Chapter 27 · The City Says Her Name

The first ghost came through the floor with both hands around my ankle.

I screamed and kicked hard enough to crack my heel against the stone circle.

Its fingers let go. Not because I hurt it. Ghosts didn’t care about hurt. It looked up at me with a woman’s dead gray eyes and opened its mouth.

“Nora.”

Then the whole basement answered.

“Nora.”

The sound came from the walls. From the black water leaking under the ritual tables. From the pile of broken chains around Elias’s wrists. Hundreds of voices, maybe thousands, stacking over each other until my name stopped sounding like a name.

It sounded like a lock turning.

“Nope,” I gasped, scrambling backward. “No. Absolutely not. Find somebody else.”

The gate pulsed behind Micah.

It wasn’t a door anymore. It was a tear in the air, black at the center and red around the edges, like the whole room had been cut open and something wet was breathing through it. Shadows curled out of it in long strips.