Chapter 1: The Elusive Shadow
The bench was splintered, digging into the back of her thighs even through the leather of her pants. Katie “Boom Boom” Manelli came awake all at once, a half-empty bottle of fire whiskey clattering from her lap and rolling across the grimy cobblestones. The neon buzz of the Dark Market sliced into her skull. Ozone and spilled ale and something sweetly rotting.
Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. She wasn’t sure why.
Then she saw her.
A profile, twenty yards away, ducking behind a tent strung with glowing, cursed cutlery. A certain slope of a shoulder. The particular way a head of messy dark hair fell across a brow. It was just a flash, swallowed by the shifting crowd of haggling goblins and cloaked hags.
“Lena?”
The word was a dry crackle in her throat. Impossible. Lena was gone. Lena had stepped off a platform five years ago.
Katie was moving before her brain could catch up, shoving off the bench. Her boots slipped on something wet. She didn’t care. She plunged into the current of supernatural bodies.
“Hey! Watch it, spark-fingers!” a grizzled troll vendor snarled as she jostled his table of luminous mushrooms.
She didn’t apologize. Her eyes were locked on the space where the figure had vanished. She shoved past a pair of arguing imps, their bat-like wings flapping in her face. The air was thick with the hum of deals and the sizzle of portal magic. She cut down a narrower alley, stalls selling bottled memories and shifting tattoos pressing in on both sides.
There. A glimpse of a denim jacket, turning a corner ahead.
“Lena! Wait!”
Her shout was swallowed by the market’s din. She ran, her breath coming in sharp gasps. The denim jacket disappeared behind a heavy velvet curtain at the back of Rainbor the orc’s candy stall.
Katie skidded to a halt, the sugary scent of mundane gummy worms clashing with the market’s occult perfume. Rainbor looked up from arranging a tray of licorice whips. His massive, jade-green face broke into a warm, tusk-filled smile.
“Little Boom! You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Which, around here, is technically possible.”
“Someone just ran through here,” Katie panted, pointing a trembling finger at the curtain.
Rainbor’s brow-ridge furrowed. He scratched his temple with a thumb the size of a sausage. “Through my storage? Nah. Been here all night. Only person who came by was Lady Eleanor for a sherbet lemon. And she floated.”
The velvet curtain hung still, innocuous. A dead end.
A cold wave of frustration and dread washed over Katie. She stumbled back, shaking her head. “I saw her.”
“Saw who, kiddo?”
“Lena. My Lena.”
Rainbor’s gentle expression softened into something mournful. He leaned his enormous forearms on the counter, making the glass jars rattle. “Ah, Katie. The mind plays cruel tricks when it grieves. Especially when fueled by bargain fire whiskey.”
“It wasn’t a trick.” The conviction in her own voice surprised her. It felt like a lit fuse in her chest.
“Well,” Rainbor sighed, lowering his voice. “The London portal’s been acting up again. Flickering. Warping at the edges. Jan’s crew is supposed to look at it Tuesday. Maybe it spit something out. Or someone. This place… it doesn’t always follow the rules.”
A ghostly chuckle sounded by Katie’s ear. She flinched as Lady Eleanor Hawthorne materialized halfway through the candy counter, her Victorian gown transparent over the jars of jellybeans. “Or perhaps your lost love is merely playing hide-and-seek! Such games can be so delightfully exhilarating. The chase! The capture! The passionate reunion against a wall of… oh, my apologies.” She winked, her spectral form shimmering. “I’m being indelicate.”
Katie ignored her, turning a slow circle. The crowd flowed on, indifferent. A hag offered her a love potion. A cyber-mage argued over the price of a crystalline data-slug. Lena was nowhere.
She’d looked so real.
For ten more frantic minutes, she paced the market’s labyrinth, her hope decaying with each passing second. She checked the familiar spots: the used-book stall dripping with ectoplasm, the alley where the shadow-merchants dealt. Nothing. Only strange glances and shrugged shoulders.
Finally, her legs gave out. She slumped into a damp, brick-lined alcove near the malfunctioning London portal. The rusted archway pulsed with a sickly, greenish light, its edges shimmering like a heat haze. A flickering “No Entry” sign buzzed overhead.
She was alone. The adrenaline bled away, leaving a hollow, aching exhaustion. She’d hallucinated. Rainbor was right. Grief and whiskey and this damned, magic-soaked place had conspired to break her heart all over again.
She dropped her head into her hands, the smells of wet stone and distant diesel fuel filling her nose.
And then she caught it.
A faint, familiar scent cutting through the market’s funk. Not perfume, really. That cheap bergamot and vanilla body spray Lena used to buy at the drugstore. The one Katie would smell on her pillow for days after she’d gone.
Katie’s head snapped up. Her blood went still.
The scent was there. Faint, but unmistakable. Hanging in the stagnant air of the dead-end alcove.
Right under the warping, unstable portal to London.
She stood up slowly, every sense screaming. It wasn’t a hallucination. The scent was proof—tangible, fleeting, real. Lena had been here. Or something wearing her skin. Or a ghost that still smelled of CVS.
Katie stared at the pulsing, distorted gateway. The Order of the Glorious Kaboom had rules about unauthorized portal travel. Jan would have her head. But Jan wasn’t here. Only the scent, and the terrible, wonderful possibility it carried.
She took a step toward the flickering light. The rules could get damned.
The rules could get damned.
She was lifting her foot, the warped light of the portal washing the black leather of her boot in a sickly green, when a massive, gentle hand settled on her shoulder and pulled her back.
“Whoa there, Little Boom. Not that way.”
Rainbor’s voice was a low rumble, his grip immovable. Katie stumbled back a step, the spell of the scent and the portal breaking like a soap bubble. Lady Eleanor hovered just behind his bulk, her spectral face etched with concern.
“A heart in distress is a compass spinning wild,” the ghost murmured. “But a broken portal is a throat waiting to be cut.”
Reality crashed back in, cold and harsh. The hum of the market, the smell of Rainbor’s licorice. Jan would have her fucking head for this. Not for following a lead, but for being an idiot about it. Charging blind into a destabilized gateway was a good way to end up scattered across dimensions, or worse, fused with a lamppost in Kensington.
“I… fuck.” Katie’s breath shuddered out of her. She leaned into Rainbor’s solid warmth for a second, the strength going out of her legs.
“You said a name before. Lena.” Rainbor guided her away from the alcove, his huge hand still on her shoulder. “Who is she, kid?”
The memory didn’t come as a flood. It leaked in, precise and brutal.
Her old dorm room. The smell of incense and Lena’s cheap body spray. The twin bed was narrow, but they made it work, a tangle of limbs and shared warmth under a threadbare blanket. Lena’s skin was soft under Katie’s palms, her breaths little sighs against Katie’s neck. They’d moved together slowly, tenderly, Katie whispering things into the hollow of her throat she’d never said to anyone else. It wasn’t about frenzy; it was about mapping familiar territory, a quiet, desperate celebration of knowing someone.
After, Lena had traced the lines of Katie’s palm. “Don’t go tonight,” she’d whispered, her voice raw.
Katie had stiffened. “It’s just the study group. It’s important.”
“It’s always important. It’s always a secret.” Lena hadn’t shouted. She never did. Her anger was a quiet, cold thing. “You vanish. You come back smelling of sulfur and burnt metal. You look at me like you’re remembering a different world. I’m right here, Kat. I’m real.”
“It is real. You just… you wouldn’t understand.”
“Because you won’t let me!” The pain in Lena’s eyes was sharper than any shout. “What’s more real than this?”
Katie had pulled away, stung, scrambling for her clothes. “We’ll talk later. When you’re being reasonable.”
She’d left Lena sitting in the rumpled bedsheets, the question hanging in the air. They didn’t talk later. The next call Katie got was from a police officer with a flat, professional voice.
Stepped in front of a train.
“She’s dead,” Katie said to Rainbor, the words ash in her mouth. “Right?”
Rainbor looked over Katie’s head at Lady Eleanor. The ghost floated closer, her form shimmering as she extended her senses. The air in the alcove grew colder.
“No recent spiritual residue,” Eleanor said after a moment, her usual levity gone. “No lingering soul-pain. If your young lady is here, she is not a ghost. Not in any traditional sense.”
“So what the hell was it?” Katie demanded, a spark of her old fire returning, fueled by confusion and a sick, stubborn hope.
“Something else,” Rainbor said grimly. He nodded toward the flickering portal. “That thing’s been glitching for a week. Spitting out echoes, maybe. Or drawing things in that don’t belong. You don’t walk into that mess alone, Katie. Not ever.”
He was right. The blinding, grief-stricken panic had passed, leaving a cold, clear purpose. She needed a tracker. Not a bomb-maker or a ghost-whisperer. She needed a predator.
Her gaze swept across the market and landed on Rainbor’s stall. Abby was there now, her freckled face lit with laughter as she gestured wildly, explaining some human confection to a confused-looking gnome. Sweet, curious, normal Abby.
But Abby had once worked for her.
“I’m not going alone,” Katie said, her voice low and decisive. She pulled her shoulder from under Rainbor’s hand. “Thanks, Rain. Thanks, El.”
“Where are you going?” Eleanor asked, fluttering anxiously.
Katie was already walking, cutting through the crowd with a new, focused determination. Most people in their circle would call Jan. Or get Fatima to consult the threads of fate. But Jan would ask for orders and a plan. Fatima would see too many possibilities.
Katie needed a nose. She needed someone who could taste a lie on the air, who could sense desire and deception in the pulse of a stranger’s blood. She needed someone who, through no fault of her own, was built to hunt.
She headed for the exit, pulling her phone from her pocket. The neon reflected in her dark eyes. She scrolled past Jan’s contact, past Fatima’s.
She found the listing for Ye Olde Unmentionables.
It was time to go find Vivian.