I don't notice it at first. I only notice that the main road feels wrong, too bright, too exposed, packed with spirits clustered beneath the orange pools of streetlight. I turn down a side street to avoid them. Then another. A construction barrier blocks an alley I could've sworn was open when I passed it last week. A crowd of dead men in work coats spills across the sidewalk ahead, shoulder to shoulder, their mouths open in silent accusation. I veer left, then right, chased less by one thing than by the impossible pressure of everything being too much.
The city isn't guiding me. That'd be insane.
The city doesn't care enough to guide anyone.
Still, every turn that feels survivable leads me deeper into the older district, where the brick rowhouses lean close and the pavement holds the day's rain in black, shining seams. My legs shake. The soles of my feet burn, then sting, then go strangely warm where the skin has split. I look back once and see dark spots on the pavement behind me.
Blood.
Mine, apparently, because the night hadn't collected enough evidence.
Turn, little priest,the cold voice whispers.
I press my palms hard against my ears, which does nothing because the dead aren't sound. "I swear to God, if one more thing calls me little tonight, I'm committing a sin with intent."
My voice sounds thin and strange between the buildings. No one answers from the living side of the street. The dead crowd closer, their forms flickering in windows and doorways, faces stretched by hunger, grief, or whatever magic has sharpened some of them into weapons.
Toward the fire,the voice says.Toward the thing that'll write its survival on your skin.
A witch's shop.
Soren's shop.
I shouldn't know that, not with certainty, but the name has weight now. Cain said it in my apartment. Soren. Ira. Witch. Exorcist. Bond. The words have been moving under my thoughts ever since, rearranging the floorboards of my life while I run barefoot over the surface.
Another shadow crosses the far end of the street.
This one's lower, closer, gone before I can decide whether it was a person or a trick of the light. I turn away from it and find myself on a narrower road lined with dark storefronts. A CLOSED sign hangs crooked in a tailor's window. A cat watches me from beneath a parked car, eyes green and unimpressed. Somewhere nearby, magic changes the air.
I feel it before I understand it.
The screaming doesn't stop, but it shifts. It moves back by inches, as if I've stepped beneath a roof in the middle of a storm. The voices are still there, still furious, still pressing their cold hands through the edges of me, but they're no longer rooted directly inside my skull. Something hums under the pavement, low and warm, nothing like Cain's devastating silence and nothing like the sharp, burning pressure of the church's crosses.
This is older. Earthier. It smells, somehow, like dried herbs, old paper, iron, and wood that's absorbed too many secrets to burn cleanly. The air tastes like the moment before lightning, not the strike itself.
Possibility, I think, and hate myself for the hope in it.
Up ahead, one shop window glows amber against the dark street. The sign's painted in gold, half-shadowed by hanging bundles of herbs pressed against the inside of the glass. The building looks narrow and crooked, the kind of place that should've been crushed between newer structures decades ago but refused out of spite. Warmth leaks through the seams around the door. The spirits trailing me recoil from it and surge harder at my back, their voices rising into a single jagged note.
Don't go in.
The words come from too many mouths at once.
He'll hollow you. He'll turn your essence into ink. He'll use you until your skin's only paper for someone else's spell.
My knees nearly give. I catch myself on the brick beside the door, leaving a smear of blood where my hand lands. The brass handle's warm beneath my palm, impossibly warm for the hour and the weather. Behind me, the street's full of smoke-shaped grief and voices that know my name too clearly. Somewhere above or behind or inside the bond, something moves at the edge of perception, but I don't look for it this time.
I'm too tired to decide whether this door's a rescue or a trap. It's simply the only door that feels less dangerous than the street.
A ghostly hand closes around my throat. Cold floods my skin, smelling of wet earth and forgotten names. I can't breathe for one horrible second, and then my body chooses for me. I turn the handle and throw myself inside.
8
Aven
ThefirstthingIregret is the way my body crumples to the floor, my head against the tiles. Not the running barefoot through the city. Not being still in my underwear. Not the very public breakdown that may or may not have involved me yelling at air in front of a taxi driver.
Those regrets are still forming a line somewhere behind my ribs, waiting for a number to be called. The floor's immediate because my knees are on it, my hands are braced against it, and my feet are bleeding across polished wood that looks expensive enough to have its own insurance policy.
