Chapter 6 · Deal in the Drain

"You're the girl who keeps dying."

Vex didn't look up from the grate he was prying open. His fingers were slick with something dark—blood or grease, I couldn't tell in the half-light of the drainage tunnel. The smell hit me first: rotting food, human waste, and something sharper underneath. Chemical. Industrial.

"And you're the rat who sells information to both sides," I said.

He grinned. Still didn't look up. "Guilty."

I kept my hand on the knife tucked into my belt. The note in my palm from yesterday—Don't die before midnight—had led me here, three levels below the Pits, where the city's drainage system bled into Ashgate's black market veins. Vex had sent it. Had to be. No one else knew I was looping.

Except maybe Halrik.

"How do you know?" I asked.

The grate came free with a wet scrape. Vex finally looked at me. He was younger than I'd expected—maybe twenty-five, with sharp eyes and a scar that split his left eyebrow in half. His coat was too nice for someone crawling through sewers. Stolen, probably.

"I don't," he said. "I'm guessing. But you just confirmed it.