Chapter 14 · It Knows My Name

Micah’s fingers locked around my wrist hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t let it take me again,” he gasped.

The black door behind him groaned open another inch.

Not a normal door. Nothing that should have existed under an abandoned subway platform. It stood in the middle of the tracks where the old maintenance tunnel had caved in years ago. Tall. Black. Wet-looking, like somebody had painted it with fresh tar.

Cold air pushed through the crack.

It smelled like flooded basements, old pennies, and the sweet rotten stink from apartments where nobody had checked on the tenant for too long.

Micah made a broken sound and folded toward me.

I caught him before his knees hit the concrete.

“I’ve got you,” I said.

It was a lie. I had one hand under his shoulder, blood running down my palm, and no idea what the hell the thing behind him wanted now that I’d ripped that smoke-key out of his chest.

But he grabbed onto my jacket anyway.

His face was gray. Lips almost blue.