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The lock gave under my pick with a soft little click.
I froze with one knee on the wet pavement, my fingers still inside the brass door handle.
Behind me, Jonah whispered through my earbud, “Tell me that was the front door.”
“It was the front door.”
“Mia.”
“What?”
“That means you’re going inside.”
I pushed the door open two inches. “You’re a genius. Keep hacking the cameras.”
“I am hacking the cameras. I’m also watching you break into a building owned by people who buy politicians for fun.”
“Not people. One guy.”
“Yeah, rich murder guy. Much better.”
The old warehouse smelled like rain-soaked wood, machine oil, and something sharp underneath it. Burnt pennies, maybe. Blood, if I wanted to be dramatic.
I didn’t.
I slipped inside and eased the door shut behind me.
The place used to be a printing factory. You could still see faded signs on the brick walls where somebody had painted safety slogans in cheerful red letters. KEEP HANDS CLEAR. REPORT ALL INJURIES.
Cute.
Now it belonged to a private collector named Alden Shaw, which was rich-guy code for a man who bought cursed junk and hired armed assholes to stand near it.
Jonah’s voice crackled in my ear. “Camera loop is live. You’ve got seven minutes before the system checks itself.”
“Eight.”
“Seven.”
“You always round down like that?”
“You always steal objects from creepy warehouses at one in the morning?”
“Only on weekdays.”
I moved past a stack of rusted paper cutters and a row of covered crates. My boots barely made a sound. Not because I was some ninja. I just had cheap rubber soles and a landlord who hated noise complaints.
At the end of the room, an office door stood under a broken EXIT sign.
That was where Shaw kept the seal.
I knew because Jonah had spent three nights crawling through property records, shipping manifests, encrypted messages, and one truly gross private photo archive he refused to describe.
He’d found a payment trail leading to this warehouse and a file labeled BMS-09.
Black Moon Seal.
A little disc of metal, supposedly. Old. Valuable. Creepy enough that the buyer had paid half a million for it through six fake companies.
Our client had offered ten grand if I got it out tonight.
Ten grand meant Jonah’s tuition deposit.
It meant groceries that didn’t come from the discount rack.
It meant I could stop pretending the lights flickering in our apartment were just an old building thing and not because I was two months behind on the power bill.
So yeah. I was stealing the creepy little disc.
I reached the office door and crouched beside the lock.
Not electronic. Good.
Old deadbolt, brass cylinder, six pins. Also good.
“Door two,” I murmured.
Jonah went quiet for a second. That meant he was looking at a screen. Or chewing his hoodie string. Probably both.
“Hold on,” he said. “There’s movement on the second floor.”
My hand stopped.
“How many?”
“I only see one heat signature. Big guy. Walking slow.”
“Guard?”
“Or a bear. Hard to say.”
“Super helpful.”
“You’re welcome.”
I slipped my tension wrench into the lock. The pins lifted one by one under my pick. I didn’t see locks the way other people did. I felt them. Tiny metal moods. Stubborn ones. Nervous ones. Cheap locks practically begged to be opened.
This one was proud.
I hated proud locks.
The third pin caught, then slid.
Click.
The office door opened.
I stood, pushed it inward, and stepped through.
The room was too clean for a warehouse. Black shelves. Glass cases. A desk with nothing on it except a dead plant in a silver pot.
At the far end, behind a painting of a white horse running through a dark field, sat a square wall safe.
“Well,” Jonah said. “That doesn’t look suspicious at all.”
“Shut up.”
I crossed the room.
The safe was old steel with a combination dial and a keyhole beneath it. Somebody had added a keypad beside it later, because apparently one annoying lock wasn’t enough.
I took out my small flashlight and leaned closer.
Then I saw the wax.
Black wax had been pressed around the edge of the safe door. Not sealing it shut. Marking it.
A crescent moon had been stamped in the center.
My skin crawled.
“Jonah,” I said quietly. “Did the client mention wax?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing.”
That was a lie, but I didn’t want him worrying before I knew what I was looking at.
The black wax looked fresh. Too fresh for an antique seal someone had shipped in from Europe or wherever rich people got their cursed junk.
I touched it with the edge of my glove.
Cold snapped up my finger.
Not normal cold. Not warehouse-in-November cold.
This felt like biting into ice with a cracked tooth.
I jerked my hand back.
“Mia?” Jonah said.
“I’m good.”
“You don’t sound good.”
“I said I’m good.”
The office lights blinked once.
Then the door behind me clicked shut.
I turned so fast my shoulder hit the filing cabinet.
A man stood between me and the exit.
He hadn’t been there a second ago.
Tall. Dark coat. Black shirt open at the throat. His hair was too long for a banker and too neat for a warehouse guard. A thin line of blood ran from just under his ear down his neck, disappearing beneath his collar.
He looked pale. Not sick pale.
More like he hadn’t slept in a year and was mad about it.
His eyes landed on me.
Gray, maybe.
No. Silver.
Jonah’s voice came sharp in my ear. “Mia, who’s in the room?”
The stranger heard him. His mouth twitched, but he didn’t look away from me.
“Take out the earbud,” he said.
His voice was low. Calm.
Like he was asking me to pass the salt.
I pulled my lock pick from my sleeve instead. “You first.”
He glanced at the pick.
“You planning to stab me with that?”
“Depends. Are you planning to murder me in this very creepy office?”
“Not currently.”
“That’s not a no.”
Jonah hissed in my ear, “Mia, answer me.”
The stranger took one step forward.
I raised the pick. “Don’t.”
He stopped.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then he looked at the safe behind me.
“You came for the seal,” he said.
“Maybe I came for the dead plant.”
“It’s fake.”
“Damn. There goes my whole plan.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Funny. I was about to say the same thing.”
He let out a breath through his nose. Not quite a laugh.
Then pain hit his face.
Not a dramatic little wince. His whole body locked up. One hand slammed against the wall. The other grabbed at his chest like something inside him had teeth.
The overhead lights flickered again.
Black wax on the safe began to melt.
Jonah said, “Mia, your heart rate just spiked. I can hear you breathing.”
“Working on it,” I muttered.
The stranger bent forward.
His fingers dug into the drywall hard enough to leave dents.
I should’ve run.
Actually, I did try.
I took one step toward the door, and he looked up.
His pupils were gone.
Just silver. Bright and wrong.
Every hair on my arms stood straight up.
“Don’t touch the safe,” he said.
I stared at him. “Wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
The safe gave a soft metal groan.
The black wax split down the middle.
And then I heard it.
A name.
Not out loud.
Not from Jonah. Not from the stranger.
It ripped through my skull like somebody had shoved a radio antenna into my brain and tuned it to one station only.
Carson Vale.
I gasped and grabbed the edge of the desk.
The name kept going.
Carson Vale.
Carson Vale.
It wasn’t sound exactly. It was colder than sound. Bigger. It carried teeth and smoke and old stone and a hundred locked doors slamming open at once.
My vision blurred.
The stranger straightened.
He looked at me like I’d just pulled a knife from his ribs.
“What did you hear?” he asked.
I couldn’t answer.
My head felt like it was splitting down the center.
Carson Vale.
The name wrapped around everything. My pulse. My teeth. The cheap silver rings on my fingers.
I’d heard names before.
Not often. Never on command.
When I was little, I thought everybody heard them. The real names underneath the fake ones. The names people kept hidden even from themselves.
Then I told my mom what I heard from the butcher downstairs.
She slapped a hand over my mouth so fast she chipped one of my teeth.
Don’t say those names, she’d whispered.
Never say them.
After that, I learned to keep quiet.
I learned that names came with trouble.
But this one didn’t just whisper.
It roared.
The stranger crossed the room in a blur.
One second he was by the door.
The next, his hand was around my wrist.
I yanked back on instinct. “Get off me.”
His grip tightened.
Not enough to hurt. Enough to tell me he could.
“What did you hear?” he asked again.
Up close, he smelled like rain on concrete and something wild. Not dog. Not exactly. Hot fur. Blood.
His pulse hammered under his thumb.
Mine answered it.
“Let go,” I said.
His jaw clenched.
Outside the office, somewhere in the warehouse, a man shouted.
Then another voice yelled, “Check the west entrance!”
Jonah cursed in my ear. “Mia. We have company. Like, real company. Six vehicles just pulled up.”
The stranger heard that too.
Of course he did.
He looked toward the door. For the first time, the calm thing slipped.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
“They found me,” he said.
“Who found you?”
He looked back at me.
The silver in his eyes had gone darker around the edges.
“People you don’t want to meet.”
“Great. Love vague answers. Really helps.”
The warehouse lights died.
Everything went black.
Jonah’s voice cut in and out. “Mia? Mia, I lost the cameras. Get out. Now.”
A heavy crash came from the main room.
Then footsteps.
More than one person.
Moving fast.
The stranger released my wrist and went to the safe.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Saving your life.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“No. You just broke into the wrong building on the wrong night.”
He pressed his bloody palm against the black wax.
The safe door clicked open.
Not the normal way. No gears. No dial turning.
It just opened like it had been waiting for him.
Inside sat a black metal disc the size of my palm.
It looked almost plain. Matte dark. Rough around the edges. A crescent cut through the center.
The second I saw it, my headache got worse.
Carson Vale.
The name hit again.
I stumbled into the desk.
He grabbed the seal.
The room shook.
Every old window in the warehouse rattled at once.
Outside, tires screamed. A dog barked somewhere down the block, then another one answered. Then ten more.
The stranger stared at the seal in his hand.
His face went white.
“Oh, hell,” he said.
“What?”
He turned toward me.
The silver in his eyes flashed bright enough to light his cheekbones.
Then the walls around us started glowing.
Thin crescent shapes appeared in the brick. One above the office door. One on the floor beneath my boots. One in the cracked window glass.
Across the city, far beyond this warehouse, bells began to ring.
Not church bells.
Something deeper.
Something old enough to know my name.
Jonah shouted through the earbud, “Mia, every damn map marker just lit up. What did you do?”
I didn’t know.
I honestly didn’t know.
The stranger looked at me like he did.
He closed his fingers around the black seal.
“Mia,” he said.
And somehow, impossibly, he knew exactly who I was.