clients. All of them. Starting with the one from Edinburgh.”
Eva nods, her hands steady now. “I’ll have the list by morning.”
Quinn turns to leave, pausing at the door. Marcus stirs, his eyes fluttering open. “Thank you,” he whispers.
She nods. Doesn’t say anything. Some things aren’t meant to be understood.
The market falls silent. Outside, the graffiti glows faintly, the *Beware the Veil * now crossed out, replaced by a single, bold *Found *.
Quinn’s watch reads 3:02. She tugs the gate closed, the bone token slipping into the lock. Somewhere, a clock ticks. Somewhere, a spirit is bound. Somewhere, a killer is hunting.
She walks back through the tunnel, her boots crunching on the mud that isn’t mud. The air no longer smells of copper. It smells of jasmine, and pine, and new beginnings.
Or maybe not . Maybe it just smells like a job well done.
Either way, she’ll take it.
For Morris.
For the dead.
For the ones who can’t speak.