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"Fresh."
The word hit Avery before she could push herself off the ground.
Her palms stung. Her knees throbbed. The black key had skidded beside a drain that breathed warm, rotten air.
Behind her, the blue door was gone.
Not closed. Gone.
Avery grabbed the key and looked up. Six people stood at the end of the crooked street. Maybe seven. The woman in front had three shadows, and the tall man beside her kept vanishing whenever the blue lamplight touched him.
Patched coats. Old-fashioned clothes. One cleaver. One rib cage turned into a lantern.
The woman sniffed.
Her eyes locked on Avery's bleeding hand.
"Fresh," she said again, softer. "She's fresh."
Then she smiled.
"Run."
Avery ran.
Her boots hammered wet stone. The street bent left, then dropped so sharply she nearly went over the edge. She caught a drainpipe and swung around it.
Pale fingers reached through the stones beneath her.
"Nope," Avery gasped.
She kicked away from the scratching hands and kept moving.
Behind her, footsteps pounded. Some came on two legs. Some came on four.
Someone laughed the whole time, high and breathless.
"Don't let her reach the wall!"
"She's got a key!"
"Cut off the east lane!"
Avery glanced back.
The woman with three shadows was ten feet behind her. Her mouth stretched too wide.
Avery faced forward. "That's disgusting."
Her coat snagged on a bent nail. She tore free and left a strip of fabric behind.
The street shifted.
Bricks slid over bricks. A third-floor window dropped to the first floor, glass bursting across the road. The paving tilted beneath Avery's boots and sent her skidding toward a row of iron spikes that hadn't existed a second earlier.
She slammed both hands against the nearest wall.
The brick pulsed under her palms.
Once.
Twice.
Like a heartbeat.
Something inside the building whispered her name.
"Avery."
She jerked away and hit the ground.
"Don't stop!" somebody shouted.
"She's in the wall's reach!"
Avery scrambled up. An alley opened on her right. A rusted sign hung above it, the letters changing every time she blinked.
EXIT.
MARKET.
DEAD END.
"Pick one," Avery muttered. "Helpful signs would be great."
She ducked into the alley.
The passage was barely wide enough for her shoulders. Pipes crossed overhead. Cold water dripped onto her cheek. Her coat brushed both walls as she forced herself forward.
"Grab her!"
"She went left!"
"No, the city turned her right!"
"The city doesn't get to turn me anywhere," Avery snapped.
The alley twisted three times. Every turn looked exactly like the last.
Avery reached into her pocket.
Nothing.
She checked the other pocket. Then her tool belt.
Empty.
"No. No, no, no."
The footsteps grew louder.
At the alley mouth, the residents stopped. They didn't rush her. They watched.
The shaved-head girl raised her rib lantern.
Its pale flame washed over the corridor.
The key lay three feet behind Avery, beside the drain.
The drain opened.
Small teeth pushed up through the grate.
The key slid toward them.
"You have got to be kidding me."
Avery lunged.
Her fingers closed around the key as the teeth snapped shut. The grate buckled. Something below slammed against it once, then twice, spraying rusty water over her boots.
She ran harder.
The alley emptied into a square.
For half a second, relief nearly made her laugh.
Then she saw the crowd.
Dozens of people surrounded a dry fountain. Some wore masks. Some had stitched mouths. Others watched from the rooftops, their heads tilted too far to one side.
Every face turned toward Avery.
A bell rang.
The crowd moved.
Avery backed into the alley wall and tightened her grip on the key.
A thin man stepped forward. His ribs showed through his shirt, and his fingers ended in polished black claws.
"Outsider," he said.
His voice sounded perfectly normal. That made it worse.
"I'm not staying," Avery said.
He glanced at the key. "Nobody stays by choice."
"Good. Then we agree. Move."
A murmur rolled through the square.
The woman with three shadows came up behind Avery. Her hand closed around Avery's shoulder.
Avery drove her elbow backward.
The hit landed in the woman's throat. She choked and let go.
Avery swung the key like a knife. Black metal cut across the woman's cheek, and blue smoke poured from the wound.
The crowd gasped.
The woman touched her face. Her fingers came away smoking.
"You hurt Mara," said the man with the cleaver.
"She grabbed me."
"You're supposed to be scared."
"I am scared." Avery backed toward the fountain. "I'm also busy."
The cleaver man raised his weapon.
The fountain cracked.
A deep rumble rolled beneath the square. Stones shifted in a widening circle around Avery's boots.
The crowd stepped back.
Not from her.
From the ground.
"What is that?" Avery demanded.
"Run!" the thin man shouted.
"You first!" she yelled back.
The dry fountain split down the middle. Black roots pushed through the basin, thick as ropes and slick with red sap. They curled around the stone and dragged it aside.
A hole opened beneath the square.
Something huge blinked below.
The residents broke.
"Get out of the district!"
"It's feeding!"
"The gatekeeper's coming!"
The cleaver man grabbed the shaved-head girl's coat and hauled her away from the opening.
Avery didn't wait for an invitation.
She sprinted across the square.
Hands reached for her coat. Fingers hooked into her sleeve. Someone seized her hair and yanked.
Avery twisted and drove the key into the attacker's wrist.
The hand released her.
"Sorry," she said. "No touching."
She shoved between two masked women and spotted a gate at the far end of the square.
A real gate.
Tall iron bars. A wall behind it. Beyond the wall, a strip of black sky and something that might have been moonlight.
Freedom.
Maybe.
Avery ran.
The gate was already closing.
Two slabs of pale bone slid across the opening, scraping against each other. They weren't attached to hinges. They grew from the wall, curving inward like ribs.
"No!"
The city groaned.
The square dropped behind her.
Avery hit the ground, rolled, and came up on one knee. The bone doors were less than six feet apart now. Smoke leaked through the narrowing seam.
She threw herself forward.
The left door slammed into her shoulder.
Pain shot down her arm.
Avery wedged her boot against the stone and shoved both hands into the gap.
The bone was hot. It flexed under her palms.
"Open," she gritted out.
The door squeezed harder.
Behind her, the thing beneath the fountain climbed out. Residents screamed. Claws scraped stone. Something heavy dragged itself across the square.
"Gatekeeper!" someone cried.
The pressure on Avery's shoulder doubled.
She fumbled at her belt.
"Come on. Pick. Wrench. Rake. Broken screwdriver."
None of them would reach the lock.
Then her fingers found the hairpin holding her braid together.
Avery ripped it free. Her hair fell across her face.
"Don't care."
She straightened the pin with her teeth, shoved it into the seam, and searched for the lock.
There.
A tiny catch beneath the bone.
The door jerked.
Avery's shoulder screamed.
"Come on, you ugly piece of—"
The hairpin slipped.
The doors crushed closer.
Avery hooked the pin again and twisted.
Something clicked.
The doors stopped.
For one breath, nothing moved.
Then blue lines spread through the bone like veins. They crawled around the hairpin, raced toward Avery's fingers, and burned into the inner edge of the gate.
Letters appeared.
Avery Vale.
She stared at her own name.
The letters sank deeper, carved into the bone from the inside out.
AVERY VALE — REGISTERED INTRUDER.
Her stomach dropped.
"No."
The city's walls shuddered.
More words formed beneath her name.
FIRST BITE CLAIMED.
Avery yanked her hand back.
The bone door opened another inch.
Not enough for her to escape.
Enough for a black blade to slide through and bury itself in the stone beside her hand.
Avery froze.
Smoke curled around the weapon's edge.
A man stepped through the gap.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in a long black coat too clean for this place. Dark hair fell across his forehead. A silver mark ran from his throat to his jaw, glowing faintly beneath his skin.
He didn't point the blade at her.
He looked past her instead, toward the key clenched in her fist.
The residents went silent.
Even the creature beneath the fountain stopped moving.
"The city wants you alive," he said.
His voice was low and flat.
Avery kept her back against the bone door. "Then you should tell it to stop trying to eat me."
His gaze shifted to the glowing words.
"It isn't trying to eat you."
"That's your defense?"
"It's claiming you."
"I don't remember signing up."
"You used the key."
"I was being chased."
"You crossed the threshold."
"The door disappeared."
For the first time, his eyes returned to her face. They were colder than the bone pressing against her shoulder.
"Your father knew what would happen."
Avery's grip tightened around the key.
The man noticed.
Of course he noticed.
"You know Nolan?" she asked.
He stepped closer. His coat brushed the blade in the stone, and the metal gave a faint, hungry hum.
"I know what he traded."
Avery's pulse kicked.
"What did he trade?"
The man reached toward her fist, stopping just short of her knuckles. Heat from his hand touched her skin without contact.
Behind him, the gate began to close again.
"Give me the key," he said, "and I'll show you what Nolan bought with your name."
Avery lifted her chin. "And if I don't?"
His fingers finally closed around the black blade.
He pulled it free of the bone, turned it toward the glowing inscription, and said, "Then the city gets to decide which part of you it keeps—"