Esme Whitfield ran the last hand-bookbinding workshop in Bath from a narrow shop on a street so old that the cobblestones had been worn to the smoothness of river pebbles. She bound books the way her mother had taught her, and her mother’s mother before that: by hand, with needle and thread and paste and … Read more
8 min readThe patient arrived in the trauma bay at 3:47 a.m. on a Sunday, which was peak hour for the kind of injuries that Dr. Saoirse Flynn had spent seven years learning to repair: the knife wounds, the falls, the car accidents, the desperate Saturday-night damage that the city inflicted on its inhabitants and then delivered, … Read more
9 min readThe bees arrived before the vampire did. Hazel Pemberton discovered them on a May morning, clustered in a dark, humming mass on the branch of the ancient oak that stood at the boundary between her garden and the overgrown grounds of Marchwood House. She had been a beekeeper for seven years — ever since the … Read more
10 min readThe gallery opening was by invitation only, which in the art world of contemporary London meant that approximately four hundred people had been invited, of whom three hundred had come for the free champagne, ninety-seven had come to be seen, and exactly three had come for the art. Mira Castellano was one of the three. … Read more
9 min readThe wine bar on Thistle Lane did not advertise. It had no social media presence, no listing in the Edinburgh dining guides, no reviews on any platform that the general public frequented. Its door was unmarked — a slab of ancient oak set into a stone wall that had been old when the city was … Read more
11 min readThe concert hall was empty when Ailsa Drummond arrived for the evening rehearsal, which was unusual. The Lyceum Chamber Orchestra did not typically abandon its Tuesday rehearsals, even when the weather turned foul, even when the heating failed, even when the second violins contracted a collective stomach ailment from the sushi restaurant they insisted on … Read more
9 min readDr. Celestine Moreau had spent twelve years studying death. As the head conservator of the Mortuary Archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, she catalogued the documents that the living preferred to forget: autopsy reports from the Terror, plague registries from the fourteenth century, the meticulous death certificates of the Napoleonic wars. She worked in … Read more
9 min readA solitary lighthouse keeper hears singing from the rocks below his tower. When he climbs down, he finds the last siren — a luminescent woman whose voice is failing and whose existence is measured in weeks. The only cure is a true harmonic: another voice singing from the heart. The problem is, Callum cannot sing.
9 min readAcademy student Thea makes a chalk error in her summoning circle and accidentally calls forth a Duke of Hell instead of a minor imp. The ancient demon offers a bargain: seven days of mortal experience in exchange for perfect practicum marks. But when an immortal being discovers coffee, rain, and Barber’s Adagio, going back to Hell becomes unthinkable.
8 min readOn her thirtieth birthday, Vera’s family curse activates: a blood bond tethering her soul to a stranger’s. She has three blood moons to find them or die. The bond leads her to Prague, to a supernatural researcher who has been studying curses like hers from a safe academic distance — and who is now, to his scholarly horror, living inside one.
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