Blood Bound

Faye

The cab smelled like pine air freshener and old leather, and I was on my third yawn before we even cleared the airport exit ramp.

Jet lag from a transatlantic flight is its own special kind of hell. My eyes felt like someone had replaced them with sandpaper, and no amount of blinking was fixing that. I pressed my forehead against the cool window glass and watched Ashford roll past.

What the actual hell.

I'd expected Massachusetts — but not this part of it. I'd been to Boston twice as a kid, remembered wide streets and red brick and that specific loud East Coast energy. Ashford was something else entirely. Gothic stone buildings pressed up against glass office towers. Wrought-iron streetlamps that disappeared into grey before you could see where they ended.

And the fog. It didn't sit on the ground the way fog normally does. It moved between buildings in slow, uneven drifts, thicker in some places than others, curling low along the building edges like it was following something.

"First time in Ashford?" The driver — heavyset guy, full beard, the kind of cheerful that only comes from genuinely loving your job — caught my eye in the rearview.

"That obvious?"

He grinned. "You've got the face. Everyone makes that face."

I rubbed my eyes. "Is it always like this? I feel like I should be looking for a horse-drawn carriage. A gaslight murder. Some guy in a top hat."

He laughed. "Welcome to Fog City, kid. About ten years back, the governor cut a deal — big outside investors, new factories in the industrial belt. Jobs, money, the whole pitch. People were happy. Then the fog came."

He tapped the wheel. The Environmental Agency spent eight months testing before it threw up its hands. The fog had nothing to do with the factories. Nobody gets sick from it either. The government couldn't explain it, couldn't fix it, so eventually they just stopped trying. Now it's a selling point." He grinned in the mirror. "Mysterious Fog City Ashford. The tourists eat it up."

"So what do the locals think caused it?"

He laughed. "Word around the neighborhood is that something moved into this city. Something that hates sunlight doesn't want to be seen. So it pulled the fog in like a curtain."

"Seriously?" I stared at him.

I thought about that for a second, then snorted. "It's probably just ugly. Scared of being seen in full lighting. Might have social anxiety on top of that."

He burst out laughing. "I like you, kid. But I'd watch what you say. Things hear things."

Here's the thing — I'd spent a year dreaming about a glass dome in a city I'd never visited, and finding the physical object from that dream sitting in my grandmother's attic. After that, "something moved into this city" didn't land the way it probably should have. It landed more like confirmation.

"If it exists, I'd actually want to meet it," I said. "We could grab coffee. Be friends."

He shook his head, still grinning. Then he glanced at the St. Helis parking sticker on my suitcase tag and his expression shifted, just slightly. "You're going to St. Helis, right?" He looked back at the road. "That place is the real Fog City, if you catch my drift. Students go missing there every year. No bodies, no explanation. Just gone."

He gave me a look in the rearview. "Watch yourself, kid."

Missing. The word snagged on something. Like a key turning.

St. Helis University's front gate was exactly as Gothic as advertised. Massive wrought-iron doors, ivy eating the stone columns, family crests worked into the metalwork everywhere. Visibility beyond the gate was maybe thirty feet before the fog swallowed everything whole.

I hauled my suitcase out of the cab and immediately regretted every single item I'd packed as the wheels caught on the cobblestones. One bar of signal on my phone. Naturally.

I stopped to check the map. The signal was still useless, one bar flickering in and out, and I was crouching down to tilt the screen at a better angle when a voice came from directly behind me — soft, sweet, close enough that I felt the air shift near my ear.

"Need help?"

I spun around. Nobody there. Empty path, grey nothing, the dark shape of the gate behind me. My pulse was going harder than the situation warranted.

Something cold touched my shoulder.

"AHH —" The sound that came out of me was not cute. Full volume, completely undignified, the kind of scream that echoes off stone. My suitcase handle flew out of my grip and cracked against the cobblestones.

I stumbled back two steps and found myself facing a person who was simply standing there, close enough to touch, as though she'd always been there and I'd just failed to notice her.

First impression: champagne-gold hair, cloud-soft. Eyes the color of caramel, warm on the surface and completely unreadable underneath. A small beauty mark under her left eye. On the lapel of her cream-colored coat, a small gold badge — an open book, the kind that looked like it meant something.

She stood like someone who had never once done anything as undignified as hurry.

She smiled. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

I had my hand pressed flat against my sternum. "You walk without making any sound. Zero. I had no idea you were there."

"Soft soles." She bent gracefully to pick up my suitcase. "And the fog distorts sound. I'm Savienne Baudelaire. Second year. You're new?"

I took the handle from her, and my fingers brushed hers. The cold hit me like touching a window in January — not the kind that comes from standing outside for ten minutes. That was the kind of cold that lived in a person.

"Your hands are freezing," I said before I could stop myself.

Something shifted in her expression — a brief stillness, like I'd pressed on something she'd rather not have touched. "Come on, admissions is this way."

I hesitated, then grabbed my suitcase and followed. "Maybe a little warning next time? I wasn't joking about my heart."

She glanced back, and the smile she gave me then was slower, more private. "I'll keep that in mind."

The students on the main path did not look like students. Perfect bone structure, luminous skin, moving through the fog like they owned it. Most were dressed like normal college kids — hoodies, backpacks, eyes down, walking fast. But some moved differently. Unhurried, custom clothes, quiet in the same specific way Savienne was quiet, like they'd edited out the small unconscious sounds that humans make without thinking. Not all of them. Just enough to notice.

"Is this a normal school?" I asked. "Or did I accidentally apply to a modeling conservatory?"