Chapter 1
The Body on the Stoop
Rain hammered the brim of Inez Ward’s hood as she climbed the last flight of concrete steps to her building. The streetlight above the stoop flickered once, twice, then died for the night. She fished for her keys in the dark, shoulder already braced for the door’s familiar stick.
A shape blocked the entrance.
A man sat slumped against the jamb, legs splayed, chin on chest. Coat open. No movement. No breath fogging in the cold.
Inez froze mid-step. The keys bit into her palm.
She scanned the street—empty, rain-slick, no headlights, no footsteps. Just water rushing along the gutter and the low hiss of a distant bus.
She crouched, keeping her boots outside the pooling water under him. Leather gloves already on from the walk home. She pressed two fingers under the jaw. Skin cold, no pulse. Dead long enough that rigor hadn’t fully set.
Her gaze dropped to the open coat.
Pinned to the sodden lining, glinting under the weak spill from the next building’s bulb, was the sigil. Mateo’s sigil. The small, hand-stitched wheel of salt and iron thread she had watched him sew into the inside breast pocket of his favorite jacket eight years ago. The same jacket she had searched for after he vanished. The same jacket she had been told—repeatedly—was gone.
The pin was still threaded through torn fabric, as though ripped straight from the lining and fastened here like a calling card.
Her pulse kicked hard against her throat.
She reached out, fingers trembling only once, and unfastened the sigil. The thread was still strong; the tear fresh. Someone had pulled it free tonight.
She tucked the small circle into her coat pocket. The metal was cold against her knuckles.
Inez glanced at the dead man’s hands. Salt crusted the webs between his fingers, fine white grains stuck to the creases of his palms. Not street salt. Ritual salt. The kind that left faint burns if you knew how to read the pattern.
Five nights.
The number arrived unbidden, the way old debts do. Five nights was the standard grace period before a blood-signed obligation defaulted and the ledger changed hands. Five nights before whatever Mateo had signed away became someone else’s property—and before the people who collected those debts started collecting people instead.
She looked at the corpse again. Message received.
Neighbors would be home soon. Someone would call it in. Police tape. Questions she couldn’t answer without opening every door she had bolted shut.
Inez hooked her hands under the man’s armpits, braced her boots, and dragged. Wet fabric scraped concrete. His head lolled; the back of his skull left a dark smear on the step.
She hauled him over the threshold, kicked the door shut behind them, and let him slump in the narrow vestibule. Rainwater pooled under his shoulders.
She stood there breathing hard, one hand still on the sigil in her pocket, the other already reaching for her phone.
Four nights left
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