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The assignment board smelled like old coffee and Marcus Vane's cheap cologne.
I stared at my name next to Cole Ashe's and wanted to punch something. Three years. Three years of scrubbing blood off guild hall floors, filing incident reports nobody read, and running supply errands to every corner of the district. All so I could finally get a real hunt.
And they stuck me with him.
"Problem, Gray?" Marcus stood behind me, close enough that I could smell the mint he was chewing. Vice commander of Sanctum Guild, which meant he got to ruin my day and pretend it was a favor.
I turned around. "Cole Ashe hasn't cleared a hunt in two years."
"Eighteen months." Marcus smiled like he was correcting a child's math homework. "And you're an apprentice. You don't get to pick your partner."
"I passed my trials. Top fifteen percent."
"On paper." He leaned against the board, blocking the other assignments with his shoulder. "Real hunts aren't target dummies and written exams. Cole's got field experience. You don't. Consider it a learning opportunity."
Learning opportunity. Right. Cole spent most nights asleep in the guard shack by the east gate. The few times I'd seen him awake, he looked like he'd forgotten where he was.
"Where is he?" I asked.
Marcus checked his watch. "He'll meet you at the site. Briefing's in your file—routine soultaker sweep, abandoned station on Route 42. Should be empty, but protocol says two hunters minimum."
"If it's empty, why send anyone?"
"Because last week a transit worker went missing near there. And the week before, a homeless guy. Could be nothing. Could be a stray." He pushed off the board and headed toward his office. "Either way, you'll handle it. Or Cole will. Or you'll both stand there looking confused until sunrise. I don't really care which."
I grabbed the file off the board. Thin. Maybe six pages, half of them maps. The kind of assignment they gave to people they wanted to keep busy without risking anything important.
My phone buzzed. Unknown number.
*Station entrance. 9 PM. Don't be late. -C*
I checked the time. 8:47. Route 42 was a twenty-minute drive if traffic was light. I didn't have a car.
Fantastic.
I took the bus. Got there at 9:14, which meant Cole had fourteen minutes to give me crap about punctuality. The station entrance was cordoned off with yellow tape that had been there so long it was gray. Graffiti covered the concrete walls—tags, dates, someone's terrible attempt at a demon face. The kind of place people went to drink or hook up or forget things they didn't want to remember.
No sign of Cole.
I ducked under the tape and clicked on my flashlight. The air inside smelled like rust and piss and something else—something that made my teeth ache. I'd smelled it once before, during a training exercise in the guild's containment wing. Soultaker residue. Faint, but there.
Footsteps behind me.
I spun around, hand on the iron blade at my hip.
Cole stood in the entrance, lit from behind by a streetlamp. Tall, maybe six-two. Dark hair that looked like he cut it himself without a mirror. He wore the guild's standard field jacket, but it hung wrong on him, like he'd lost weight and never bothered getting a smaller size.
He didn't say anything. Just looked at me.
"You're late," I said.
"You're earlier." His voice was flat. Not rude, not friendly. Just empty. "Marcus said 9:15."
I pulled out my phone and showed him the text. "You said nine."
Cole looked at the screen for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "Guess I did."
He walked past me into the station without another word.
I followed, because what else was I going to do? Stand outside and wait for Marcus to write me up for insubordination?
The station tunnels branched in three directions. Cole went left without checking the map. His flashlight beam swept the walls in a lazy pattern, like he was looking for something but didn't care if he found it.
"You've been here before," I said.
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Ten years is a long time. Things blur together."
I stopped walking. "You worked this sector ten years ago?"
Cole kept going. "I worked a lot of sectors."
The file said he'd been with the guild for twelve years. Which would make him—what, early thirties? He moved like someone older. Or someone who'd stopped caring about moving right.
We reached a junction. Cole stopped and crouched down, running his fingers along the ground. When he stood up, his hand was dark with something that wasn't dirt.
"Blood?" I asked.
"Old. Week, maybe two." He wiped his hand on his jeans. "Transit worker or the homeless guy. Hard to say."
"Shouldn't we call it in?"
"And tell them what? We found old blood in an abandoned station where people come to do stupid things?" He started walking again. "They already know someone died here. That's why we're here."
I wanted to argue, but he wasn't wrong. Marcus didn't send people to investigate. He sent people to confirm what he already suspected and file the paperwork.
"Why do you still work for the guild?" I asked.
Cole glanced back at me. First time he'd actually looked at me since we went inside. "Why do you?"
"Because I'm good at it."
"No." He turned forward again. "You think you'll be good at it. There's a difference."
My jaw tightened. "I passed my trials."
"So did I." His voice didn't change. Still flat. Still empty. "Top of my class. Youngest chief hunter in Sanctum history. Twenty-two years old and I thought I knew everything." He stopped at another junction, this one leading down. Stairs disappeared into darkness that my flashlight couldn't reach. "Then I learned I didn't know anything at all."
"What happened?"
Cole didn't answer. He just started down the stairs.
I followed, because I was stupid and stubborn and because some part of me wanted to know what could turn someone from the guild's best into its worst.
The air got colder as we descended. My breath misted in the flashlight beam. The smell got stronger too—that sour, wrong smell that made my teeth ache and my stomach turn.
"Cole."
"I know."
"There's something down here."
"I know."
We reached the bottom. A maintenance tunnel stretched ahead, lined with pipes that dripped water in a rhythm that sounded almost like breathing. The walls were covered in marks—scratches, gouges, symbols I didn't recognize.
Cole stopped in front of one. Traced it with his finger.
"What is it?" I asked.
He didn't answer. Just stood there, staring at the mark like it was speaking to him in a language I couldn't hear.
Then he turned to me. And for the first time since I'd met him, his face wasn't empty. It was something worse.
It was afraid.
"You're wearing a locket," he said.
"What?"
"The locket. Around your neck. Where did you get it?"
My hand went to my throat automatically. The locket was small, silver, old. My mom's. The only thing I had left of her.
"It was my mother's," I said. "Why?"
Cole took a step toward me. "Take it off."
"No."
"Take it off right now."
"I said no." I backed up. "What's your problem?"
"That locket—" He stopped. Tilted his head like he was listening to something. "Do you hear that?"
I listened. At first, nothing. Just the dripping pipes and my own heartbeat.
Then I heard it.
A voice. Distant. Coming from deeper in the tunnel.
"Help."
I looked at Cole. He was staring into the darkness, his face pale in the flashlight beam.
"Please," the voice said. "I can't see. I can't see anything. Where am I?"
It was a man's voice. Young. Terrified.
"The transit worker," I said.
Cole grabbed my wrist. His grip was iron. "That's not the transit worker."
"How do you know?"
"Because the transit worker's been dead for a week. And whatever's using his voice knows exactly where it is."
The voice called out again. Closer this time.
"Please. I just want to go home. Can you help me find the way out?"
Cole pulled me backward, toward the stairs. "We're leaving. Now."
But before we could move, the lights went out.
Both our flashlights. At the same time.
And in the darkness, something laughed.
Not with the man's voice. With a woman's.
With my mother's voice.
"Hello, little hunter," it said. "I've been waiting for you."