Page 12 of Fated to the Fang

"Some of those codes are sealed."

"Then we have something to talk about."

He doesn't agree, but he doesn't refuse. He's measuring how much he can give me to keep me where he can watch me, and I allow it, for now.

I unroll the old chart between us, then set Owen's camera stills beside it.

"This," I say. "The cut. It isn't sealed. Something's using it on a schedule."

Dorian looks at the photographs first, not the map. His hand stills beside the nearest image.

"Who else has seen these?"

"Owen. Me. Now you."

"Keep it that way."

"Because they're useful, or because they're dangerous?"

"Yes."

I tap the dotted line. "You didn't answer the question."

"It's all I can give you without making things worse."

"The cut," I say. "It leads inland."

"Into the old storm works."

"I said cut. You said storm works."

The silence between us does useful work.

"The old storm works run under half this town," he says. "Most are flooded. The rest are worse."

"Worse how?"

"Unstable. Unmapped. And not as empty as the closures claim." He slides the photograph back to me. "If you insist on checking it, I can get you close to one access point. Daylight. Low tide. No improvising."

"That sounds like help wearing a leash."

"It is assistance wearing conditions."

"At least it dressed honestly."

I roll the chart and squeeze it under my arm. I haven't agreed to anything. But I have my confirmation: the cut is a door, he knows it's a door, and he wants the handle more than he wants me away from it.

Outside, gulls work the slip. I ought to be counting them. Instead I'm sitting too still next to Dorian whose warnings keep landing one truth short, and the dangerous part isn't the lying. It's that some part of me wants to believe the next thing he says. I should know better.

Instead of dwelling on it, I go looking for a map of the tunnels. Whatever moves under this town has been reading the coastline ahead of me, and I'm finished being last to the evidence.

10

DORIAN

The grate over the storm outfall has been gone for years, but the bolts that held it are bright. Sheared, not rusted through. I crouch at the drain mouth where the cliff drinks the low tide and put my hand to the cut metal. Cold. Recent. I go in.

The first hundred feet run wet and old, brick gone soft with a century of salt. Then the floor shifts. The silt is packed where boots have filled it, and the waterline on the walls stands too high. Too clean—saltwater pushed up through passages that should sit dry on a falling tide. It's the same as Avery's cove gate. The same hand working both.