AI The air in the abandoned Camden Tube station was cold enough to fog the breath, and thick with the smell of damp brick, ozone, and something else—incense, maybe, or old magic. Detective Harlow Quinn stood at the edge of the platform, her sharp jaw set, taking in the crime scene. The Veil Market was supposed to be a myth, a whisper among the city’s fringe-dwellers. But the call had come from a CI with a bone token in his pocket, and the address led here, to a service door behind a boarded-up kiosk, and down a rusting ladder into the forgotten dark.
Now, under the flickering glow of emergency lanterns set up by the first responders, the market lay revealed. Stalls fashioned from old train doors and moth-eaten velvet drapes lined the curved walls. The detritus of the trade was everywhere: shattered vials leaking iridescent fluid, scattered feathers that looked too sharp to be from any bird, pages of cryptic script torn from ledgers. At the centre of the platform, a larger stall was cordoned off with police tape. It looked like it had been hit by a small, focused explosion.
“Quinn.”
She turned. A woman was picking her way carefully across the debris-strewn tracks, avoiding a puddle that shimmered with a mother-of-pearl sheen. Eva Kowalski. Harlow had seen her file. Research assistant at the British Museum, known associate of Aurora Finch and her circle. The red curls, the round glasses, the freckles—all matched the surveillance photos. She wore a thick wool coat over a sweater, and the strap of a worn leather satcut was slung across her chest. Harlow’s eyes narrowed . What was she doing here?
“Miss Kowalski. This is a restricted scene.”
“They called me in,” Eva said, tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear. A nervous habit, the file had noted. “From the Museum. When your constables found… well, some of the items here are technically cultural artifacts. Or they would be, if anyone admitted this place existed.” She stopped a few feet away, her green eyes wide behind the lenses, taking in Harlow’s stance, the worn leather watch on her wrist, the unspoken military precision in the way she held herself. “Detective Quinn, right? I’ve heard about you.”
“I’m sure you have,” Harlow said, her voice flat . She gestured toward the destroyed stall. “What can you tell me about this?”
Eva followed her gaze. “That was Alaric’s stall. He was a Shade artisan. One of the best. He crafted attunement devices, focusing lenses… tools for navigating the less stable parts of reality.”
“Navigating.” Harlow let the word hang . She walked toward the stall, her boots crunching on broken glass. The scene was wrong. The stall was obliterated , yes, but the destruction was contained . Stalls on either side were untouched. It wasn’t an explosion; it was a dissection. Someone had taken it apart with terrifying efficiency. Shelves were splintered , drawers pulled out and emptied, their contents—whatever they had been—gone . But there were no scorch marks consistent with explosives, no smell of cordite. The air smelled of cedar and cold iron.
“Your people think it was a robbery,” Eva said, coming up beside her, keeping a respectful distance from the tape. “They’re not wrong. But they’re looking for a thief. I think you’re looking for a harvester.”
“A what?”
“Some entities… feed on refined supernatural energy. A Shade artisan’s workshop would be a feast. The violence of the act would be a byproduct of consumption, not the goal.” Eva pointed a finger toward a particular section of the wreckage. “See how the wood is not just broken, but desiccated ? Like it’s been aged a hundred years in a second? That’s a signature.”
Harlow looked. The girl had a point. A support beam was indeed grey and crumbly, while the rest of the wood was freshly splintered. But her detective’s mind immediately offered a dozen natural explanations: chemical reaction, accelerated dry rot from a spilled agent. She filed it away. “What was taken?”
“That’s the question.” Eva knelt, unbothered by the damp floor, and opened her satchel. She pulled out a notebook. “Alaric was working on a new batch of Veil Compasses. Highly sought after. They’re like… supernatural GPS. Without one, navigating certain markets or finding hidden doors is nearly impossible.”
Harlow’s memory flashed—a small brass compass, verdigris patina, sigils etched into the face. She’d seen a sketch in an evidence file from Morris’s last case. The connection sent a cold wire down her spine . She kept her face impassive. “Any of these compasses here now?”
“I doubt it. If this was a harvest, they’d be the prime target. The energy concentrated in them is…” Eva trailed off, then looked up at Harlow. “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”
“I believe someone tore this place apart looking for something valuable,” Harlow said, moving past her to examine the stall’s interior. “I believe they used tools, not teeth. And I believe they were in a hurry, but not a panic.” She crouched, ignoring the protest of her knees. Eighteen years on the job. She shone her torch along the floor. Scuff marks, multiple footprints—most now contaminated by her own colleagues. But one pattern caught her eye: a series of deep, clean impressions in a fine layer of brick dust near the back wall. Someone had stood there, weight evenly distributed, for some time. Watching? Waiting?
“Your harvester would have just… eaten the place,” Harlow said, thinking aloud. “This looks like someone did a thorough, violent search. They pulled every drawer, ripped every shelf down. They were looking for something specific, something they thought was hidden.” She stood up and scanned the back wall. It was bare brick, stained with damp. But her eye, trained for discrepancies, caught it: a single brick, slightly less weathered than its neighbours, at eye level. She pressed the edges with her gloved fingers. It gave, just a fraction.
“What is it?” Eva asked, coming closer.
Harlow didn’t answer. She took a small evidence tool from her coat and worked at the mortar. It was fresh, soft. With a little pressure, the brick came loose. Behind it was a shallow niche. And in the niche, resting on a fold of black velvet , was a small brass compass.
Its casing was green with patina, the face intricately etched with swirling symbols that seemed to move in the torchlight if you stared too long . The needle, instead of pointing north, spun in a slow, lazy circle.
Eva sucked in a breath. “A Veil Compass. He hid it. But… that doesn’t make sense. If this was a harvest, the compass would be the first thing sensed. It couldn’t be hidden by a brick.”
“Exactly,” Harlow said, but her triumph was short-lived . She carefully lifted the compass. It was cold, heavier than it looked. As she held it flat on her palm, the spinning needle slowed, then stopped. It didn’t point to the tunnel mouth, or to Eva. It pointed directly at a seemingly solid section of the platform wall ten yards to the left.
“What’s it pointing at?” Harlow asked.
Eva’s face paled. “The needle points toward the nearest supernatural rift or portal. But there’s nothing there. The Market’s stable here. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the act of violence itself—the robbery, or the harvest—tore a temporary hole. A wound.” Eva turned to Harlow, her earlier academic certainty replaced by dread. “Detective, if that needle is right, then whatever did this might not have come from outside the Market. It might have come from *through * that wall.”
Harlow stared at the compass, then at the unremarkable patch of dirty brick and faded posters. The evidence shifted in her mind, two contradictory pictures trying to fuse. The methodical , human violence of the search. The unnatural desiccation of the wood. A hidden compass, deliberately spared. A needle pointing to a blank wall.
Her colleague, DS Morris, had been found in a locked room with no visible wounds, a look of utter terror on his face, and a strange, metallic dust on his clothes that the lab could never identify. Unexplained circumstances. Supernatural origins.
She looked from the compass in her hand to Eva’s frightened face, then back to the ravaged stall. The evidence didn’t add up because she’d been trying to force it into one column: human crime *or * supernatural event. What if it was both? What if someone had used a supernatural means to commit a very human robbery? Or worse, what if something had used a human crime to cover its feeding?
“Get your things, Miss Kowalski,” Harlow said, her voice low and precise . She slipped the Veil Compass into an evidence bag, but didn’t seal it. The needle, visible through the plastic, still pointed rigidly at the wall. “You’re going to explain to me, in very clear terms, exactly how one finds a door that isn’t there. And then we’re going to see what’s on the other side.”