Chapter 19 · Something's Inside the Bell

Marcus could hear the bell before he saw it.

Not the ringing. The breathing.

It sat in the center of the plaza like a tumor, twelve feet tall, cast in bronze so dark it looked wet. The surface rippled when he got close, not like metal, like a lung filling. People moved around it in slow arcs, their steps dragging, their faces slack. A woman dropped her bag. She stared at it for ten seconds before she bent down. A kid stood frozen mid-step, one foot in the air, trembling.

Marcus pressed two fingers to his wrist. His pulse was normal. Everyone else looked like they were drowning in honey.

"You feel it yet?" Cassian's voice came from his left, easy, like they were standing in line for coffee.

Marcus didn't look at him. "No."

"You will." Cassian stepped past him, hands in his coat pockets, head tilted toward the bell. "Give it a minute. It's polite like that. Builds slow."

The plaza was old city architecture, the kind with too many columns and carved lions that had lost their faces to acid rain. The bell sat on a marble dais, no rope, no clapper visible. Just the shell.