Chapter One

  It was raining. Again.

  Not the gentle, romantic kind of rain that poets write about. No, this was February in Baltimore, which meant the sky was actively trying to drown the city in something that was neither rain nor sleet, but the sort of in-between misery that soaked through clothes and into bones. Stepping out of the doorway, Nash ducked his head against the onslaught and pulled the collar of his coat up.

  The street was empty, lit by streetlights that turned the rainfall into streaks of gold, like molten piss streaming from the heavens. The cold rain collected in his short-cropped hair and trickled down the back of his head, slipping under the collar of his coat and soaking into his shirt beneath, freezing his skin.

  He cursed as one particularly cold rivet trickled down his spine and ducked under the short overhang of a nearby atm, flapping his coat like a pelican, sending rain droplets flying. He swiped at the wetness on the back of his neck and glared at the melting snowdrift in front of him.

  The damned rain wasn’t letting up. It drummed against the ATM’s metal shell and ran in thin rivers down the sidewalk, turning the city into one endless, gray, miserable thing.

  This case was no different. A slow, grinding kind of frustration, designed to wear him down before he got anywhere near the truth. The kind tangled up in protocol and pointless busywork, meant to keep him moving without getting anywhere. Like someone higher up wanted him running in circles instead of solving the damn problem.

  The report said siren activity, but the location made no sense. Inner Harbor was too crowded, too public. Sirens weren’t the kind of creatures that thrived in neon-lit chain bookstores and overpriced coffee kiosks. They worked the docks, the waterfront, places where people went missing without making the news. But this one?

  Apparently, it had set up shop in a Barnes & Noble.

  Nash exhaled sharply through his nose and rummaged through his pockets until his hand closed around the beat-up carton of herbal cigarettes. He pulled it out and the familiar scent of dried-up, old lady lavender twitched his nose. He shook one of the cigarettes free, stuck it between his lips, and shoved the box back into the depths of his coat.

  There were too many things about the assignment that didn’t track. He tongued the filter up and down, thinking. If it was a siren, why the hell was it haunting a bookstore instead of some dive bar or shadowy pier? And why had the report landed on his desk instead of someone lower down the ladder?

  This was low-level work, the kind they gave fresh recruits trying to prove themselves. Nash wasn’t fresh. He wasn’t looking to prove a damn thing.

  He tugged his coat tighter, hunching against the cold. Siren in a bookstore. Sure. Maybe that’s all it was.

  Maybe it wasn’t about his last case at all.

  Maybe if he was better at lying to himself, he might believe it.

  The rain coursed over the pavement, running in oily rivulets toward the gutter. The thought of trudging down to the Inner Harbor in this weather made his jaw clench. But there was no way around it. The sooner he dealt with this siren—or whatever the hell it was—the sooner he could get back to real work.

  A car pulled up to the curb—a brown Buick with rust creeping along its edges like a slow death. The driver leaned over and worked the old-fashioned handle to lower the window.

  “Get in!” the kid inside called. “It’s pouring!”

  Nash plucked the cigarette from his mouth and gave him a look that had sent lesser men running. “What are you doing here, Louis?”

  Louis didn’t blink. “The boss asked me to pick you up.”

  Pain flashed behind Nash’s eyes, the familiar kind of lightning that came when someone lied to his face. He exhaled slowly through his nose. Then, just as slowly, slid the cigarette back into his mouth.

  “Bullshit.”

  Louis winced, just slightly—which, for him, was as good as a full confession written in neon.

  Nash turned and started down the street, hunching against the rain, letting the conversation die where Louis should’ve left it. But the Buick rolled after him anyway, like an overeager stray that didn’t understand when it wasn’t wanted.

  “Come on, man,” Louis tried again. “Just—just get in the car.”

  Nash didn’t bother looking back. “Kid, if you’re gonna lie to me, at least try to be better at it.”

  Louis groaned. “I could be! If you’d stop calling me out every time—”

  “Then stop making it easy,” Nash shot back.

  He reached the corner. The walk signal flashed orange. Downtown was dead at this hour—nothing but ghosts and bad decisions waiting to happen. He took a quick glance down the empty street, then made a break for it, cutting across the slick pavement before the city could make up its mind about stopping him.

  Behind him, the Buick’s horn let out a long, petulant wail, like a junkyard dog left out in the rain. Nash grinned to himself around the unlit cigarette. He had a habit—some might say a flaw—of picking the fight everyone else avoided. He didn’t do it out of principle. He did it because it was the wrong choice. Because bad choices were easier to live with when they were yours.

  The light changed from red to green, and the Buick charged across the street, tires hissing on wet asphalt, and pulled ahead of him. The driver’s side door swung open, and Louis spilled out, an overgrown kid with more enthusiasm than sense.

  “That wasn’t cool, Nash,” Louis said. The streetlight caught in his black hair, turning it into an inkblot against the neon wash of the city. He slouched against the open door, arms folded like he’d been personally wronged.

  Nash yanked the cigarette from his mouth and inhaled the damp morning air that smelled like trash and snowmelt. “Go home, kid. Get some sleep. Find a girl, get a hobby—hell, get a life. Keep following me around, and one day, you won’t like where we end up.”

  Louis just stood there, rain dripping off his collar. “Will you just get in the damn car?”

  Nash didn’t move. Rain trickled down the back of his neck, slipping under his collar, seeping into his shirt. It found every gap, every opening, worming its way in until his whole body felt damp. He hated being cold. Hated being wet even more. And yet, here he was, standing in a freezing downpour, arguing with a seventeen-year-old who didn’t have the sense to take no for an answer.

  Louis sighed. “Man, just get in. You’re not shaking me that easy.”

  Nash exhaled sharply. The kid was an idiot. A persistent idiot. But the rain wasn’t stopping, and his coat wasn’t getting any drier. His hands were already in his pockets, feet already moving before he could stop himself.

  “Fine.” He pointed a finger and scowled. “But only because it’s raining.”

  Louis grinned like he’d won something. Probably because he had.

  “Sure thing, Boss.”

  Nash wrenched the passenger door open. “Don’t call me Boss,” he muttered as he slid in. The leather seats were cracked and crisscrossed with duct tape, and when Nash sat down, a tired puff of air escaped from the cushion, bringing with it the stench of stale smoke. Louis flopped into the driver’s seat, still grinning.

  “So,” he said, flexing his hands on the steering wheel, “where to?”

  Nash sighed. He could already feel this turning into a mistake. He checked his watch. The cracked face read seven minutes slow, as always. It was just after five in the morning. The bookstore wouldn’t open for hours. He could call Eris, but she had a special talent for not picking up when he actually needed her. He could troll the docks looking for a lead, but, well, it was raining.

  That left one option.

  “You know the way to Lucky’s?”

  Louis let out a low whistle. “Wow. Really aiming high this morning, huh?”

  “We’re not going there to drink,” Nash said, shoving the cigarette back into his mouth. “We’re going there to listen.”

  “What are we listening for?”

  Nash sighed and swiveled in his seat to look at Louis. “Look, kid. If we’re going to do this, then we’ve gotta do something about your questions.”

  Louis looked offended. “What’s wrong with my questions?”

  “You have them.”

  “Nash, you can’t expect me not to ask questions—” Louis started.

  Nash pinched the bridge of his nose. “I absolutely can.”

  Louis let out a low, incredulous laugh. “Seriously? That’s your answer?”

  “That’s my answer.”

  The kid shook his head as he threw the Buick into gear. “So what, I’m just supposed to drive and pretend none of this is weird?”

  The old car shuddered as it pulled onto the road, wipers smearing rain across the windshield in slow, tired arcs, barely keeping up with the downpour.

  “Exactly,” Nash muttered, tilting his head against the window.

  Louis scoffed. “You know, normal people explain things.”

  “Lucky for me, I’m not normal.”

  Louis grumbled something under his breath but didn’t push further. The silence stretched long enough for the city to thin out around them, buildings giving way to cracked pavement and forgotten corners.

  Nash watched the streets slip past through the rain-streaked window, the city blurred in half-light. Dark shapes lingered at the edges—just out of focus, shifting with the rain, never clear enough to name. He’d long since stopped trying.

  Baltimore had a way of swallowing things—snow, light, people. Anything left out too long just got absorbed, turned into part of the grime.

  Lucky’s sat on the ragged edge of the city, where the highway bled into a stretch of forgotten businesses and stubborn institutions that refused to die. A truck stop in all but name, it clung to relevance by feeding the kind of people who didn’t want their meals to come with a QR code. Old-school booths, a jukebox with half its songs missing, and a bartender who poured drinks with the same level of care you’d give to changing a tire.

  Louis pulled into the gravel lot, his Buick rattling like a smoker’s cough as he threw it into park. Nash sat for a moment, watching the neon flicker in the window—a shamrock missing half its glow, struggling to convince passersby that walking through that door was a good idea.

  Louis cut the engine, leaving nothing but rain and the faint buzz of the neon sign half-dying in the window.

  Nash didn’t move. The car wasn’t warm, but it was warmer than out there. He exhaled, watching his breath fog up the window.

  Louis side-eyed him. “You good?”

  “Yeah.” Nash exhaled through his nose, fingers drumming once against his thigh, but he still didn’t move.

  Louis huffed. “Look, man, if you’ve got some sixth sense bullshit telling you not to go in there, now’s the time to share with the class.”

  Nash exhaled, popped the door open, and stepped into the cold. “Nah. Just don’t feel like freezing my ass off for no reason.”

  He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets—and the prickle hit him like a punch to the chest.

  Something was off.

  It was nothing he could name or put a finger to, just a slow-creeping wrongness that curled at the edges of his senses. The kind of feeling that made the air a touch too thick in his lungs. It wasn’t magic— or at least nothing obvious. Just a hum beneath his ribs, a pressure behind his eyes, like something had tilted a few degrees out of alignment with the rest of the world.

  With his hands still buried in his pockets, he tugged his coat tighter and scanned the lot. Same flickering neon, same random assortment of semis, same old motorcycle parked under the overhang like it hadn’t moved in weeks. But still— something in his gut twisted sickly.

  Louis shut his door, oblivious. “Man, this place looks like it should’ve been condemned twice already.”

  Nash plucked the cigarette from his mouth and shoved it into a pocket, trying to shake off the feeling. “Lucky’s has been circling the drain since before you were born.”

  Louis muttered something under his breath about tetanus but followed him up the cracked pavement anyway. The rain had thinned to a mean drizzle, and as they passed the motorcycle, something moved in the corner of his eye—a rat, slick with rain water, darting across the wet sidewalk.

  “Jesus!” Louis yelped, stumbling backward.

  Nash barely glanced over. “You gonna scream every time something scurries past, or just the ones with tails?”

  Louis scowled, adjusting his coat like it would cover his embarrassment. “I wasn’t screaming.”

  “No,” Nash said dryly, “of course not.”

  Louis exhaled sharply, but he kept walking. The moment Nash pushed open the door, the smell of stale beer and bad decisions wrapped around him. The bartender, a woman built like a bouncer, barely glanced up from wiping down the counter. A shock of white hair framed her sharp features, and a faded snake tattoo curled around the knuckles of her left hand, ink worn like an old story.

  “Well, if it ain’t Nash Fuller. Thought you died, son.”

  “Close,” Nash said, stepping inside and shaking the rain from his coat. “Thought you finally cleaned this place up.”

  She snorted. “Dream bigger.”

  Lucky’s wasn’t just a bar. It was a place people came to forget their troubles—or at least stay long enough for their troubles to forget them. Named after an owner nobody remembered, it existed in the cracks of time, a twenty-four-hour haven where truckers, old-timers, and things that weren’t entirely human nursed cheap whiskey in the same room, so long as nobody asked too many questions.

  For Nash, it was a dumping ground for things better left unsaid— a place where secrets got traded like cheap smokes and where the wrong kind of people always knew just a little too much.

  He knew better than to trust anything he heard at Lucky’s—but he also knew that if there was dirt to be found, sooner or later, it’d make its way to one of these barstools. All he had to do was listen.

  He headed toward the bar, dropping onto a stool that wobbled under his weight. Louis hovered behind him like a nervous stray.

  “You got anything edible?” the kid asked.

  The bartender arched a brow. “Depends on your definition.”

  Louis hesitated. “I’ll just take a Coke.”

  She grinned. “Safe choice.”

  Nash pulled the lavender cigarette from his pocket and tapped it against the counter. “You heard anything about a siren?”

  The bartender’s grin faded. “What kind of siren?”

  “The kind that sets up shop in a bookstore.”

  That got her attention. She set the Coke down in front of the kid and leaned forward, eyes sharp beneath her thick brows. “You serious?”

  “No, I came all the way down here to tell you a joke.” Nash met her gaze. “Yeah, I’m serious.”

  The bartender blew out a breath, then nodded toward the back corner. “Talk to Marty. He was in here a couple nights ago, mumbling about something like that.”

  Nash turned. The back of the bar was darker, more shadow than light, but he could see the shape of a man hunched over a drink. Marty. Regular enough to have a name.

  Nash pushed off the stool and nodded to Louis. “Stay here.”

  Louis frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  Louis opened his mouth, then sighed and took a sip of his Coke. “Fine. But if you get murdered, I’m absolutely telling people you deserved it.”

  Nash snorted and strode toward Marty, the floor creaking beneath his boots. The man barely looked up as Nash approached, eyes sunken deep, a half-empty glass in front of him.

  “You the one seeing sirens in bookstores?” Nash asked, sliding into the seat across from him.

  Marty’s fingers twitched around his drink. He lifted his gaze, eyes darting around the room before settling on Nash. “You’re Agency,” he said, voice rasping like he’d swallowed a pack of cigarettes.

  “That a problem?”

  Marty licked his lips. “Depends. You here to help, or to make sure nobody asks questions?”

  Nash shot a glance at Louis, making sure the kid wasn’t doing something stupid, then tilted his head toward Marty. “Guess that depends on the answers.”

  Marty hesitated, then leaned in. “It ain’t right, man. Whatever’s in that bookstore—it’s not a siren.”

  Nash felt something cold settle in his gut. “Then what is it?”

  Marty’s fingers tightened around the glass. He swallowed hard.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But it ain’t human.”

  Behind them, the jukebox stuttered.

  Not the normal mechanical failure—the kind where a needle skipped or the wiring threw in the towel. This was something else entirely. The music bent, reversed, and twisted itself into a shape that had no business fitting inside a human ear. A song that might have been an old Johnny Cash track if Johnny Cash had learned to hum in reverse drifted through the var, playing a tune that dragged vowels too long and split consonants like rotten wood.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The wrongness that had curled at the edge of Nash’s senses outside the bar had slithered its way in sometime between then and now.

  It crept beneath the low hum of bar chatter and crouched in the flickering neon, slotting itself into the crack between one breath and the next. Nash stiffened.

  Marty, to his credit, noticed it too. His fingers tightened around his drink, and his eyes grew wide, but the man himself stayed slumped, body language somewhere between defeated and dead drunk. Then his lips moved, and something else spoke through them.

  “You’re looking too close,” the voice said. Not Marty’s voice. Something else’s.

  Nash narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? And what should I be looking for?”

  The not-voice let out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. It was a low, rattling thing, like the wind through old pipes. “For what’s stirring the water.”

  Marty’s lips hadn’t quite matched the words, his mouth moving on a half-second delay like a badly dubbed film. His pupils weren’t behaving either, edges smudging, the color of them a little too murky, like something swimming just beneath the surface.

  Nash felt his stomach turn over. “What?” he asked again, slower this time.

  Marty—or whatever was riding shotgun in Marty’s head—didn’t answer. But his face twisted, something there and gone, the corners of his mouth curling in a way that didn’t belong on a human skull.

  Behind Nash, a chair scraped across the floor—sudden and sharp. Then, the crash of glass. A sucked-in breath. A thump of flesh hitting wood.

  “Uh, Nash?”

  Nash turned to see Louis pressed against the wall. Because, of course, he was. The man pinning him there—the trucker he’d been running his mouth to a second earlier—wasn’t a man anymore.

  Nash’s mind did the split-second recalibration: too many joints in the fingers. Knuckles bulging wrong, each one bending twice, like someone had double-booked his bones. His nails, thick and ridged, pressing against Louis’ throat like he was deciding how hard to squeeze. His spine lengthened as Nash looked at him, as if the illusion of human height had only ever been a suggestion, something he was getting bored of maintaining.

  Louis’ expression was frozen somewhere between bravado and horror. His wide eyes darted to Nash, the universal look for I might’ve made a mistake.

  “Nash?” he squeaked a second time.

  The thing in the trucker’s skin turned its head in increments, like a mannequin on a rusted pivot. The eyes, when they landed on Nash, narrowed.

  “You got a problem?” it asked.

  Its voice was wrong. Too smooth. Like oil on broken glass, slipping over the words instead of forming them.

  Nash took a slow breath. “Yeah,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “I got a real big fucking problem.”

  And then everything snapped.

  The trucker moved too fast. Not like a human—like something that had been wearing one like a cheap rental and had just remembered the thing had joints. Nash barely got his arm up before the backhand landed. Not a full swing—just a lazy, disinterested swipe that still hit like a hammer.

  Pain shuddered through his forearm, muscle and bone singing like struck metal. The impact carried, sent him staggering sideways—his ribs lighting up like a match scraped raw against its box as he hit the edge of a table. A chair screeched across the floor. Someone—Louis, probably—swore.

  Nash barely had time to suck in half a breath before the second punch landed.

  His head snapped to the side, teeth punching into the soft meat of his lip. Iron bloomed across his tongue, thick and metallic, curling at the back of his throat.

  A pause—just long enough for Nash’s skull to catch up with the pain.

  Then:

  The trucker grinned.

  It was a wrong thing. A broken thing. Like it had read about smiling in a book once and decided to give it a try, but the angles weren’t quite right.

  It reached for him again—fingers lengthening, joints creaking—and Nash let it get close.

  Then he moved.

  Magic lurched behind his ribs, raw and unrefined, a fire guttering inside his bones. He grabbed the trucker’s wrist, fingers locking like a vice—then let the magic gnaw its way out.

  A sick, electric jolt shot up his arm, heat and cold tangled together like biting down on tinfoil. His pulse stuttered. His stomach twisted. His body rejected the sensation even as the magic bit deeper, latching onto something beneath the skin.

  The trucker hissed—a noise that didn’t belong in a human throat. Something inside its flesh rippled, shuddering like oil on water, the edges of its borrowed form slipping.

  Nash felt his grip slip, his own body rebelling against whatever the hell he’d just touched.

  That hesitation cost him.

  The trucker lunged, slamming a fist into Nash’s gut.

  Pain punched through his ribs. The air rushed from his lungs in a sharp, breathless wheeze. He doubled over, vision sparking, but he didn’t fall—planted his feet, twisted into the pain, and wrenched the thing’s arm sideways.

  Something snapped.

  Not bone—not quite—but something wrong. Something that wasn’t supposed to bend that way.

  The thing snarled.

  Louis was still on the floor, eyes wide, looking up like a man watching God and the Devil duke it out and realizing he hadn’t picked a side.

  Nash gritted out, “Louis—move your ass.”

  For once, Louis did as he was told—scrambling sideways, out of immediate horrible-death range.

  The trucker jerked, its shape flickering, like it was trying to hold onto the shape of a man but was forgetting how.

  Then, with a heave, it threw Nash.

  His back hit the bar. A burst of white-hot pain flared up his spine. His ribs screamed. His vision whited out at the edges.

  Somewhere behind him, Louis made a very dignified yelp.

  Nash’s fingers scrabbled for something—anything—

  His hand closed around a glass.

  And because Nash Fuller was a goddamn professional, he smashed it into the trucker’s face.

  The glass exploded against the trucker’s face in a sharp, splintering crack. Liquid and shards spattered against Nash’s coat, some slicing along the knuckles of his fist, but the thing reeled—skin shuddering, struggling to hold onto the shape of a man.

  A split second of hesitation.

  Nash took it.

  He shoved hard, wrenching himself free, stumbling backward just in time to see the trucker seething, lip curling back over wrong-looking teeth, something slick and dark moving under its skin like eels in black water.

  “HEY!”

  The bartender’s voice cracked through the air like a gunshot.

  “I JUST CLEANED THIS FUCKING PLACE!”

  Nash, still catching his breath, still tasting iron on his tongue, held up a hand.

  “I was—” He winced, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, smearing red. “—just about to finish up here.”

  The trucker thing bared its teeth, but its shape was already shuddering, rearranging back into something that resembled a human. For a second that low, wrong hum vibrated against Nash’s skull, and he blinked, distracted, but then the trucker gave him one last look—lingering, knowing—and turned, shoving past the door with enough force to rattle the frame on its hinges.

  Louis, hunched on the floor near the door, released a long, shuddering breath.

  “I didn’t even do anything,” he muttered as he pushed himself to his feet.

  Nash shot him a look, pressing his sleeve to his split lip. “You opened your mouth. That was enough.” He turned, glancing back toward Marty at the table.

  The man was out cold.

  Slumped over the table, head in his arms like he’d passed out in the middle of a drink, Marty’s fingers twitched, but whatever had been riding shotgun in his body was long gone.

  Nash spat blood onto the floorboards. “Goddammit.”

  The bartender sighed and surveyed the wreckage—glass, blood, and spilled beer. She grabbed a rag, swiped the counter once like it might make a difference, then flicked it toward the nearest trash bin.

  “You payin’ extra for this, Fuller?” she asked, her tone sitting somewhere between annoyed and exasperated.

  Nash, still dabbing his split lip with the back of his sleeve, reached into his coat. His shoulder screamed in protest, the bruising already setting up camp along his ribs. He pulled his wallet free, thumbed through the bills, and tossed a few of the larger ones onto the counter.

  The bartender pocketed them without counting.

  “Get the hell out of here before I decide to not like you anymore, Nash Fuller.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He tipped an imaginary hat, the gesture more habit than flourish, and grinned before he remembered his lip was split. It stung. A reminder, if he needed one, that mornings like these were why whiskey was invented.

  She snorted, turning away, already done with him.

  Outside, the sky was shifting—the deep, pocket-lint black of the night pulling back just enough to let the city remember it had colors. The rain had slowed to a thin, reluctant drizzle, the kind that had decided it was too tired to keep up the fight but didn’t quite want to quit entirely. Streetlights flickered, their dying glow swallowed by the soft approach of morning. The air smelled of wet asphalt, old metal, and the ghost of cigarettes.

  Louis stood next to him, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets.

  “So where to now?” he asked, kicking a loose chunk of pavement with the toe of his sneaker.

  “Fuck if I know.” Nash sighed, dug his own hands into the depths of his coat, and rocked back on his heels. The world felt thinner now, stretched taut in the wake of whatever the hell had just happened at Lucky’s. He could still hear the not-voice twisting through Marty’s throat. Who’s stirring the waters. Fuck. He hated hedgy bullshit like that.

  He checked his watch. The cracked glass face read seven. Too early for the bookstore. Too late to pretend sleep was an option. He wasn’t quite sure how two hours had passed, but that was Lucky’s for you. Time didn’t just slip away here—it got comfortable, sat down, and ordered another round.

  He flexed his jaw, tasting blood.

  “Food,” Louis decided, with all the authority of a man who had survived the apocalypse and demanded a reward.

  Nash looked at him, the kid’s face still open and eager despite everything that had just tried to murder him, and sighed.

  “Fine. But pick someplace that won’t kill us.”

  Louis brightened, already pulling out his phone.

  “I know a place.”

  Nash groaned. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  All in all, the kid chose good. It was the kind of diner that hadn’t changed since 1973, except for the prices, which were scrawled in grease pencil on the peeling menu. The booths were cracked vinyl, held together by generations of duct tape, and the linoleum floors had absorbed so much coffee and bad luck that they probably had their own gravitational pull.

  Louis slid into a booth by the window like a man who’d just won a long, stupid war and seized the menu like a lifeline. Nash followed, slower—more like a man who’d seen the war, lost a few friends, and come back smart enough to know lifeboats don’t always float. He sat opposite, stretching his sore shoulder, and pushed the salt shaker into alignment with the napkin dispenser.

  The waitress appeared—older than the diner and wearing an apron that had probably once been white. She had a nametag that simply read RITA and regarded them with all the enthusiasm of someone who had long since lost the energy to pretend.

  “What’s it gonna be?” she asked, pulling a pencil and pad from her front pocket.

  Louis ordered like a man who believed in miracles. Eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns. Sausage. Pancakes. Coffee. More bacon.

  “And you?” Rita asked, leveling Nash with a look.

  “Coffee.”

  Her pencil hovered. “That it?”

  Nash tapped two fingers against the tabletop, watching the small grains of salt scatter. “More cream than coffee. More sugar than cream.”

  Rita exhaled through her nose but didn’t argue. “Got it.”

  She disappeared into the depths of the diner, leaving them in the hush of clinking silverware and quiet conversation. Beyond the window, the half-light of a Baltimore morning still hadn’t decided what kind of day it was going to be.

  Louis stretched out, grinning. “I could die happy right now.”

  Nash took a slow breath, let the warmth of the diner seep into the cracks in his bones, and did not argue.

  “So we’re lookin’ for a siren?” Louis asked.

  Nash didn’t answer right away. He was watching Rita as she bustled over. She deposited two porcelain mugs in front of them— the kind that had lived through several decades and bad breakups— followed by a saucer overflowing with half-and-half cups, each one rattling against the other but somehow not spilling over.

  She didn’t even bother looking at them before she scuttled away again, disappearing through the kitchen door.

  “I’m looking for a siren,” he corrected, reaching for the sugar packets that were tucked in beside the ketchup. He grabbed half a dozen, maybe more. He didn’t drink coffee as much as he performed alchemy on it.

  “I’m helping,” Louis protested.

  Louis wasn’t a help. He was a pest at best, a liability at worst. Nash glanced up, sharp words on the tip of his tongue—then caught the eager gleam in the kid’s eyes, that dumb, undented optimism that hadn’t been kicked out of him yet. Some stupid part of him couldn’t bring himself to snuff it out.

  “You’re driving,” he conceded, peeling open a creamer and dumping it in.

  Louis huffed, slouching deeper into the booth and wrapping his hands around his mug. “Yeah, sure. Living the dream.”

  Nash snorted, stirring in another creamer. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.” The coffee had officially reached the color of unhealthy.

  There was a beat of silence—the kind that only really settled in at strange hours of the morning, when the world was shifting between yesterday and today. The diner hummed around them. The rain tapped lazy fingers against the glass.

  Then, Louis muttered, “Maybe the siren just likes to read.”

  Nash paused mid-stir, his gaze flicking up.

  That was a thought.

  Not a good one. But a thought.

  Sirens weren’t subtle creatures. They weren’t built for patience. They were made to lure, hunt, consume. There was a method to them—like gravity or bad luck or the way streetlights always seemed to flicker just as you walked beneath them.

  Nash swirled his coffee, watching the way the liquid moved—like something waiting just beneath a frozen lake.

  What’s stirring the water.

  His grip on the spoon tightened.

  Louis rested his forehead against the table. “If my food doesn’t get here in sixty seconds, I’m gonna do something drastic.”

  “Like what?” Nash asked, distracted, the thought gnawing at the edges of his mind.

  Rita reappeared with a plate so massive it nearly bowed under its own weight.

  “Saved by the gods of cholesterol,” Louis sighed in relief as she set it down.

  Rita rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath about “dramatic little shits”, but there was no real bite behind it.

  Louis grabbed his fork and dug in. “So. What’s the plan?” He looked up at Nash, grinning through a mouthful of eggs.

  Nash exhaled, flexed his sore shoulder, and watched the rain streak against the window in thin, half-hearted lines. “We go to the bookstore.”

  Louis swallowed his bite and waved a piece of sausage like a wizard casting a spell. “Right now?”

  “After you finish your absurd amount of food.” Nash took a sip of his coffee, letting the warmth settle deep into his ribs. “Then, yeah. We go.”

  Louis chewed, eyeing him. “What do we do if you find it?”

  “Well, that can get a bit tricky.” Nash fingered the empty sugar packets on the table. “Arrest it, but something tells me it's not going to go quietly.”

  Louis turned out to be a ferocious eater, the kind of teenager who could put away an entire short stack and still look like he was considering gnawing on the syrup bottle. By the time he demolished the last of his pancakes and they finally tumbled out of the diner, the world had inched reluctantly toward eight in the morning.

  Nash spent the drive slumped in the passenger seat, coat pulled tight against the cold seeping through the Buick’s doors. He didn’t bother with conversation. Neither did Louis. Maybe the kid finally sensed the foul weather inside Nash’s skull and decided not to poke the bear. The drive downtown felt longer than usual in the spitting February rain, everything in Baltimore wearing a thin coat of miserable gray.

  They hit the Inner Harbor a good twenty minutes before the Barnes & Noble opened, which meant standing around watching the rain try its best to make the waterfront even more uninviting. The National Aquarium loomed against the bay, a glass-and-steel beast exhaling fog from its vents. A few determined souls huddled outside under umbrellas, presumably willing to risk pneumonia for a glimpse at a shark. Nash squinted at them, wondering what made a person voluntarily stand in the cold to look at something with that many teeth.

  Louis caught his expression and grinned. Nash ignored him.

  By the time they reached the Barnes & Noble on the next pier over, the lights were on and the doors were open. They walked in, the door swinging shut behind them with a soft thump, leaving the Baltimore drizzle behind. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of paper, industrial carpet, and whatever corporate blend of cinnamon and vanilla Starbucks had pumped into the atmosphere. Nash’s boots left damp footprints on the tiles as he made his way to the counter.

  The clerk behind the register was young, bored, and underpaid—someone who had mastered the delicate art of looking busy while doing absolutely nothing. Nash had seen statues with more urgency. He stepped up to the counter, rain dripping off his coat, and planted an elbow on the worn laminate.

  “Morning sunshine,” he said dryly. “Anybody unusual around here lately? Employee acting strange? Customer out of the ordinary?”

  The clerk blinked. “Uh… you’re gonna have to be more specific.”

  Fair. Baltimore wasn’t exactly a beacon of normal.

  Nash exhaled through his nose, digging for something more useful. “Someone who sticks out. Shows up regular, but doesn’t buy anything. Acts… off.”

  The kid frowned, fingers drumming lazily against the counter. “Off how?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  They chewed their lip, considering, then shrugged. “I mean… we get weirdos, sure. But there’s one person who’s been coming in a lot lately. Never talks to anyone. Just kinda… wanders.”

  Nash’s stomach tightened. “Wanders?”

  “Yeah. Sticks to the same few aisles. Real focused, like they’re looking for something but never find it.”

  Nash lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” the clerk said, a little hesitant. “She’s… weird.”

  Weird covered a lot of ground.

  Nash shot a glance at Louis, who lifted his brows like, now we’re getting somewhere.

  “Any idea when she shows up?” Nash asked.

  The clerk shrugged. “Haven’t seen her yet. But if she does show, it’ll probably be soon—she’s like clockwork. Never talks, never buys anything… just sings. Gives people the creeps.”

  Nash thanked her with a nod, then turned toward the aisles. The store was mostly empty, the music playing so softly overhead that it felt like a suggestion more than a song. The fluorescent lights hummed. Somewhere near the back, a page turned with a whisper.

  He exhaled, long and slow. There was a tang of magic in the air—subtle, but there on the back of his tongue. Like a note played just under the threshold of hearing. It tasted bitter, like salt and rust.

  He shot Louis a look. “Well. No sense standing around waiting to be haunted.”

  They parked at one of the café tables near the back of the Starbucks, close enough to the aisle so Nash could see the door. The place was quiet, the usual dead lull of a rainy Tuesday morning. A couple of college girls hunched over laptops, and an older man near the window read the paper like he was trying to win an argument with it. Not much else.

  Then she walked in, and every alarm bell in Nash’s head started screaming.

  She looked like she belonged on the docks—like she’d hitched a ride straight from the southern side of the bay, salt-worn and waterlogged. Yellow waders, a knit green sweater that might’ve been older than Nash, and hair the color of bilge water hanging in straggly wet ropes. Rain dripped from her sleeves, her steps slow and unsteady, like she was listening to music no one else could hear. Her skin had the sickly, washed-out pallor of someone who hadn’t seen sunlight in too long, and there was something off about the way she moved—drifting rather than walking, her gaze unfocused, like she wasn’t entirely here.

  Nash nudged Louis, who had been deeply invested in eavesdropping on the college girls. “We’ve got a winner.”

  Louis glanced at the door, then did a double take. “Her? I thought sirens were supposed to be beautiful.”

  Nash lifted an eyebrow. “Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know, Homer?”

  Nash gave him a long look, unimpressed. “When did you read Homer?”

  Louis scowled. “There’s such a thing as library cards, you know.”

  Nash shot Louis a look. “Homer never said they were pretty—just that their song could crack a man open like an egg. The whole ‘sexy mermaid’ thing? That came later, from people who clearly weren’t paying attention.”

  Louis shifted, casting another glance at the woman. “So what do you think? Is she gonna try to sing us to death?”

  Nash studied her, the bitter taste of magic sharpened in the air, fresh and biting. “Dunno,” he said. “But let’s find out.”

  The woman moved without moving—somewhere between a drift and a slow-motion collapse, her gait uneven, like she wasn’t sure how feet worked anymore. She weaved through the shelves, not looking at titles, not searching, just existing in the space like a stray current that had wandered too far inland.

  Nash took his time watching her. Noticed the damp sheen on the floor where she walked, the way her hands twitched at her sides. Like she was trying to remember how to use them.

  Then she started singing.

  It wasn’t like any siren song Nash had ever heard. There was no honeyed temptation, no whispered promises of bliss just beyond the waves. No hunger.

  This was something else.

  The first note scraped through him like rusted wire pulled through bone. His breath hitched, his stomach twisting sharp and sudden, like he’d missed a step on solid ground. His pulse stuttered—off-beat, out of sync—like something inside him was trying to match the song and failing.

  Louis shuddered. “Jesus,” he whispered.

  Nash swallowed hard, his jaw tight. “No kidding,” he muttered, blinking hard against the weight in his chest.

  The pressure curled in his ribs, settling deep in his bones. Like the echo of a word he should know but didn’t. It wasn’t just wrong—it was off, the way the air feels before a storm, when the world goes too still and waits.

  Louis swallowed, voice low. “Sirens don’t just stop feeding, right? Like—if they’re not luring people, they starve, don’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Nash murmured. “They do.”

  His eyes flicked back to her. The waders, the waterlogged hair. The sickly pallor.

  This wasn’t a creature in control.

  The song shifted, notes sliding into each other like water trying to take shape, and Nash stood up and stepped forward before he could think better of it. The sound crawled up his spine, wrapped itself around something old in his head. Not a language—just the memory of one.

  She turned.

  Her eyes locked onto his, pupils blown wide, not entirely seeing, but aware. Not of him, necessarily. Just—aware.

  Nash slowed his approach, hands loose at his sides, keeping his expression neutral. “Hey,” he said, voice low. Even. “You alright?”

  The siren didn’t answer.

  Didn’t blink.

  But her lips parted, breath hitching like she was about to speak.

  Instead, she sang again.

  The sound hit deeper this time, pressing against his skull like hands trying to pry something loose.

  Nash clenched his jaw. The fuck is this?

  Louis shifted beside him. “Dude.” His voice was tight. “I don’t think she wants to be doing this.”

  Nash exhaled sharply through his nose. Louis wasn’t wrong.

  The siren’s body fought itself. Her hands twitched at her sides. Her chest hitched between notes, breath struggling to keep up, like the song was being dragged out of her instead of sung. Her throat bobbed with the effort, muscles working against something unseen. Not calling. Not luring. Just… off.

  The siren swayed, her voice faltering, and for a second Nash saw something flicker across her face. Not hunger. Not desperation.

  Fear.

  Then she staggered back, eyes darting past him, out the door.

  And bolted.