CHAPTER 1
The Book That Bled
The book began bleeding at eleven minutes past midnight.
Mara Baptiste knew the time because she had been watching the clock, doing the math on whether the repair fee would cover her rent before the landlord changed the locks. She had chosen a narrow needle for the broken binding. Nothing sharp enough to cut skin.
Yet a bead of red rose from the leather beneath her thumb.
She set the needle down and stared at it the way you stare at something you need to be a trick of the light.
The workshop smelled of paste, paper, and rain coming through the badly fitted window. Below it, one of Rookhaven’s harbor bells rang. Ships did not come in at this hour anymore. Not since the channel began swallowing lights.
Mara fetched blotting paper. The blood moved away from it.
Three words appeared on the cover.
RETURN WHAT REMAINS.
Someone knocked at the street door.
She took the little knife she used to scrape glue from spines and went downstairs. Through the glass stood a man in a dark coat, no umbrella. Rain silvered his hair. She recognized him before she saw the crest on his collar.
Elias Veyr. Twenty-eight. Sole heir to the family that owned the docks, the hill, and half the streets between.
Mara had once watched him explain a dock closure to a crowd of displaced workers. His suit had cost more than her mother’s funeral. There had been no body at that funeral. Only a borrowed box, an empty grave, and a statement from Veyr Holdings describing an unfortunate maritime incident.
She did not unlock the door.
“We’re closed.”
“You opened the book.”
Her fingers tightened around the knife. “You sent it?”
“No. Who did?”
“A customer who paid in advance. Something your family might try.”
His gaze slipped past her toward the stairs, and there was fear in it — unmistakable, and inconvenient to everything she wanted to believe about him.
Behind her, the bell above the door rang.
The door had not moved.
Mara turned. Water was spreading across the floorboards from nowhere. Inside the dark pool, something lifted a white face with no eyes.
“Don’t answer it,” Elias said.
The face opened its mouth.
“Mara?”
Her mother’s voice. Exact enough to break her.
The thing was inside with her. The lock wouldn’t keep it out — but Elias, whatever he was, stood on the far side of the glass in the rain. She fumbled the lock. Elias came in as the thing rose to its knees, long fingers dragging through the water. He took off one glove and placed his palm flat against the wall.
His shadow did not follow him.
It stepped forward, unfastening from his heels, and struck the creature across the mouth.
Mara backed into the counter, the knife shaking in her hand. Elias’s shadow wrapped around the white face and crushed it into a thin stream that fled beneath the door. The water vanished with it.
He leaned against the wall. A line of blood ran from his nose.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
“What are you?” Mara asked.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Late.”
Upstairs, pages turned without wind.
Mara took the stairs before he could stop her. The book lay open on her worktable. She recognized the handwriting immediately: the small, upright letters, the impatient cross through every t.
Her mother had taught her to write them that way.
Mara, the page said. If this reaches you, I have failed to keep you safe. Do not let the Veyrs make you promise anything.
Beneath the message, a fresh line appeared.
HE HAS ALREADY PROMISED FOR YOU.
