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The guy in the alley was bleeding through a white dress shirt that probably cost more than my rent.
I hit the brakes so hard my bike fishtailed on wet pavement. My delivery bag slammed into my spine. A noodle soup container inside it made a sad little slosh.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, mister. Don’t move.”
Which was stupid. He was already on the ground behind a dumpster, one hand clamped over his side, like he’d been trying to hold his insides in and losing the argument.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.
DELIVERY TIMER: 04:12 CUSTOMER: VIP TIP: $22.00
Twenty-two bucks.
I stared at the screen, then at the guy bleeding onto the alley bricks.
“Of course,” I muttered. “Of course you’re dying during my good tip.”
The alley sat behind a row of high-end restaurants downtown, all glowing signs and polished windows on the other side of the building. Back here, it smelled like hot grease, old beer, rainwater, and something metallic enough to curl my stomach.
Blood.
A lot of blood.
I left my bike leaning against the wall and crouched a few feet away from him.
“Sir?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
No answer.
He looked maybe fifty. Maybe older. Hard to tell under the blood and the gray streaks in his black hair. His face had that expensive, sharp look rich men got when they spent their whole lives making other people nervous.
But he was scared.
Not normal scared, either.
His eyes kept snapping toward the mouth of the alley.
Like somebody was coming.
I pulled out my phone and opened emergency services.
The guy’s hand shot out.
His fingers locked around my wrist.
I yelped and almost dropped the phone.
“Jesus.” I tried to pull back. “Let go. I’m calling an ambulance.”
His grip got tighter.
Way tighter.
For a dying man, he had no business being that strong.
His eyes found mine.
They were pale. Almost silver in the ugly yellow light over the dumpster.
Then he spoke.
In my voice.
“Don’t call them.”
Everything in me stopped.
Not froze. Froze was too neat. It was more like my brain tripped over its own feet and went face-first into concrete.
The words came out of his mouth.
But it was me.
My rough little voice after a ten-hour shift. My exact voice. Same low scratch on the last word. Same stupid flat way I said them.
Don’t call them.
I stared at him.
“Nope,” I said.
His mouth twitched. Not a smile. More like he’d heard something he expected.
“Nope,” I repeated, louder. “Absolutely not. I’m not doing weird voice stuff in a murder alley. Let go of me.”
He dragged in a breath that sounded wet.
“Listen.”
Still my voice.
I tried to yank my wrist free again. His thumb pressed into my pulse.
“Who are you?” I asked.
His gaze flicked over my face. My hair shoved under a helmet. My cheap courier jacket. The black crescent-shaped birthmark near my left thumb.
His expression changed when he saw it.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
“Oh, hell,” he whispered in my voice. “She really did it.”
“She did what?”
He coughed, and blood ran down the corner of his mouth.
I should have been helping him. That was the normal thing. Put pressure on the wound. Keep him awake. Tell him help was coming.
Instead I was kneeling in garbage water while a stranger wore my voice like a mask.
He looked past me again.
His face went white under the blood.
“They found you,” he said.
“Who found me?”
He didn’t answer.
“Hey. No, don’t do that.” I shook his hand. “You don’t get to say creepy shit and then pass out. Who found me?”
His fingers spasmed around my wrist.
Then he said one word.
“Moonbug.”
The alley disappeared.
Not really. The dumpster was still there. My bike was still dripping rainwater. The soup in my bag was probably turning into noodle mush.
But for one second, I was six years old again.
I was sitting on the kitchen counter in our apartment over the laundromat. Mom was trying to braid my hair before school. I kept twisting away because I hated when she pulled too hard.
Moonbug, hold still.
That had been her name for me.
Nobody else used it.
Nobody.
My throat closed.
“What did you call me?”
The man’s grip loosened a little.
“Your mother,” he rasped. His real voice cracked through for half a second. Deep. Broken. “Did she send you?”
My heart kicked so hard it hurt.
“My mother is gone.”
His pale eyes sharpened.
“No.”
“She disappeared twelve years ago.” My words came out too fast. “She left me with Mrs. Ortega and never came back. Cops said maybe she ran. Her sister said she was dead. I said they were both full of crap, but nobody cared, so yeah. Gone.”
The guy stared at me like I’d said something impossible.
Then he laughed once.
It turned into a choking cough.
“Not gone,” he said.
I leaned closer before I could stop myself. “You know where she is?”
His eyes slid shut.
“Hey.” I slapped his shoulder, not hard. “Nope. Stay with me. You say her name, you tell me where she is, and then you can die or whatever. Fine. But you tell me first.”
His eyes opened again.
“You sound like her when you’re angry.”
“Everybody says that. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means…” His face pinched. He swallowed blood. “It means she gave you the seal.”
“The what?”
His gaze dropped to my hand again.
I looked too.
The little crescent mark on my thumb had always been there. Mom used to kiss it when I was little and say it meant the moon had left a fingerprint on me.
I used to think that was cute.
Then I turned thirteen and realized Mom had lied about plenty of things.
The mark was glowing.
Barely. A dull red under my skin.
I jerked my hand back.
“What the hell?”
The man reached into his coat with his free hand.
I moved away fast. “Don’t. Don’t reach for a gun. I swear to God, I have pepper spray and trauma from every true-crime podcast ever made.”
He ignored me.
His fingers came back out holding a ring.
Not gold. Not silver either.
Black metal, thin and old-looking, with a white stone set in it. The stone had a crack down the middle, like somebody had tried to split the moon in half.
He held it toward me.
“Take it.”
“No.”
“Take it, Mara.”
My blood went cold.
I never told him my name.
He gave a weak, ugly smile.
“You really don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Your mother didn’t leave you.”
My pulse thudded under his fingers.
“She traded for you.”
The words landed wrong. I heard them. I understood every word. They just wouldn’t fit together.
“What?”
“She bought you time.”
His hand slipped in blood. The ring nearly fell.
I grabbed it on reflex.
The second it touched my palm, heat shot up my arm.
I gasped.
The black metal snapped shut around my finger.
“What the fuck?”
I pulled at it.
It didn’t move.
The white stone flashed.
For half a heartbeat, the alley vanished again.
I saw a woman with dark hair running through a room full of blue fire.
My mother.
Older than the last photo I had. Her face cut and filthy. Her eyes wide with terror.
She was screaming something.
Not my name.
A man’s name.
Dorian.
Then the vision broke.
I was back on my knees in the alley, choking on cold air.
The stranger was staring at the ring on my hand.
“Good,” he whispered. “Good. It chose.”
“What chose?”
His gaze snapped toward the street.
A black SUV rolled past the alley entrance.
Slow.
Too slow.
The windows were dark enough that I couldn’t see inside.
The stranger’s fingers dug into my wrist one last time.
“Listen to me,” he said.
This time, it was his own voice.
Deep. Frantic.
“Find Ash.”
“Who?”
“Dorian Ash.”
The name hit the back of my skull like I should know it.
I didn’t.
“Is he the guy my mom was yelling for?”
The stranger’s mouth opened.
No sound came out at first.
Then he whispered, “Don’t let him touch the ring.”
His hand fell away from my wrist.
I caught his shoulder.
“Hey. Hey, no. You don’t get to drop dead after that. Who are the people looking for me? What did my mom trade? Who the hell is Dorian Ash?”
He blinked at me once.
His eyes were already going empty.
“Moonbug,” he breathed.
Then, in my voice again, soft as a secret, he said, “Run.”
His head rolled to the side.
I sat there with blood on my jeans and a ring burning around my finger.
My phone buzzed again.
DELIVERY CANCELLED. NO TIP ISSUED.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Sure. Great. Perfect.”
A tiny red dot appeared on the brick wall beside my bike.
I stared at it.
Then another showed up on the dumpster.
Another on the puddle by my knee.
Little red lights. Moving. Searching.
One crawled over the dead man’s chest.
My ring went hot enough to make me flinch.
At the mouth of the alley, a car door clicked open.
And the red dots started climbing toward me.