Chapter 12 · Under the Tracks

Mara grabbed my wrist before I could shove the station door open.

“Don’t touch the handle with your bare hand.”

I looked down at her fingers around me. Her nails were bitten short. There was dried blood under two of them.

“It’s a door,” I said.

“It’s a door people disappear through.”

“Cool. Love that for us.”

The abandoned station sat under the east side overpass, half hidden behind chain-link fencing and three rusted construction signs nobody had bothered to take down. The old transit logo above the entrance had been spray-painted over so many times it looked like a bruise.

Cars screamed overhead. Every time a truck crossed the bridge, dust shook loose from the concrete.

Mara pulled a crumpled pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket and shoved one at me.

“Put it on.”

“You have extras?”

“I steal things. It’s one of my better traits.”

I took the glove.

My palm still hurt.

Not cut hurt. Not burn hurt either. It was deeper than that. Heat sat under my skin, right where I’d touched that wolf in the cornfield. Every few minutes my hand gave a sharp little pulse, like it remembered exactly what I’d done.