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"Don't move."
The man on the floor gave me a thin, bloody smile. "That usually works better when you've got a weapon."
"I do have one." I lifted the iron nail between two fingers. "And if you twitch, I put this through your tongue."
He looked expensive even half-dead. Dark suit. White shirt soaked red from the side of his ribs. Heavy watch. Real leather shoes, not the fake kind people bought to look rich.
And the cursed thing crawling over his chest had more gold in it than I'd seen in one room all month.
Black fire threaded under his skin in ugly little branches. Started at the wound in his side, then climbed over his chest, his throat, his jaw. Every few seconds, the marks lit up from inside.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth.
The basement stank like rust, burned hair, and the cheap disinfectant Mara used when she wanted people to think this place was cleaner than it was.
I crouched beside him and pressed two fingers against the edge of the black marks.
The curse snapped at me.
Not physically. It didn't have teeth. Still, pain shot up my hand so fast I nearly jerked away.
"Well," I muttered. "That's rude."
The man's eyes tracked my face. "You're the breaker?"
"You sound disappointed."
"I was expecting someone older."
"Yeah, and I was expecting a client who hadn't been stabbed by a demon contract. Looks like we both got screwed."
His mouth twitched. Almost a laugh.
Then the black veins across his throat pulsed.
His body arched off the floor.
I grabbed the chain around his wrist before he could slam his skull into the concrete. The metal burned cold against my palm.
"Hey. Hey, rich boy. Stay with me."
His pupils blew wide.
For one second, he stared through me.
Not at me. Through me.
Then he said, in a voice that wasn't fully his, "The debt always comes home."
I froze.
The air left my lungs.
I knew that voice.
Not his voice. The curse's.
Mom used to say those exact words when collectors came to the apartment door. Usually while shoving me behind her and telling me not to make a sound.
The debt always comes home.
No one else said it like that.
No one should've known it.
The man blinked hard, and the black drained from his eyes just enough for gray to show through. "What did I say?"
I got to my feet too quickly. My knee cracked against the edge of a metal table.
"Nothing."
"That didn't look like nothing."
"Good news. You don't pay me for my face."
"I haven't paid you at all."
"Then don't die. Mara said you're worth enough to cover the whole night."
His expression changed at that. Barely. But I saw it.
He knew Mara.
Of course he did. Men with blood on their shirts always knew the broker. That was why Mara was still alive. She had dirt on half the city and bad manners with the other half.
I glanced at the clock nailed crookedly above the old furnace.
2:17 a.m.
Four hours and forty-three minutes until sunrise.
I had one job: keep him alive until then.
No names. No questions. No family trouble. No city guard. Just break the curse, take the cash, and go home before the guild started asking why I was behind on my debt again.
Simple.
Except the curse was wearing a twelve-layer lock around his heart.
I bent over him again, pulling a leather roll from my jacket pocket. Chalk. Salt. Three silver pins. A tiny glass bottle of gravewater. Two pills for pain, one for poison, and a little folded photo I never touched unless I was desperate.
The man watched me lay things out around him.
"You always carry a graveyard in your coat?" he asked.
"You always bleed on strangers' floors?"
"Not usually."
"Then we're both having a weird night."
I drew a circle around him in chalk, leaving a gap near his feet.
He noticed. "That's open."
"It needs somewhere to run."
"Where?"
"Not into me, ideally."
His eyes narrowed. "Comforting."
"Look, if you wanted comfort, you should've called a priest."
"I did."
I paused.
He stared at the ceiling. "He died."
"Okay." I swallowed. "Then you made the right call coming here."
"That confidence real?"
"No."
That got a real laugh out of him. Lasted maybe half a second before he winced and pressed a shaking hand to his ribs.
I caught his wrist.
His skin was too hot.
Not fever hot. Stove burner hot.
The black fire under his chest rolled toward my fingers.
I pulled back.
The thing had noticed me.
Great.
"Who did this?" I asked.
His face closed up.
Not fear. Training.
The kind rich families beat into their kids early. Say nothing. Trust nobody. Smile while someone twists the knife.
"Don't know," he said.
"Bullshit."
"I was attacked."
"By who?"
"Masked people."
"Wow. That clears it right up."
"I was a little busy getting stabbed."
"And now you're here, bleeding in Mara Quinn's basement. So either you trust her, or you were too desperate to care."
His jaw tightened.
Desperate, then.
I didn't push. Not yet.
I sprinkled salt over the black marks. The grains hit his chest and instantly turned gray.
Then they started moving.
The salt crawled uphill.
Every grain slid toward the wound in his side, piling over it like ants covering a dead bug.
The man stared down. "That normal?"
"Nope."
"Should I be worried?"
"You should've been worried before you got stabbed."
"Evelyn."
I looked up.
He'd said my name like he knew it.
My hand went to the knife at my belt. "Who told you that?"
"Mara."
"She gave you my name?"
"She said you were good."
"Mara says that about anyone she wants to overcharge."
"She also said you don't work for families."
I went still.
He noticed that too. Damn him.
"I don't," I said.
"Why?"
"Because they lie. Because they think money makes curses polite. Because when things go bad, they feed the help to whatever came through the door."
His gaze stayed on me.
"You talking from experience?"
"No."
That was a lie. An old one. It came out easy.
I shoved a silver pin into the floor at his left shoulder. Then another by his hip.
The third one went into the concrete near his heart.
The man flinched when it struck.
"You stabbed the floor," he said.
"Yeah. Try to keep up."
"Can't. Dying."
"Annoying, isn't it?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then, quiet enough that I almost missed it, he said, "Nolan."
"What?"
"My name. Nolan."
I stared at him.
I knew that name.
Everybody in the city knew that name.
Nolan Kade.
The Kades owned power stations, private security, half the north side, and enough judges to make court feel like a family dinner. They put their crest on charities, schools, hospitals. Gold tower. Black sun.
I looked back at his watch.
The crest was carved into the clasp.
"Oh, hell no."
Nolan's mouth tightened. "That bad?"
"You're a Kade."
"Apparently."
"I don't touch Kade jobs."
"You're touching one right now."
I stood. "Then congratulations. You're getting a refund."
His hand shot out and caught my wrist.
Fast. Too fast for a dying man.
The black lines on his chest surged toward his arm.
I hissed. "Let go."
"Please."
That stopped me.
Not because it was sweet. It wasn't. It sounded scraped raw, like he hated the word and had forced it out anyway.
His grip loosened, but he didn't let go.
"If you walk," he said, "it gets out."
"What gets out?"
His eyes dropped to the dark marks crawling beneath his skin.
"The thing that killed my father."
The basement went very quiet.
I could hear the old pipes ticking behind the wall. Water dripped somewhere near the storage room. My phone buzzed in my pocket, probably Mara checking in.
I ignored it.
"You said you were attacked," I said.
"I was."
"And this thing killed your father?"
"It was supposed to die with him."
"Supposed to?"
Nolan's hand shook around my wrist. "I need you to break it."
I stared at his fingers.
Then at the clock.
2:29.
I could walk away. I should walk away. The Kades didn't pay debts. They made people disappear until the debt stopped existing.
But Mara had promised fifteen thousand upfront if I kept the client breathing. Fifteen thousand would cover three months of guild payments. Maybe four, if I ate noodles and stopped buying decent coffee.
And if I had four months, I could find Theo.
My little brother was out there somewhere. He had to be.
I yanked my wrist free.
"Fine," I said. "But you do exactly what I say."
Nolan let out a breath.
"And if you lie to me again," I added, "I let the curse eat your expensive face first."
"Fair."
"It's not fair. It's a warning."
I pulled the gravewater bottle open with my teeth and spat the cap into my palm. The liquid inside looked like plain water until it touched the air. Then little shadows moved through it.
Nolan watched me pour it over the wound in his side.
He screamed.
Not loud at first.
Then the sound ripped out of him and hit the basement walls.
The chalk circle flared blue.
Black fire exploded across his chest.
I grabbed both of his shoulders and shoved him flat before he could break the circle. Heat punched into my hands. My palms blistered instantly.
"Look at me!" I snapped.
Nolan's eyes were black again.
His teeth showed when he smiled.
"The debt always comes home," the thing said through him.
My stomach dropped.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Nolan's head turned toward me with a sharp, ugly jerk.
The curse looked at my face.
Then it laughed.
"Oh," it said. "Morrow's girl."
Every muscle in my body locked.
Nobody called me that.
Not since Mom died in a locked room with blood under her nails and a guild seal burned into her throat.
I pressed harder on Nolan's shoulders. "Tell me who sent you."
The black fire crawled over his jaw, into his mouth. Smoke leaked between his teeth.
"Your mother begged better than you do."
"Shut up."
"She begged for the boy."
Theo.
My control cracked.
I slammed my palm onto Nolan's chest.
The fire bit me.
Pain tore up my arm, white and hot. My hand should've pulled away. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to pull away.
Instead, my fingers spread over the center of his chest.
Nolan's eyes snapped open.
Gray. Human. Terrified.
"Evelyn," he gasped. "Move."
My palm caught fire.
Not the black fire.
Gold.
Light burst between my fingers, bright enough to bleach the room empty. The silver pins shrieked against the concrete. The bottle of gravewater shattered. Wind slammed through the basement even though there were no windows open.
Nolan grabbed my wrist.
His hand covered mine against his chest.
"Don't let go," he said.
"I'm trying not to lose my whole damn hand!"
The gold fire climbed my wrist in thin lines.
For one wild second, I saw things that weren't in the room.
A woman kneeling in black water.
Mom's face, younger and furious.
A gold ring shoved onto someone's bleeding finger.
A man's voice saying, Bind it. Bind them both.
Then Nolan shouted my name again.
The basement snapped back.
I hit the floor on my side.
The pain vanished so fast it left me shaking.
For a second, nobody moved.
The black fire was gone.
Nolan lay on his back, chest heaving. His shirt had burned away down the middle.
And right over his heart was the mark of my hand.
Not a burn exactly.
A gold handprint, every finger clear against his skin.
The mark pulsed once.
Nolan looked down at it.
Then up at me.
His face had gone completely white.
"What did you do?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
The gold mark flashed again.
Somewhere above us, the basement door unlocked.
Footsteps came down the stairs.
Nolan grabbed my arm. "If they see this—"
"Who?"
"Anyone."
The door at the top of the stairs opened.
Mara's voice floated down, sharp and annoyed. "Evelyn, you still breathing?"
I looked at Nolan.
His hand was still wrapped around my wrist.
The gold mark on his chest pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
"Yeah," I called up. "We're good."
"Good doesn't take this long. What's the hold-up?"
Nolan's eyes locked on mine.
"Tell her I'm dead," he whispered.
"What?"
"Tell her the curse won won and I'm dead."
"You're not dead."
"I will be if you don't lie."
Mara's heels clicked on the stairs.
Nolan's grip tightened.
"Please," he said again.
And this time, I believed him.