Ballad of the Bone Road E-Book

A.C. Wise

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 395

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

In the glittering city of Port Astor, where fae roads criss-cross human highways and ghosts whisper to the living, nothing is ever as it seems. From Sunburst Award-winning author A. C. Wise, this utterly original dark fantasy tale of faith and fanaticism, doomed love and desperate bargains is perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Ava Reid. Port Astor is a city of ghosts. Once home to the beautiful, brutal courts of the fae, forty years ago they vanished without explanation – and Port Astor decided to forget. Brix and Bellefeather are paranormal investigators, working to keep Port Astor's wraiths and spectres from consuming the city. Both have hauntings of their own: Belle shares her body with a demon, Belizial; Brix has trapped the soul of his dead fiancée in the world of the living, unwilling to let her go. While investigating the glamorous and notoriously haunted Peony Hotel, Brix and Belle come across a young couple tangled up in one of the city's most infamous tales. Jimmy Valentine, silver screen idol and one-time favorite of a fae queen, has returned to haunt the Peony. But Jimmy is no mere ghost, and Brix and Belle soon realize his return is more intimately tied to their own hauntings than they could ever have imagined. The fae have not forgotten that Port Astor once belonged to them. And their Hollow Queen won't give up her kingdom so easily.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise for Ballad of the Bone Road

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Eight Months Ago

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4: Eight Months Ago

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7: Eight Months Ago

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10: Eight Months Ago

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13: Six Months Ago

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Acknowledgments

About the author

Praise for

BALLAD OF THE BONE ROAD

“The ultimate ghost story, many-layered and highly original. Ballad of the Bone Road is both terrifying and irresistible.”

JULIET MARILLIER, award-winning author of theSevenwaters and Blackthorn & Grim series

“A new A. C. Wise book is always something to celebrate. A ghostly heartthrob, a hollow queen, a vanishing hotel room and haunted protagonists – what’s not to love? Ethereal, wild and liminal, Ballad of the Bone Road is a fabulous intersection between weird crime and the next wave of the paranormal. Not to be missed.”

ANGELA ‘A. G.’ SLATTER,award-winning author of The Crimson Road

“A breathtakingly beautiful and chilling ghost story, Ballad of the Bone Road is like nothing you've ever read before. In these pages, you'll find phantoms, fae, one very glamorous hotel, and so much more. Without a doubt, A. C. Wise is one of the best literary voices of our time, which makes this book a must-read for fans of horror and dark fantasy.”

GWENDOLYN KISTE, four-time Bram StokerAward®-winning author of The Hauntingof Velkwood and Reluctant Immortals

“A. C. Wise has created a lush and lyrical world thatdraws you in and devastates you. I was captivated.”

RYM KECHACHA, author of The Apple and the Pearl

Also by A. C. Wise

and available from Titan Books

Wendy, Darling

Hooked

Out of the Drowning Deep

BALLAD OF THE BONE ROAD

A.C. WISE

TITAN BOOKS

LEAVE US A REVIEW

We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

Amazon.com,

Amazon.co.uk,

Goodreads,

Barnes & Noble,

Waterstones,

or your preferred retailer.

Ballad of the Bone Road

Print edition ISBN: 9781835413784

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835413791

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: January 2026

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© A. C. Wise 2026

A. C. Wise asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU R P (for authorities only)

eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, Estonia

[email protected], [phone]

Typeset in Tribute by Richard Mason.

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

For everyone who grew up on fairy talesand liked the dark and bloody parts the best.

1

EIGHT MONTHS AGO

It begins in a hotel room.

Two kids who aren’t really kids – old enough to know better, but young enough not to care – believing they will live forever and playing with magic they don’t understand. They are stupidly in love. Their pockets are flush with cash for once, and they are determined to spend it all in one glorious weekend at the Peony Hotel.

It isn’t sensible, but it’s romantic and luxurious and selfish, which is exactly the point. Soon enough, the world will expect them to act like adults, buckle down and get serious about their lives; this is their last hurrah.

And what better place for it than the once-glittering jewel in Port Astor’s crown? There’s a faded glory here. The ghosts of the past, both literal and figurative, linger only a breath away. In its heyday, movie stars and politicians, poets and dukes alike graced the Peony’s halls. The Oleander King and his Silver Stag once took a room for an entire glorious summer that lasted well into fall. Tallulah Bankhead caused a scandal dancing in the Grand Ballroom with the King of Sweden, who was rumored to be half fae himself.

Back then, the Morgans and Rockefellers and Astors regularly rubbed elbows with the High Courts, and the fae still roamed the city streets freely. Nymphs and vodyanoy and all manner of mers haunted the tiled baths and steam rooms. Shadowy wolves tested their voices in the subway tunnels connecting the hotel to the rest of the city. Anybody who was anybody had at least one relative stolen away to the world beneath the world – often right from the Peony Hotel itself – never to be seen again.

Then, the fae vanished. No one knows why, or where they went. It happened just long enough ago that the city is beginning to forget they were ever there – though the Peony remembers.

All this history crowds around Virgil and Leonie in their hotel room. Even faded, the Peony is still the poshest place either of them have ever been. They feel its hauntings and its glamour deep in their bones.

Neither of them is from Port Astor. Hardly anyone is. Port Astor is the place people run to when they’re chasing their dreams or fleeing their nightmares, unless they go out west to Hollywoodland. Virgil came to the city from a small farming town, one of seven children, crowded against his siblings like too many seeds in too little soil. Leonie, an only child, ran to escape the unpredictable storms living inside her parents’ skins.

They’ve been living in Port Astor for almost a year now, both working at Oberwager’s Department Store. This weekend, they will reinvent themselves as disgraced royalty and louche poets belonging to another age. Already one bottle down, they’ve been toasting each other since they arrived, picturing themselves dripping jet beads and pearls, just like the guests in the framed illustrations lining the halls.

The wallpaper in their room is a riot of color – a jungle of silky green-black leaves and scandalously blooming flowers. Virgil can’t stop running his fingertips over them, smelling their heady scent and feeling velvet when he touches the petals – pink at their ruffled edges, darkening to red in their secret hearts.

There are birds hidden among the greenery, and Virgil wonders what else the leaves might conceal among their dense shadows: watchful golden eyes and sharpened claws. The thought gives him a delicious thrill. Something terrible is coming, and in the next heartbeat, isn’t that wonderful?

There’s a thrum, like a storm building, electricity caged behind dark clouds. The room smells like ozone, like everything about to happen. Virgil reaches for a second bottle, digging the cork free to pour them each another glass, feeling wild and powerful, like he could do anything at all.

“To us,” he says. “To the movie stars and kings and queens in whose footsteps we’re following, and whose bedsheets we’re about to despoil.”

Leonie smacks him on the arm, light and playful. “A place this fancy washes the sheets every day, you know.”

“I know,” he says.

They give the bed a furtive glance, heat creeping up the back of Virgil’s neck and fizzing pleasantly in his belly along with the alcohol. Neither of them moves to those fabled sheets just yet. It’s not like they’ve never seen each other naked before, but the bed is too large for just the two of them, almost intimidating, and besides, the night is young.

They settle on the floor instead, smokes and snacks and yet more alcohol spread around them. On the opposite wall, above an old-fashioned writing desk, a mirror tilts just so to watch over them.

“You know who I always wanted to meet?” Leonie says, her tone wistful. She leans back against the foot of the bed, legs sprawled out straight, black-clad in wide trousers. Her suspenders, formerly pulled up over a white collared shirt, hang loose at her waist. Her low-heeled boots rest next to Virgil’s head, the mess of his black curls smashed flat against the floor.

“Who?” Virgil’s position is the inverse of hers, legs kicked up onto the bed, lying with his head near Leonie’s feet. There’s a hole in one of his socks, toe poking through, and he wiggles it as he waits for Leonie’s answer.

“Jimmy Valentine.”

The thick shag of her black fringe nearly hides her kohl-lined eyes. Together, make-up and hair give the effect of a mask. She shakes the fringe out of her eyes to look at Virgil properly, revealing the shine of excitement; her mask is for the rest of the world, never him.

Virgil lifts his head. “The movie star?”

“Movie star and singer-songwriter-musician,” she corrects. “He started off in music. The movies came afterward.”

“Sure, right.” Virgil laces his hands over his stomach and looks up at the ceiling. “My grandmother took me to a couple of his pictures. My siblings and I were each allowed one special day a year where we got to pick what we wanted to do and wouldn’t have to share it with anyone. I always asked to go to the cinema, I never even cared what was playing. Gran would take me to the lunch counter and the ice cream parlor, too. That little town only had one main street, but it was the biggest place I’d ever been, back then.”

He glances at Leonie, the memories warm inside of him, but shadows gnaw at the corners of her expression. Virgil quickly steers away from family, back to Jimmy Valentine.

“I only remember one picture. Jimmy played a poor kid who worked in the mines with his father until he moved to the big city and became a star – just like his real life, I guess. Did you ever see that one?”

Leonie shakes her head. “I listened to his records more than I ever watched his films.”

Virgil remembers the record player that used to be in Leonie’s dorm room, along with a stack of records in well-worn sleeves. He wonders whatever happened to it, whether it’s tucked away in some corner of their apartment or in a box somewhere they just haven’t unpacked yet. He’s almost sure, now that he thinks about it, that they must have listened to at least one of Jimmy Valentine’s songs together. They might have even tried to dance, knocking into the furniture and each other in the tiny space before falling into Leonie’s bed together, laughing while hushing each other and trying not to wake her neighbors. Neither of them lasted at Ember College long, though they still have to worry about waking their neighbors sometimes.

“Jimmy sang in that movie about the mines. I think there was a bit where his father made a deal with a devil he met deep in the tunnels. Jimmy had to trade the devil a song to set his father free before he left for the city, but he’d never be able to sing that particular song again and his father wouldn’t ever remember what Jimmy had done for him.”

Virgil thinks of a voice like summer sunshine, like bees droning around an apple tree. He can almost smell the cider-scent in the air now, overwhelming the flowers. “Now you’ve got me wishing I could have met him, too.”

Leonie captures one of the open bottles and pours herself another glass. “All that fame and fortune, all the songs he never got the chance to write, just because of a stupid car accident.”

Virgil can’t help thinking how beautiful she looks, talking about Jimmy Valentine like he was somebody she knew, even though neither of them could have been more than five or six years old when he died.

It isn’t just Leonie. Every newspaper and magazine cover right across Arcadia carried pictures of him after he died. Movie theaters showed a film of his funeral, and people sat in the dark crying together like they’d known Jimmy Valentine, too. They left flowers and cards and pictures in every place Jimmy ever lived or played a show.

“He used to stay at the Peony all the time,” Leonie continues, more wistful now than melancholy. “He might even have stayed in this very room. Did you know he wrote ‘Winter Velvet’ about a girl who used to work here? Everyone thinks it’s a love song, but it’s a tragedy. Her fiancé died in the war. She was mourning him, but Jimmy helped her forget for a while.”

“Did he make love to her?”

“Probably. Jimmy made love to everyone.”

“Well, then, darlin’, I reckon I’d be even more pleased to meet him.” Virgil affects his best Jimmy Valentine drawl.

“That was truly awful.” Leonie smacks him on the arm again. Virgil is relieved to see her smile.

“I’ll work on it.” He lays his head back against the floor, his gaze tracing the molded flourishes on the ceiling.

The world is so thin here.

He isn’t sure where the notion comes from, except he knows it’s true. He isn’t even properly drunk yet, but his thoughts move thick and slow as honey. It doesn’t seem like such a stretch; he could reach out and find Jimmy Valentine, take his hand, and invite him in for a while. Now that he’s thought of it, he wants to do it, more than he’s ever wanted anything before. It would chase away the sadness in Leonie’s eyes, and on top of that, Virgil wants prove to himself that he can.

Why not? Why shouldn’t he? Possibility and energy crackle within him. This is what he was made to do. All he needs is to—

Leonie pokes him in the stomach. “Where did you go?”

He blinks. Leonie’s face is inches from his, leaning over him. Her breath and the ends of her hair tickle his skin. Her forehead touches his own. “Come back.”

“I’m here,” Virgil says, though he wonders if it’s true.

Leonie’s eyes are a blue that is almost grey, or a grey that is almost blue, a ring of slate around their lighter interior.

“Good.” Her lips brush his. The hair rises on the back of his neck and all along his arms.

She shifts until she’s straddling him. Virgil rests his hands on her waist, and when she tugs her shirt free from her trousers, he slides his hands beneath it, her skin pebbling under his touch. The promise in the room shifts until it’s centered in Virgil’s body. Leonie retrieves the tin of tobacco and rolling papers she carries with her everywhere. For as long as Virgil has known her, she’s insisted on hand-rolling her own cigarettes, and she gives it the same care and attention each time, like she’s performing a ritual.

She balances the tin and paper on Virgil’s chest, using him as the surface to work her magic. He watches her face, enraptured, the tip of her tongue poking from the corner of her lips as she rolls the paper tight, then dampens it with her spit, sealing the tobacco inside.

As they pass the cigarette back and forth, watching each other’s fingers and mouths, a new urgency grips them – a storm breaking. Virgil fumbles to get his trousers undone, only managing to get them and his underwear partway down his legs before she lowers herself onto him.

Leonie throws her head back, exposing the column of her throat. Virgil holds on to her waist as she jerks her hips hard, clenching around him as she comes. The swiftness of it, the beauty of it, startles an orgasm from Virgil too, though he’d intended to hold on.

She rolls off him, curling around him and plucking the cigarette from his lips to put it back between her own. His hand drifts to the small of her back as she pillows her head against his chest – careful to keep any ash from dropping on him.

The curtains are drawn against Port Astor’s glow, so he has no idea of the time – not that it matters in the city anyway. Stars barely fight through the glare of all the mirrored skyscrapers reflecting each other, the blinking marquee bulbs smearing so beautifully in the puddles any time it rains. It’s the most gorgeous city in the world, Virgil thinks. No wonder the fae adored it; no wonder its ghosts never want to leave.

“We could, you know,” he says. He’s half-dreaming, uncertain whether he’s said the words aloud until Leonie raises her head to look at him.

“Could what?”

Virgil absently traces a hand over the line of his ribs. “Call Jimmy Valentine.”

There’s something there, a whole other world inside him. When he tries to picture it, he sees a white road tucked behind his bones. It looks like crushed-up sticks of classroom chalk. The trees on either side are pale, and beyond them there’s grass – each blade sharply defined in its own shadow.

He doesn’t know where the road goes, but he’s certain the dust there is softer than anything in this world. Somewhere along that road, he’ll find Jimmy Valentine.

“I really think we could do it,” he says.

“You’re serious?” Leonie sits up. After a moment, the beginnings of a smile crease the corners of her mouth.

If Leonie believes in him, Virgil can do absolutely anything. He bounces to his feet, yanking up his trousers, no longer the slightest bit tired. His enthusiasm is like a wildfire, catching as he paces around the room. “Why not? Why shouldn’t we?”

He whirls around and comes back to the end of the bed, holding out a hand for Leonie. She takes it, and he pulls her to her feet.

“What do you say? Wanna give it a try?”

“Yes.” Leonie breathes her answer against his lips, sealing it there with a kiss. “I really, really do.”

2

Roasted notes of caramel and sugar trailed after Brix as he left the bright copper gleam of the cozy café, returning to the merciless sidewalks of Port Astor. Car horns blared along the street and the flow of pedestrian traffic never slowed, leaving him weaving and dodging to preserve the paper cups of coffee held aloft in either hand. Both were strong and black, his sweetened with sugar, which he probably didn’t need given the paper bag of almond pastries tucked under his arm, but he’d barely slept last night and so he’d decided to indulge.

Non-specific and restless dreams had kept him awake, but Belle was waiting on him, and she’d be annoyed if he was late when it was his turn to supply the caffeine. She’d left the outer door of their office open, knowing he would have his hands full. He nudged it with his hip and stepped into the entryway.

“All right, luv? I brought coffee.”

“In here,” she called.

In the office proper, he found Belle leaning against the large rosewood desk, which dominated the crowded space. Stained glass accents in the bay window scattered colored light across the stacks of books and paper covering every surface. Neither of them had ever used the desk for anything other than storage. Brix found a rare clear spot to set the pastries down and handed Belle her coffee.

“What’s on the docket today?” He leaned beside her, digging a pastry out of the bag and scattering crumbs.

Belle glanced up disapprovingly. Brix took a second unapologetic bite. If the crumbs attracted mice, he’d just let one of the cats that liked to sun itself in the back courtyard inside. Problem solved.

Belle didn’t go so far as to chide him, paging back through her leatherbound casebook to read aloud to him from the list of recent inquiries.

Despite the growing backlash against spiritualism – and indeed all things occult – that dominated the opinion pages of Port Astor’s newspapers these days, they never seemed to lack for work. The fae had only been gone forty-odd years, well within many people’s lifetimes, but it was as though everyone had collectively chosen to forget the way magic had once flowed through the streets. But it wasn’t as if the city had stopped being haunted. If anything, it had grown even more so. Maybe precisely because people had already chosen to forget the old ways; it left them more vulnerable. They no longer knew how to protect themselves.

When the fae vanished, the last of the great robber baron families had claimed it had always been their plan – to retake the city by sealing the ways between worlds with iron, not to mention claiming that they knew where every single one of those ways was located. They called it a victory, but it struck Brix as remarkably short-sighted. The fae had always had their own unknowable reasons for everything they did; their departure without explanation wasn’t entirely uncharacteristic, but it seemed that at least one great industrialist or politician ought to be concerned. What if the fae came back? What if they never did? And what if something worse took their place? A vanishing like that, all at once… It was the kind of thing that left scars.

“An apartment building on 20th and Park. The superintendent’s been receiving complaints of odd noises, banging on the walls, things creaking and bumping in the night.”

“Sounds like a problem with the pipes.”

“A manager at Oberwager’s called about items going missing, merchandise mysteriously shifting around.”

“Probably underpaid employees having a bit of fun,” Brix said. “Nothing else?”

A better quality of inquiries ought to be piling up at their door. Things had gotten worse in the last year or so, though he didn’t like to think on the timeline too closely. Those old scars were reopening, and it left him with a desire to distract himself with a proper case. Something real and something sufficiently complex to keep him occupied for a while.

He finished the last bite of his pastry and glanced at the bag, which Belle hadn’t touched. He contented himself with a sip of his coffee instead, trying not to fidget. He’d been hoping for a something like the demon-haunted warehouse they’d cleansed for the Carmichael siblings, or the Sutcliffe girl who’d vanished right before her sister’s eyes. Strange noises and missing merchandise sounded more like a job for a building superintendent and a night watchman than specialists like him and Belle.

Belle flipped over a page, giving him a measured look, and kept reading.

“Ghostly music from a church on 9th. That one might actually be real, if not terribly exciting.”

She found a scrap of paper to mark her page and snapped the book closed. Brix tried to hide his disappointment. It felt wrong to want something a little dangerous – or at least absorbing. Something to keep him out of the house and away from the silences that gathered with increasing thickness each day, stretching themselves longer every time they came to fill up the gaps between the sound of Abby’s voice.

Belle set the casebook aside, finally reaching for her coffee. It might have been Brix’s imagination, but he caught the faintest hint of a smile. The off-hand way she spoke, as if in afterthought, suggested she’d deliberately been holding out on him.

“There was one more call,” she said. “A young woman let go from her job a few months back. A room went missing from the hotel where she worked, completely vanished midway through her shift. She told her boss, but he accused her of causing a scene and fired her on the spot.”

Brix stood up straighter. “Oh? Which hotel?”

“The Peony.” Belle consulted her notes, no recognition in her voice at the name.

“You’re serious? The most haunted hotel in all of Port Astor and you didn’t mention it right off?”

The look she returned was guileless.

“Holcombe’s Folly? Nothing? Not ringing even one bell?”

“If you say so.” She watched him over the rim of her cup. Brix gave into the urge to pace – fully awake now – despite the fact that there was scarcely any room.

“It’s the most famous hotel in the city. John Jacobs Astor commissioned it for the express purposes of holding seances after his fiancée vanished. Some hack of a medium convinced him to spend his entire fortune on it. He ruined what was left of his family name and ended up killing himself in one of the suites. I can’t believe you’ve never heard any of this.”

“I didn’t grow up here,” she reminded him with the slightest of frowns.

“Neither did I, luv, but we’ve both been here long enough now that surely some of the history must have permeated.”

“Hmm.” Belle made a non-committal sound, but Brix caught the note beneath it. Her interest had been piqued.

“Peony it is, then.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them, nervous energy building between his palms. He wanted to be there already, gone, working, but even so his mouth ran away with him as if Belle needed more convincing. “They’ve got a whole indoor garden – a gift from some fae queen or other, it still blooms year-round. The Red Rose Girls came up from Cogslea and held an impromptu residency there for a week. A real wonder. I’m surprised we’ve never gotten a call from there before. What else did the woman say?”

“Not much, but I told her she could stop by if—”

A knock on the door interrupted her.

“Speak of the devil?”

Belle shot him a look, a faint rind the color of blood circling her irises, then called into the hallway. “It’s open.”

A young woman peeked her head around the door, looking like she might change her mind and take flight at any moment. “Brix and Bellefeather?”

“That’s us.” Brix gestured her in. “I’m sorry there isn’t anywhere to sit.”

“It’s alright.” Her gaze drifted between the two of them, startling slightly at Belle’s attire – lilac silk, a skirt that reached the floor and a fitted jacket to match, gloves covering her hands, curls drawn back primly, all of it suggesting she’d stepped into the room from another age.

“Pastry?” Brix held out the bag, hoping to set her at ease, but the young woman shook her head.

She turned her attention to Belle. “I called earlier?”

“Calliope, yes?” Belle folded her hands neatly in front of her, making no move to shake the young woman’s hand.

“Yes,” she said, but she sounded doubtful.

“Sydney Brix.” Brix held out his hand. “How can we help?”

It wasn’t uncommon for those who found their way to the office to second-guess whether they should even have come. Brix was used to clients who refused to believe the evidence of their own senses, as well as those who believed fully, but had already lost hope. There were few enough people who could do what he did, especially these days, and Belle was even rarer. Many would-be clients talked themselves out of presenting their cases before they ever stepped foot in the door. It was easier to believe the two of them were con artists, or at the very least, delusional. More comfortable to think that anything that couldn’t be touched, tasted, or held in the hand wasn’t real.

“You worked at the Peony?” Brix tried to keep his tone level, not to sound over eager. The pain that should have lessened this last year seemed only to have grown, a bruise deep under the skin that ached every time he pressed on it. He longed to sink into a job.

“Yes, I…” Calliope looked down, studying her shoes. “It’s going to sound unbelievable.”

“Unbelievable is our line of work.”

That brought her head up, a small measure of relief crossing her features.

“Why don’t you tell us everything from the start?” Belle suggested.

She hadn’t moved from the desk, but Brix noted the straight line of her back and shoulders. He checked her eyes. There was no telltale sign of rust-red now. She held her demon in check, but Brix imagined they were restless, too.

“I was a maid,” Calliope said. “During my last shift, I was turning over rooms like usual. Everything seemed perfectly ordinary, then one of the rooms was just… gone.”

“How do you mean?” Brix asked.

“Well, there are twelve rooms on each floor, six on either side – except that afternoon, there were only eleven rooms on the fourteenth floor, and the spot where the twelfth room should have been felt… wrong.”

Calliope glanced between them again, like she was expecting to be called a liar.

“After you found the room missing, what then?” he asked.

“I went to Mr. Gustav – he’s the manager. He accused me of making the whole thing up for attention.” Calliope shook her head. “I tried to show him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He ordered me to leave, or else security would escort me out.”

“That seems like a pretty extreme reaction.” Belle stiffened with clear irritation on Calliope’s behalf.

“He was afraid of losing business. Anyway, I found another job, a better one. But the thing is, I know I wasn’t wrong. Except…” Uncertainty crept back into her voice.

“Go on,” Belle said.

“Well, I spoke to some of the other girls, and not one of them remembers there being a twelfth room on that floor. They say there’ve only ever been eleven, but I know that’s not right. Fergus…” Calliope blushed. “He’s one of the bellhops… We looked at the blueprints together, and there’s clearly supposed to be twelve rooms on the fourteenth floor. Fergus is the only one who believes me. It’s like something made everyone else forget.” She looked briefly embarrassed. “I even forgot. All of this happened a few months ago.”

“But something changed,” Brix said. “What?”

He wasn’t entirely able to keep the eagerness out of his voice this time. This, whatever it was, this was what he’d been waiting for. A shift in the wind, a storm bringing the scent of damp earth to the air. A fae season, his grandmother used to call it – one season slipping into the midst of another where it clearly didn’t belong.

“I don’t know,” Calliope said, sounding genuinely distressed. “I woke up this morning with a feeling something bad is about to happen. Something’s coming or…”

“It’s alright,” Brix told her. “We’ll take a look, see if we can’t find some answers.”

“Gustav still works there. He might not let you investigate. He hates anything that looks even a little bit like scandal, anything he thinks will hurt the hotel’s bottom line.”

“Well, then.” Brix caught himself grinning, unable to help it now that the thing he’d been waiting for had finally arrived. “We’ll just have to find a way to look around without him knowing, won’t we?”

The look Belle shot him wasn’t exactly approval, but it wasn’t disapproval either.

Calliope’s distress melted into a look of mischief. “Some of the girls like to smoke around back by the laundry room door. They keep it wedged open so they don’t have to clock in and out through the lobby.”

“Very understandable.” Brix patted his jacket pocket. “I’m rather partial to a smoke myself, and I’m feeling like a walk just about now to enjoy one.”

He tilted his head toward the door, and Belle pushed away from the desk. Calliope looked surprised at the ease with which they’d taken the case, but hurried out after them.

“Good luck.” She held out her hand for Brix to shake. Belle kept her hands wrapped firmly around her beaded clutch. “And thank you for believing me.”

3

Belle felt the wrongness as soon as the building came in sight. More precisely, Belizial felt it, her demon tensing inside her, like a cat arching its back, fur spiking all along its spine.

“What is it?” she asked aloud.

Brix glanced at her, but only briefly, understanding she wasn’t talking to him. Belizial curled around her bones.

There are ghosts here, but something else. It’s… Distress rose in their tone, fear making them wind themself even closer.

Tightness answered in Belle’s chest, as if the corset under her jacket had been laced too hard, cinching her ribs until they creaked and making it difficult to breathe.

Shhhh, she soothed without words, trying to keep her own heart rate even.

The speed of their guilty retreat only left her more on edge. Normally, Belizial would press close to her skin, ready to transform her, ready to devour anything that posed a threat. They rarely made themself this small. Unless—

“Everything alright?” Brix asked.

She reached after Belizial, a question without specific words. The fae who had hurt them was long gone, but what else would make them shrink as if salt-stung, pulling back even from her touch? It was subtle enough, but it still struck at her pride. Didn’t they trust her to keep them safe, after all these years?

“I don’t know.” She addressed Brix, then spoke again internally. Let me know if you feel anything specific.

Her tone, even within the confines of her thoughts, sounded petty, but it was impossible to hide bitterness from someone who shared her skin. Belizial agreed without words and settled within her, which only made her feel worse. They were both overreacting.

Brix dropped the last of his cigarette, crushing it under his heel. “Ready?” He tipped his head toward the narrow alleyway between buildings, and the metal door, which had indeed been wedged open.

From behind the Peony, Port Astor’s sky was a ribbon divided by buildings. The façade was much more impressive, but even here the strange mix of Gothic and Art Deco stood out. Belle couldn’t shake the feeling of space, as if the interior had been folded to contain more than the comparatively drab buildings to either side should allow.

Fae magic. Even now it persisted. The past wasn’t the past at all within the hotel. On the walk over, Brix had told her how during the Great Blackout that had smothered the entire city, the Peony alone continued to shine, foxfire and spirit lights in every window. Perhaps that was all Belizial felt, echoes clinging to the place. The Hollow Queen had vanished along with the rest of the fae; she wasn’t here. She couldn’t be here, regardless of what Belizial felt.

The idea reassured her, but her demon neither agreed nor expressed doubt, as if they weren’t even listening. Fine, if they wanted to hide, let them. She and Brix could handle this on their own.

“Ready.” Belle tugged at the sleeves of her jacket, making sure no gap existed between them and her gloves. She pulled open the door. Belizial prickled again, but the sense of wrongness remained non-specific. Unhelpful, but it made Belle feel justified in ignoring their unease, at least until she had more information. Gently, but pointedly, she pulled her consciousness from theirs and narrowed her focus.

They turned left, away from the scent of laundry soap and the sound of voices muffled behind a set of double doors. At the end of the corridor, another door let onto a set of stairs, winding upward.

“Fourteenth floor?” Brix didn’t sound enthusiastic.

“Fourteenth floor.” Belle gathered her skirt and set to climbing.

The stairwell was empty, but sooner or later a staff member or a guest was bound to spot them. Not to mention that even if they weren’t caught, they didn’t have a clear plan. They hadn’t officially been invited to investigate; what exactly could they do?

Gloom pervaded the stairwell, dim and heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the lack of windows. Belle felt it in her back teeth, a sharp, aching cold, a taste like metal.

We should leave. Belizial squeezed at her from within, rising panic making them careless.

It felt like before, like being closed in the dark, the Hollow Queen hurting them again and again.

“What do you make of that, luv?” Brix stopped just short of touching her arm, drawing her attention.

Two floors farther up the stairwell, a stain spread across the wall. Belle gripped the railing, leaning outward for a better look. “I don’t think that’s mold.”

She ignored the tightness in her ribs. The stain made her think of a spreading bruise, blurred and smudgy. Belizial shuddered, their thoughts humming against her own.

It shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here.

Brix’s dark curls stirred even though there was no wind in the stairwell, the sheen of rust and plum that marked him as ghost-touched gleaming even in the dull light.

“It’s just a haunting,” Belle murmured, trying to soothe Belizial.

A haunting, but certainly not the kind she was used to, and from Brix’s expression, not the kind he was used to either. She leaned farther over the railing, trying to get a better look. Gravity tugged at her, but so did the smudged shadow. The taste of salt and iron lingered at the back of her throat, and with it came the feeling of a knife plied against her skin. Not her skin, Belizial’s. Not their skin, but the very essence of themself, layers peeled away as the Hollow Queen took them apart, over and over again.

Don’t— Their voice rose, then fractured; they dug in, as if something might pull them away from her.

It wasn’t just the shadow, but something inside it, or behind it. The dizzying sensation of the entire hotel turning to peer at her and Belizial swept over Belle. A shuddering ripple, like a stone dropped into a pond.

“You felt it too,” Brix said.

Belle let go of the railing to wrap an arm around her midsection, fighting to control her breath. Something cracked deeper within the hotel, a seam splitting somewhere below them.

“Something’s wrong.” Belle fought to get the words out, then nearly lost her balance, startling at the sound of a door opening above them.

She caught Brix’s eye, and as quietly as possible, they hurried back the way they’d come. A new wrongness tugged at Belle’s awareness. She never should have brought Belizial into such a fae-haunted place. No wonder they were panicking – and now that they were, where did that leave her?

The door leading back to the alleyway wasn’t where Belle remembered it. She’d gotten turned around and Brix had followed her, pushing open a door into a room that smelled of rust and heat. A boiler squatted against the back wall, pipes snaking across the ceiling.

“What happened back there?” Brix asked.

“I’m not sure.” Belle opened her eyes, keeping her hands pressed against her aching ribs. “Belizial felt something, but I don’t know what. What did you feel?”

“There’s a haunting, but…” He shook his head.

Too big. Too much. Curiosity demanded a closer look, but Belle never wanted to look at anything like the shadow in that stairwell again. Hungry – that was the word that came to mind, but not for food. A feeling like something with delicate fingers picking at the deepest parts of her, trying to unravel her.

“I think we have more than just a disappearing room on our hands,” Brix said. His hair no longer stirred in winds that weren’t there, and his curls had returned to their usual brown-black color. He ran a hand through them, sweeping the residual energy and flicking it away like drops of water.

“That mark on the wall. It felt like it wanted—”

The skin at the back of Belle’s neck tightened, and she went still, holding out a hand. To warn against what, she didn’t know.

“Behind me.” She kept her voice low, the words terse.

To his credit, Brix didn’t question her, moving so she stood between him and whatever else shared the room with them. Nothing human; a moment later, the stench of sulfur confirmed it.

A small and starveling shape crept from behind the boiler. It was wrong, twisted – somewhere between a hairless cat and a feral child. Naked and sexless, thin enough that every one of its ribs and all the knobs of its spine were visible through its near-translucent skin.

The tearing she’d felt, when the entire hotel shuddered – a demon had come through.

Crouched on all fours, it glared at Belle, its eyes red and baleful, speaking without words of horrible unfairness. It felt Belizial inside her skin and hated that they were there, free while it was not. The desire to bite and rend rolled from it in palpable waves. Belle could almost taste the hot spit filling its mouth, its longing to carry the tattered shreds of her demon back to whatever hell it had emerged from so they could suffer, too.

Without her having to ask, Brix turned away, giving her privacy. Belizial didn’t resist her or shrink away this time, already so close to the surface, all spikes of anxiety inflamed by the pure rage pouring from the demon in front of them, minor though it might be.

The thing hissed, baring needle teeth. Belizial flowed over and through Belle, peeling away into a halo of darkness around her, snapping her bones and making her larger. Not a full transformation, but enough.

The pale demon arched its back. Fear gleamed in eyes the color of old coins. Yet it didn’t flee, drawn like a magnet to Belizial. Belle might have felt pity – if it hadn’t lunged first, if she didn’t want to pounce on something weaker than her and crunch it between her jaws, to be feared instead of fearful, and give all the restlessness and distress she’d been feeling since they entered the hotel somewhere useful to go.

A shrieking sound cut off, the hunt over too quickly. For a moment, it wasn’t enough. Belle wanted to rake claws down the metal of the boiler and hear it scream as well. Rip the pipes from the wall for the sheer joy of destruction.

Belizial drew back and she let go, reining herself in and folding them back inside of her. Their relief washed through her, the strength of it leaving her ashamed of herself. And even so, some measure of the hunger remained.

Belle smoothed a gloved hand over a new tear in her jacket. Some of the pale demon’s blood had spattered across her skirt as well, but not so much that it couldn’t be salvaged.

“It’s alright. You can turn around now,” she said.

“Where in the hells did that thing come from?” Brix came to stand beside her.

“Exactly.”

She crouched, placing a hand against the wall behind the boiler while Brix looked over her shoulder. The energy that throbbed beneath her palm, already fading, felt nothing like the shadow in the stairwell. There was no lingering tang of iron, no incessant pull – or rather, the pull was in the wrong direction, as if the demon had merely been passing by, minding its own business, when something compelled it to come here.

“You said John Jacobs Astor built this place specifically to hold seances?” She looked at Brix over her shoulder. “Whether or not that medium was a quack, Astor still hit on something. This place is thin, like a crossroads.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

There was a note of strain in his voice. Just being here would wear at Brix like a tide, all those ghosts tugging at him and demanding his attention. She straightened, drawing her hand away from the wall.

“That thing…” Brix indicated the wall.

“Believe it or not, I think it was just bad luck,” she said. “All of us were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It felt us, or Belizial, and got pulled through. No wonder it was angry.”

“It can’t be a complete coincidence though, surely?”

Belle brushed her hands off, one against the other, as if soot stained them from touching the wall, though her gloves remained perfectly clean. Now that the immediate danger had passed, exhaustion gnawed her, too, but the kind that left her itchy and unsettled rather than wanting sleep.

“No. Like you said, this place is thin, and whatever it was we saw in the stairwell is making it thinner.”

The Hollow Queen.

“There’s no immediate danger,” Belle went on, brushing past Belizial’s concerns. She’d always kept them safe; she’d continue to do so now. “The tear that demon came through is already closing, and I’m not sure there’s much more we can do here right now.”

“You’re probably right.” Brix glanced back at the wall. Belle caught the reluctance in his voice, like part of him hoped the tear would open again and give them an excuse to stay.

It lasted only a moment. “Right, then.”

Belle moved to check the coast was clear before leading them into the hall and back outside. The metal door was exactly where it should be, and she wondered how they’d ever gotten turned around. The minute they were in the alleyway, Brix lit a cigarette. He squinted up at the slice of sky above them, and Belle could almost see the thoughts turning, worrying the question of the haunting like a dog with a bone.

The door opened behind them, and two women in maid’s uniforms gave them a startled look. Brix touched two fingers to his forehead, tossing them a salute, and before either could question their presence, he strolled away as if he and Belle being in this alleyway, her in blood-splattered clothes, was the most natural thing in the world.

“Until tomorrow, then?” Brix said as they reached the sidewalk.

Belle sensed his hesitation, but she badly needed a change of clothes and the opportunity to talk to Belizial alone. “Tomorrow.”

“Your turn to bring the coffee.” His smile attempted to project ease, but didn’t entirely hide the strain.

But a moment later, he straightened his shoulders as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and gave her the same salute he’d offered the maids as they parted ways.

Belle watched him go for a moment. Brix had a talent for smoothing a mask over any grief or pain. It was one of the many things she appreciated about him.