Chapter 8
The sewers had been quiet for hours. Not peaceful. Never peaceful. But quiet.
A rat scurried across the lip of a broken pipe and paused, nose twitching. It smelled the scorch marks first. Then the other thing, the oily tang of magic, sharp as ozone and old pennies, aka copper, aka blood.
It squeaked once, then turned to run. It didn’t get far. A hand, too long, too thin, and still forming, slid out from a pool of glistening muck and caught the rat by the tail. It dangled there, struggling. Then it went still, as a mouthless face tilted toward it, considering.
The thing was rebuilding, but it must have realized becoming a rodent wouldn’t serve its purpose and dropped it into the muck.
The battle with the witches had torn it apart, shredded it. But magic like that didn’t kill things like it. Not permanently. It just made it mad.
Around it, the sewer walls held the leftover heat from the explosion, and the magic pulsed through the stones like a heartbeat, stirring old things in the deep places.
A voice whispered in the dark.
They’re not ready.
The gate opens soon. Find the girl. Find the key. Find the boy. Find the mission.
The gray-thing shuddered, sloughing off a layer of burnt flesh that hit the water with a hiss. The spot where its eyes should be glowed. Just enough to make the rats hide.
It didn’t know the girl’s name yet. But it would. And when it did… The next time, there would be no escape. Witches or no witches.
Katie MacGregor woke with a gasp, tangled in sweat-damp sheets and the last shreds of a dream that didn’t belong to her. Again.
She sat up slowly, heart hammering, and grabbed the notebook from her nightstand. It was already open to a page with a foreign scrawl. She didn’t remember doing that. She didn’t remember keeping the pen in her hand either. But there it was, pressed into her fingers.
She looked down at what she’d written in handwriting that wasn’t hers.
When the gate opens, run.
The rats will not protect you.
Beware the one with no voice.
She exhaled slowly. “Fan-fuckin-tastic. Love that for me.”
Outside her window, Brooklyn yawned itself awake. Buses groaning, pigeons arguing, a car alarm doing its daily panic symphony. Normal. Sort of.
On her way to work, she spotted the graffiti. Damn. It was back. She had hoped she’d just hallucinated it the other times. It was a scrawled, looping sentence in pale blue spray paint across a brick wall that hadn’t been tagged in years.
You dreamed of this.
She stopped walking. Turned and looked again. The words were still there.
Yesterday, it said, "Watch the teeth." She’d just rolled her eyes. The day before that, it said, "The key is coated in blood."
She hadn’t told anyone. How could she? Her friends would either laugh or stage an intervention. And her landlord would just raise the rent if he thought she had “weird artist energy.”
She took a picture of the graffiti anyway, then added it to the folder on her phone labeled Math problems, hoping nobody would be interested enough to open it if something happened to her.
The dreams were getting worse. Or maybe clearer.
Faces without eyes. Doors without hinges.
Someone or something was trying to find her.
She didn’t know what they wanted. But she knew they were close.
And getting closer. She kept walking, faster now.
Not running, but close enough to draw a few odd glances.
By the time she reached the coffee shop, her hands were shaking. Great. That would go really well with the espresso machine. Any pretty picture she’d try to make would look like a scribbled signature.
“Yo, Katie,” called her boss from behind the counter. “You okay? You look like you saw a ghost or fought a demon or something.”
She slapped on a smile that felt like it had been ironed into place. “I won, if that helps.”
He snorted and went back to restocking cups. Katie ducked behind the espresso bar and got to work, muscle memory carrying her through the motions. Grind. Tamp. Pull. Steam. Pour. Smile. Repeat.
But her thoughts kept circling like seagulls around a fishing boat. The notebook. The handwriting that wasn’t hers. The graffiti. You dreamed of this.
She didn’t remember dreaming last night. Not really. Just flashes. A metal gate, rusted shut. A shadow moving behind it. The sound of rats scattering, then silence. Thick, unnatural silence. Like the world holding its breath.
And the figure in the distance. Unmoving. Faceless. Featureless. Voiceless. A new wave of nausea rose in her throat.
“Grande oat milk latte for... Broomhilda?” she called, trying to force some cheer into her voice.
A girl with two nose rings, glitter on her eyelids, and a bindi where her third eye would be stepped forward. “That’s me.”
Of course it was.
As Katie handed over the drink, her fingers brushed the cardboard sleeve. She froze. It was warm from the drink. And still, somehow, wet. Not like spilled milk. Thicker. Stickier. It smelled coppery.
She yanked her hand back and glanced down. Was that blood?
“Did you—?” she started, looking up. But Glitter Girl was already gone, flouncing out the door. Katie looked down again. Nothing clung to her palm. She grabbed a napkin and wiped her hand, heart thundering. Her boss didn't seem to notice. No one did. She must have imagined it.
The bell over the door jingled. A man walked in, slow and deliberate, like someone who didn’t need to rush like the rest of the world. Dressed all in gray. Gray coat, gray shoes, gray skin. Not pale. Light gray. Like he’d been caught in a volcanic eruption.
And when he turned toward her, his face was empty. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Empty.
She dropped the portafilter with a loud clang. He tilted his head slightly. As if curious.
“Bathroom,” she whispered to her boss, and bolted from behind the bar. Customers turned to look, but no one said anything.
She slammed the door behind her, locked it, and pressed her back to the wall.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
No notifications. No messages. Just a new photo on her wallpaper.
It was her, standing at the espresso machine.
And behind her, at the far edge of the photo, barely visible, a gray figure.
Smiling. And this time, it had a mouth and pointed teeth.
Katie did what any rational adult would do. She shrieked and threw her phone across the tiny bathroom.
It bounced off the paper towel dispenser and landed in the sink. Still smiling at her. Still with the pointed, toothy grin.
“Oh, hell no,” she muttered, dragging both hands down her face. She delicately picked up and rested her phone, face down, on the toilet seat and splashed cold water on her cheeks like it might wake her up from whatever this was. Sleepwalking? Schizophrenia? A caffeine-crash?
She didn’t have time for a breakdown. Rent was due in two weeks, and her espresso-pulling hand was still functioning, which meant she had no excuse for a sick day.
Her phone buzzed again. Same pocket. She looked at the sink. It was empty. She must have tucked it back into her pocket and forgotten, yeah, like one second ago.
Slowly, like her pocket was haunted, she reached into it. Her phone was there and lit up. It showed the same picture. Only this time, the gray figure was closer.
Still grinning. Still teeth.
Katie dropped the phone back into her apron pocket and sat on the closed toilet lid, trying to breathe without hyperventilating.
“Okay,” she said aloud, “So either I’m cracking up, or something from my dreams is stalking me in real life. Super fun choices. Really loving this choose-your-own-nightmare.”
She stood and flushed nothing, just for the illusion of normalcy, then forced herself to unlock the door.
The coffee shop looked the same. Customers still scrolling. Lattes still foaming. Her boss was taking orders like a man with no idea his barista had just been emotionally messed with by a phantom. But the good news was, no gray man. No chaos.
She took a careful step forward. And stopped.
A single word had been scrawled on the whiteboard by the register. In the same pale blue as the graffiti outside. Not her boss’s handwriting. Just one word.
RUN.
She backed away, then rushed toward the end of the counter. She didn’t grab her bag or her coat. Or her dignity. She just shoved through the door and hit the sidewalk like she had somewhere urgent to be, which, if you counted not dying, she totally did.
Katie didn’t know where she was going. Just away. Away from the empty face, the too-sharp teeth, the whisper of rats, and handwriting that wasn’t hers.
She didn’t stop until she saw the subway station and had to make the classic New Yorker decision: down into the rat pit or stay up and join in the outdoor chaos. But before she got there, she ran smack-dab into a man in uniform.