Chapter 5

I don't look up. My fingers find the edge and I pull.

Nothing. Locked.

Of course it's locked. There's a keyhole dead center, small and old-fashioned. Skeleton key type. The kind I've opened a hundred times before.

"Nia, listen to me—"

"He used our signal." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Three knocks. Stop. Two knocks. That's ours. No one else knows that."

"Which is exactly why someone would use it." Rafe crouches beside me. His hand hovers near my shoulder, doesn't land. "It's bait."

I finally look at him. His jaw's tight, and there's something in his eyes I can't name. Not fear. Closer to the look you get when you know the next move's gonna hurt but you can't stop it.

"You said he disappeared in the subway tunnel," I say. "You said you lost him."

"I did."

"Then maybe he's been down there this whole time. Maybe he's been trying to get out and you—" I stop. Swallow. "You didn't even look for him, did you?"

Rafe's quiet for three seconds too long.

"I looked," he says finally. "Two weeks I went back to that tunnel every night. There was nothing. No scent, no blood, no sign he'd ever been there except the broken key."

The trapdoor's still cold under my hands. I spread my fingers wider, like I can feel through the wood.

"Nia." Rafe's voice drops. "If your brother's alive, if he's really down there, why would he wait eight years to knock?"

I don't have an answer.

The knock comes again. Three slow taps.

My heart kicks.

"Nia, please." Jonah's voice drifts up through the cracks, muffled and thin. "I can explain everything. Just open the door."

Rafe's hand lands on my shoulder. His grip's firm enough to hurt.

"That's not your brother."

"You don't know that."

"I can smell him. Whoever's down there, they smell wrong."

I twist to look at him. "Wrong how?"

"Like old blood and copper wire. Like something that's been sitting in a closed space too long." His eyes are solid gold now, catching the lamplight. "Your brother smelled like coffee and WD-40. I remember."

That detail cracks something in my chest. I remember too. Jonah always had a travel mug in one hand and a can of lubricant in the other, fixing every squeaky hinge in the building.

But the voice sounds right. The knock pattern's right.

And I already opened one lock I wasn't supposed to touch.

"I'm opening it," I say.

Rafe's grip tightens. "Nia—"

"Let go."

He doesn't. We stare at each other for five seconds, maybe ten.

Then his hand drops.

"Fine," he says. "But I go first."

I want to argue. I don't. Instead I pull my pick set from my jacket and select the thinnest hook. The lock's old but well-maintained—someone's been oiling it. My hands move on autopilot, feeling for the pins, lifting each one till I hear the soft click.

The door opens an inch.

Cold air rushes up. Old blood. Copper. And something else underneath, something sweet and rotten that makes my stomach turn.

"Stay behind me," Rafe says.

He pulls the door open the rest of the way.

Stairs lead down into darkness. Concrete steps, steep and narrow, disappearing into nothing.

Rafe moves first. Takes the stairs like he's done this before, weight on the balls of his feet, barely making a sound. I follow, one hand on the wall. The concrete's damp and cold.

Twelve steps. Then twenty. Then I lose count.

The smell gets worse. My eyes start to water.

"Jonah?" My voice echoes off the walls.

No answer.

Rafe stops so suddenly I almost run into his back. His whole body's gone tense, head tilted.

"What—"

He holds up one hand.

I shut up.

Ten seconds of nothing but my own breathing and distant dripping water. Then I hear it.

Footsteps.

Not from below.

From above.

Someone's in my shop.

Rafe grabs my wrist and pulls me down three more steps. We press against the wall as the footsteps cross the floor overhead, slow and deliberate. They stop right above the open trapdoor.

"She's already inside." A woman's voice, cold and clipped. "Seal the perimeter and wait for my signal."

I don't recognize the voice. But I recognize the tone. Same tone the hunters used yesterday when they surrounded my shop.

Rafe's hand tightens on my wrist. His claws are out, just the tips, pressing into my skin without breaking it.

The footsteps move away. A door slams.

We wait.

Rafe counts to sixty under his breath before he lets go. When he does, there are four small crescent marks on my skin, already fading.

"They're not coming down," he whispers.

"Why not?"

"Because they don't have to. They know we can't get back out." He looks past me, down into the dark. "This was the trap. Not the voice. This."

My mouth goes dry.

"So what do we do?"

"We go deeper."

He moves before I can argue, taking the stairs two at a time. I follow because there's nothing else to do. The steps keep going down and down, way past where my shop's foundation should end. We must be under the street now. Maybe under the whole block.

Finally the stairs end.

We're in a tunnel.

Narrow, maybe five feet wide, with exposed pipes running along the ceiling. The floor's wet. My boots splash in something I don't wanna identify. There's a light up ahead, faint and flickering.

Rafe stops at the edge of the light.

"Stay close," he says.

We move toward it. It's coming from a doorway cut into the left side of the tunnel. Not a door, just an opening, rough and uneven like someone took a sledgehammer to the concrete.

Inside is a room.

Small, maybe ten feet square. There's a camping lantern on the floor, battery-powered, throwing shadows up the walls. A sleeping bag in one corner. Empty water bottles scattered everywhere.

And on the far wall, scratched into the concrete:

DAY 2,847. STILL ALIVE. THEY DON'T KNOW I'M HERE.

I do the math without thinking. Two thousand eight hundred forty-seven days.

That's seven years and ten months.

Almost eight years.

"Oh my god," I whisper.

Rafe's already moving, circling the room, checking every corner. He stops at the sleeping bag and crouches. His hand hovers over the fabric but doesn't touch.

"Scent's faint," he says. "Whoever was here, they left days ago. Maybe a week."

"But someone was here."

"Yeah."

I move to the wall, running my fingers over the scratched numbers. The concrete's rough under my hand. Next to the day count there's more writing, smaller and harder to read:

THEY'RE USING THE TUNNELS TO MOVE THE OFFERINGS. NEXT ECLIPSE IS MARCH 9TH. NIA'S BUILDING IS MARKED. I CAN'T GET TO HER. CAN'T LET THEM KNOW I'M ALIVE OR THEY'LL USE HER TO DRAW ME OUT.

My vision blurs.

"Nia."

Rafe's voice sounds far away. I blink and he's standing next to me, holding something.

It's a portable voice recorder. Old-school, the kind with actual tape inside.

He presses play.

Static hisses through the speaker. Then Jonah's voice:

"Nia, if you're hearing this, you found the room. Good. That means you're smart enough to get past the first lock and stupid enough to ignore Calder's warnings. Sounds about right."

I let out a sound that's half laugh, half sob.

The recording continues.

"I don't have much time. The battery on this thing's dying and I can't risk going topside for a new one. Listen carefully. The blood pact isn't what Calder thinks it is. It's not just a sacrifice every eclipse. It's a binding. The city's using Vale blood to keep every wolf-shifter in the district leashed. That's why they can't leave. That's why they can't shift without permission. And that's why they wanted me dead—I figured out how to break it."

Rafe's gone completely still beside me.

"The key I was carrying the night Calder chased me, that was the anchor point. I hid it before he caught up. If you find it and destroy it during the next eclipse, the whole pact unravels. But Nia—" Jonah's voice drops, urgent and rough. "The key's not in the tunnels. It's inside the archive building. Third floor, restricted section. You'll need Calder to get in because only wolves can pass the wards. But listen to me—"

The recording cuts to sharp static.

Then Jonah's voice comes back, barely a whisper:

"If Rafe's with you right now, if he followed you down here, run. Don't trust him. Don't let him touch you. He's not the one who was hunting me. He's the one they sent to make sure I stayed gone."

The tape clicks off.

I turn to look at Rafe.

His eyes are still gold. His claws are still out.

And he's standing between me and the only way out.