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"Move."
Mara shoves me through the warehouse door before I can ask where we're going. The street outside is empty, wrong kind of empty. No cars idling. No late shift smokers. Just sodium light pooling on cracked asphalt and the smell of burnt plastic drifting from the safehouse two blocks back.
"They'll have the perimeter locked down in three minutes," she says, not slowing. Her jacket's torn at the shoulder, blood darkening the fabric. Not hers. "You still breathing?"
"For now."
"Good. Keep it that way."
She cuts left into an alley I didn't see, narrow enough our shoulders brush the brick on both sides. I follow because the alternative is standing still, and standing still got me killed once already.
"Who were they?"
"Collectors." She doesn't look back. "The kind that don't ask twice."
"For what?"
"You. The ledger. Pick one."
The ledger's still there, black edge visible in the corner of my vision. I haven't opened it since the safehouse. Don't need to. I felt it move when the cleanup chief went down, felt something shift in my chest like a number sliding into place.
"How many?"
"Four at the door. Two on the roof. One in a van three streets over." She stops at the alley mouth, checks left, then right. "Seven total. You dropped three."
"You dropped four."
"I'm counting the driver. He won't be driving anywhere."
She moves again, across the street and into the loading bay of a shuttered depot. The chain-link gate's already cut, recent job. Someone else's exit route.
"They knew where we were," I say.
"Yeah."
"You bring them?"
She turns, and for half a second her hand's on the grip of her gun. Then she lets go, slow, deliberate. "If I brought them, you'd be in a bag right now. Not walking."
"So who did?"
"That's the question."
The depot stinks of oil and rust, years of it baked into the concrete. Mara crosses to a cargo lift, pulls the gate open with one hand. The mechanism groans but moves.
"Get in."
I don't move. "Where does this go?"
"Down. Then out. You want a map?"
"I want to know who sold us."
"Join the line." She steps into the lift, hits the button. The cables start pulling. "You coming or you planning to wait for round two?"
I get in. The gate closes, and we drop, slow and shaking, into the dark under Cinderfall.
The ledger opens without me touching it.
No warning. Just there, black pages spreading in my vision like ink in water. Lines of script I can read now, names and numbers I didn't ask for. The collector I put down on the safehouse stairs is logged at the top: Marcus Vey. Three thousand two hundred in the red. Paid.
Below that, the cleanup chief: Laura Senn. Eighteen thousand. Paid.
And below that, new, still wet: Mara Quinn. Outstanding.
"What's it saying?" Mara's watching me, not the lift gate.
"You don't want to know."
"Try me."
I meet her eyes. They're cold, sharp, the kind that's seen too many people lie. "It says you owe."
"How much?"
"Doesn't say."
"Doesn't say or you won't say?"
The lift hits bottom, hard enough we both catch the rail. The gate rattles open onto a service tunnel, narrow, low-ceilinged, lit by emergency strips every ten meters. Water drips somewhere ahead.
"Doesn't say," I tell her. "Just outstanding."
"Great." She moves into the tunnel, gun out now, checking corners that aren't there. "Add it to the pile."
We walk. The tunnel runs straight for a hundred meters, then angles down. The air gets colder, damper, tastes like iron and old rain. My ribs ache where the collector clipped me, but the ledger took care of the rest. I don't ask how. Don't want to know what I traded for it.
"They'll track us," I say.
"They'll try."
"You have a plan?"
"Working on it."
"That's not a plan."
"You got a better one?"
I don't answer. The ledger's still open, still showing Mara's name, and below it now, a new line forming. Letter by letter, like someone's writing it live.
Ephraim Slate.
"Stop," I say.
Mara stops, turns. "What?"
"The ledger just gave me a name."
Her face doesn't change, but her grip on the gun tightens. "Whose?"
"Ephraim Slate."
She goes still. Not frozen. Coiled. "Say that again."
"Ephraim Slate. You know him?"
"Yeah." She lowers the gun, just slightly, and looks past me like she's seeing something else. "Yeah, I know him."
"Who is he?"
"Bookkeeper. Fixer. Runs favors under the table for half the syndicates in Cinderfall." She looks back at me. "He's also dead."
"When?"
"Three years ago. Burned in a depot fire on the east side."
"Ledger says otherwise."
She stares at me, then at the air where the ledger would be if she could see it. "It's showing his name right now?"
"Yeah."
"What else?"
I look. The line under his name is filling in, numbers and symbols I don't recognize yet. Then words, clear and cold: Outstanding. First blood. Witness due.
"It says he's owed," I tell her. "First blood. Witness due."
Mara's jaw tightens. She holsters the gun, pulls out her phone, and dials without looking. It rings once, twice, three times. Then a click.
"Yeah?" A man's voice, low, rough, like gravel scraped over steel.
Mara doesn't waste time. "It's Quinn. I need a location."
"For?"
"Slate."
Silence on the other end. Long enough I hear water dripping two tunnels over.
"He's dead," the voice says.
"That's what I thought. Now I'm not sure."
Another pause. Then: "What are you into, Quinn?"
"Something that keeps growing teeth. You have an address or not?"
"I'll send it. But if he answers, you didn't get it from me."
The call cuts. Mara pockets the phone and starts walking again, faster now.
"We're going to see him?" I ask.
"We're going to find out if he's breathing."
"And if he is?"
"Then you're going to ask him why the ledger thinks you owe him blood."
The tunnel opens onto a subway platform, old line, decommissioned years ago. Mara climbs the service ladder to street level, and I follow. We come out behind a shuttered bodega, three blocks from the depot, far enough the sirens are faint.
Her phone buzzes. She checks it, swears under her breath.
"What?"
"Address just came through." She shows me the screen: a warehouse district on the north edge, the kind where people go to disappear. "Twenty minutes on foot. Ten if we steal a car."
"You know how to hotwire?"
"Do you?"
I look at the ledger. It's still open, Ephraim's name still glowing. Below it, a new line forming: Trade offered. Years for distance.
"I can buy us a ride," I say.
Mara looks at me. "How?"
"The ledger. It's offering a trade."
"What kind of trade?"
"Years for distance. Don't ask me whose years."
She steps closer, close enough I can see the flecks of gold in her eyes, smell the gunpowder still clinging to her jacket. "You take that trade, what happens?"
"We get where we're going. Fast."
"And someone loses time."
"Yeah."
"Who?"
I don't answer. The ledger's showing me a face now, young, maybe twenty-five, walking two blocks west with grocery bags. No name. Just a marker: Available.
"Someone who doesn't know," I say.
Mara holds my gaze. "You okay with that?"
I should say no. Should tell her we'll walk, steal a car the old way, take our chances. But the ledger's humming now, low and insistent, and I know if we don't move fast, the collectors will find us first.
"I'm okay with staying alive," I say.
She nods, once, and steps back. "Do it."
I open my hand. The ledger responds, pages flipping, settling on the trade screen. I press my thumb to the mark, and the world shifts.
One second we're on the street. The next we're in a car, engine running, parked three blocks north. My head's spinning, stomach churning like I just dropped ten stories. Mara's in the passenger seat, breathing hard.
"What the hell was that?" she says.
"The trade."
"We teleported?"
"Something like that."
She looks at me, then out the windshield, then back at me. "How many years?"
"Five."
"From who?"
"Does it matter?"
Her hand's on the door handle, knuckles white. "Yeah. It matters."
"Too late now."
She doesn't move for a long moment. Then she pulls the door shut and buckles in. "Drive."
I drive. The address leads north, through streets that get darker and emptier the farther we go. The warehouse district rises around us, all rusted metal and broken glass, the kind of place where the city forgot to send the demo crews.
Mara's phone buzzes again. She checks it, frowns.
"What?"
"Message from my source. Says Slate's been seen. Recently."
"Where?"
"Here." She points ahead, to a low building with boarded windows and a loading dock chained shut. "That's the address."
I pull over half a block away, kill the engine. The street's dead quiet. No lights. No movement.
"You sure about this?" I ask.
Mara pulls her gun, checks the magazine. "No. But we're out of other options."
We get out. The air smells like rain and rust, cold enough I can see my breath. Mara moves toward the building, low and fast, and I follow, the ledger a weight in my chest I can't shake.
She tries the side door. Locked. She pulls a pry bar from her jacket, works it into the frame, and the door pops open with a crack that echoes too loud.
Inside, it's dark. Not empty dark. Waiting dark.
Mara goes in first, gun up, sweeping corners. I stay close, eyes adjusting slowly. The warehouse is gutted, just concrete and support pillars and the smell of old smoke.
Then I see the light.
Soft, orange, coming from a doorway at the back. Mara sees it too. She signals me to stay put, but I don't. We move together, across the open floor, past the pillars, to the doorway.
Inside, a man sits at a desk, writing in a ledger of his own. Older, fifty maybe, with gray stubble and a scar running from his temple to his jaw. He doesn't look up.
"You're late," he says.
Mara raises her gun. "Ephraim Slate?"
"That's right." He finishes writing, sets the pen down, and looks up. His eyes find mine, and he smiles. Thin. Cold. "Jace Vale. Took you long enough."
"You know me?"
"I know everyone who owes me." He leans back in his chair. "You owe me for your first death."
The ledger in my chest flares hot, and the room tilts.
Mara's voice cuts through. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Ephraim's smile doesn't move. "Ask him. He knows."
I don't know. But the ledger does. It's opening again, pages flipping fast, stopping on a date three years ago. The night I took a job I shouldn't have. The night I died the first time.
And at the bottom, in ink that looks like blood:
Witness: Ephraim Slate. Payment due.