Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8X4M423V5P2F5EGF2SZVZJ

The damp chill of the underground station seeped through the soles of Harlow Quinn’s shoes. She stood on the grimy platform of the abandoned Camden Tube stop, her breath misting in the air under the weak glow of emergency lanterns. The place was a tomb of peeling advertisements and rusted rails, but the scene before her was anything but deserted. Forensic techs in white suits moved with a hushed urgency around a cordoned-off stall. The stall’s velvet drapes were torn, its shelves overturned. Shards of glass and strange, viscous fluids glittered on the concrete. This was the Veil Market, and its usual clandestine bustle had been replaced by a sterile, procedural silence. Eva Kowalski stood just outside the tape, her worn leather satchel hanging heavy from her shoulder. She tucked a curl of red hair behind her left ear, her round glasses reflecting the lantern light. “They called you in.” Harlow didn’t look at her, her eyes scanning the scene with military precision. “Standard procedure when a place like this gets turned over. Especially when the owner ends up dead.” The body lay half-under the stall’s counter, a man in his sixties with a waxy complexion. No visible wounds. His eyes were open, fixed on the arched ceiling as if watching for trains that would never come. “Mr. Silas,” Eva said. “He dealt in protective talismans. Wards. Nothing offensive.” “And you’re here because?” “The Museum’s Restricted Archives have a standing agreement with certain departments. When artifacts or… practitioners are involved.” Harlow finally glanced at her. Eva’s freckles stood out against her pale skin. She looked nervous, but her voice was steady. A uniformed sergeant approached, his boots crunching on broken glass. “Detective. Looks like a botched robbery. Cash box is empty. Some items missing from the shelves.” “What items?” The sergeant consulted his notebook. “According to the initial witness—a stallholder across the way—a few small things. A set of bone dice. A vial of something called ‘moon-dust.’ And a compass. Brass, about this big.” He made a circle with his fingers. Harlow’s gaze drifted back to the body. “Cause of death?” “No obvious trauma. ME’s on the way down, but it’ll be a while. This place isn’t exactly on the map.” “And the witness saw nothing?” “Said he heard a commotion, saw a figure in a dark coat running off toward the northern tunnel. That was it.” Harlow stepped under the tape. The sergeant moved to stop her, but a sharp look from her made him hesitate. She crouched by the body, her worn leather watch catching the light. Silas’s hands were curled inward, not in fists, but as if clutching something that wasn’t there. No defensive wounds. No signs of a struggle on his knuckles. She looked at the overturned shelves. The breakage was concentrated on one side. The cash box, a simple metal lockbox, lay on its side near the body, its lid open and empty. But it wasn’t smashed. The lock was intact. “He opened it for them,” Harlow said, more to herself. “Or he knew them,” Eva offered from behind the tape. Harlow ignored her for a moment, her eyes tracing the pattern of the debris. Shards of glass radiated outward from a point near the wall, not from the shelf’s fall. Something had exploded. Or been shattered with deliberate force. She stood and walked to the wall. A small, empty bracket was screwed into the brickwork, about head height. Two wire leads dangled from it. “This held something.” The sergeant shrugged. “Maybe a light?” “It’s not wired for electricity.” Harlow ran a gloved finger over the bracket. No dust. It had been used recently. Eva’s voice was closer now. She had ducked under the tape, her satchel brushing against her hip. “It’s a display mount. For something valuable. Something you’d want to show off but keep secure.” Harlow turned. “The compass.” “The Veil Compass,” Eva corrected, her green eyes serious behind her glasses. “It doesn’t point north. It points to the nearest thin spot. A rift. A door that shouldn’t be open.” “A what?” “A supernatural aperture. They’re unstable. Dangerous.” Harlow looked from Eva to the bracket, then to the cash box. “So someone came in, demanded the compass. Silas took it down, maybe handed it over. Then they killed him and took the cash for appearances.” “That’s one story,” Eva said. “You have another?” Eva knelt beside the shattered glass on the floor. She didn’t touch it, just peered at the viscous fluid pooling amidst the shards. It had a faint, iridescent sheen. “This wasn’t a robbery. It was a retrieval. Or a prevention.” “Prevention of what?” “Of Silas using the compass himself.” Eva pointed to the fluid. “This is distilled ectoplasm. Stabilized. It’s used in high-grade ward construction. It’s also highly volatile when mixed with certain metals. Like brass.” Harlow’s mind clicked through the sequence. “The compass was on the wall. Someone breaks in. A struggle ensues, the compass falls, shatters this vial…” “No.” Eva stood, tucking her hair again. “Look at the bracket. No scratches. It was unscrewed carefully. The compass was removed, not knocked down. And the glass.” She gestured to the shards. “They’re all roughly the same size. Thick. This was a deliberate smash. Not an accident during a fight.” Harlow stared at the evidence. The sergeant’s theory of a panicked thief didn’t fit. The open cash box with an intact lock suggested compliance, not violence. The lack of defensive wounds on Silas. The carefully removed compass. The deliberately shattered vial. “He was killed after,” Harlow said, the realization cold in her gut. “After he handed over the compass. After the vial was broken. Why break the vial?” “To create a distraction,” Eva said. “Or to destroy evidence. Ectoplasm that pure can be traced back to its source. To the spirit it was harvested from.” “But the cause of death…” Harlow moved back to the body. She leaned in close, ignoring the faint smell of ozone and decay. She looked at his eyes again. The pupils were fully dilated, even in the low light. Tiny, faint red pinpricks dotted the whites around the irises. “Petechial hemorrhaging,” she murmured. “Asphyxiation. But no marks on the neck.” “There are ways to stop a heart without touching the skin,” Eva said quietly. “Ways that don’t leave a mark.” Harlow remembered DS Morris. The way he had been found in that locked room, his face a mask of terror, no wound on his body. The official report said cardiac arrest. She had never believed it. She stood up, her sharp jaw tight. “The witness saw a figure running. Did he see the face?” The sergeant shook his head. “Dark coat, hood up. That’s all.” “And which tunnel?” The sergeant pointed toward the northern archway, a dark maw leading into deeper blackness. Harlow walked to the tunnel entrance. The ground was dusty, but here, just inside the arch, the dust was disturbed. Not by running footsteps, but by something being dragged. Two parallel lines, about three feet apart, with scuff marks between them. Like something on wheels. “He didn’t run,” Harlow said. “He had a cart. Or a trolley.” Eva joined her, looking at the marks. “To carry something out. Something heavy.” “The compass is small.” “But other things might not be.” Eva’s voice dropped. “Silas dealt in wards. If someone wanted to dismantle a ward, or bypass one, they’d need specific counter-artifacts. Heavy ones. They took the compass to find a weak point, and they took the tools to exploit it.” Harlow looked back at the crime scene, the pieces rearranging themselves in her mind. This wasn’t a random theft. It was a targeted, precise operation. The killer had known exactly what they wanted. They had convinced Silas to cooperate, then murdered him with a method that left no trace. They had staged the robbery, but badly—the clues were there for anyone who knew to look. And she was the only one here, besides Eva, who was even considering looking. “Sergeant,” Harlow said, her tone leaving no room for debate. “I want this entire tunnel searched. Every inch. I want to know what was on that cart. And I want the witness brought to the station for a formal statement. Now.” The sergeant nodded and hurried off. Eva watched him go, then turned to Harlow. “You see it now.” “I see a homicide dressed up as a mugging. I see a missing compass that points to doors. And I see a dead man who opened his cash box for his killer.” Harlow’s brown eyes met Eva’s. “What I don’t see is why.” “The ‘why’ is in the archives,” Eva said, hefting her satchel. “In things that aren’t supposed to exist. The compass wasn’t the target. It was the key. Silas was just the locksmith.” Harlow looked at the drag marks leading into the darkness. The answers were down there, in the old tunnels. And so was whatever had killed her partner three years ago. She could feel it, a cold certainty settling in her bones.