Chapter 1: Breadcrumbs - The Night Market

PART I

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Pepper wasn’t supposed to be here.

Not in this part of the city. Not at this hour. And definitely not following some breadcrumb trail of the impossible.

The streets were louder than she expected for past midnight, still throbbing with life, just a different kind. Dregs of students stumbled out of bars, their laughter sharp, doing nothing for her nerves. A cab honked in impatience. Music thumped through the walls of a club as she passed, the baseline dragging her heartbeat into synchronicity.

She kept her head down. Checked her phone. Walked fast.

The air had that end-of-night smell – the musk of wet tarmac and takeaway joints. Bins overflowed. Shop shutters rolled down like closing eyelids. The city was winding down, except for the parts that never really did. And while Pepper wasn’t dressed for attention, she still felt a spotlight upon her. Her coat was pulled too tight. Her expression too fixed. Walking a little too quickly maybe. She passed a man sleeping in a doorway, wrapped in plastic sheeting, and her guilt attempted to make her stop. But she didn’t. Couldn’t.

Over the road, she finally stopped beneath a streetlamp and pulled out her vibrating phone. Her inbox was still open – a string of untraceable contacts and junk, with one new noticeable exception that had been flagged as urgent. Its subject line read like a threat: Last Chance.

Her stomach tightened as she tapped it open.

Beneath a string of coordinates was a message:

Remember that what you’re searching for has eluded many.

It doesn’t want to be found.

You have to walk like you’ve already been invited.

When you get there, say hello just like I told you.

If it likes you, it’ll let you in.

SilkVeins

She checked her directions on Google Maps and took a turn.

Almost there.

Pepper continued, head down, coat drawn against the October chill, avoiding deposits of the day’s rain. Music leaked from pubs as she passed. Screaming profanity over heavy rock melded into waves that made the pavement throb. Laughter echoed from doorways. Somewhere, a bottle smashed. Every instinct in her body was telling her to go home. To be smart. Sensible. She never was one to take advice, not even her own.

She could have turned back at any time. That was the worst part.

The longer she walked, the more real this became. Sketchy images from this SilkVeins person became recognisable landmarks. Cryptic suggestions they had left on internet message boards seemed to be genuine, providing secret directions that led her deeper into the city’s guts, away from the light as well as the safety. The buildings leaned closer here. Cracked or broken windows stared down at her like judging eyes. She said the words that would grant her protection, fragments of a language that she had no right to speak, and crossed over a lonely road.

A group of revellers passed her on the corner – heels too high, tops too thin, cheeks pink with drink and happiness. One girl bumped into her shoulder, apologised with a voice soaked in schnapps, then vanished around the corner without waiting for a reply.

Pepper herself had barely noticed.

Her thumb danced across her phone, shifting between columns of text, images and Google Maps, checking each in turn once again, just like she had done a hundred times before. Her fingers suddenly hesitated upon the screen. Her breath was stolen, but not by the breeze.

What if this didn’t work?

What if all this was one sad joke? A lie concocted by heartless bastards on the internet, convincing the desperate that following ley lines and whispering nonsense was a good use of a Friday night.

Even worse – what if it did?

What if by some goddamn miracle it all turned out to be real?

Pepper was unsure what outcome terrified her more.

She hated the quiet in her own head. It left too much space for doubt to take advantage.

Following the map, she turned down a side street slick with wet, where the amber glow of streetlights faltered and the storm drains had been suffocated by rubbish. She walked alone, cautious, coat collar drawn high, trying to shrink into the dark.

Opposite the occasional kebab shop and gloomy bar was the corpse of a discarded factory. Crumbling fences around the car park bowed inwards like tired ribs. Layers of graffiti had faded to coloured stains. Nature had begun its reclamation years ago, pulling down obstructions with ivy, and thrusting saplings through the smallest cracks in tarmac. It was the kind of place that never gets rebuilt or put out of its misery by being torn down. It was and would forever be communally ignored.

Pepper’s fingers drifted to the gold locket around her neck, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. The chain had tangled twice today, snagged on her collar, like it didn’t want her to come here. Or maybe it just knew what waited on the other side.

This was it. This was it!

It was here.

She looked about herself. The street was still moving, quietly alive in the way cities get after midnight – never silent, just slow and tired. Two men smoked outside a minicab office, politely arguing about football. No one looked her way.

But there was something; of that, Pepper was sure. The wind unnaturally slowed itself on approach, fighting some unseen resistance, before racing onwards. But only here and here alone.

And she knew it was time.

The fence was slanted wooden panels, fractured in many places. Beyond it: silence. Not quiet. Silence. The kind that feels horribly deliberate.

Everything pointed to this being the place. All the clues, the cryptic comments and anonymous prodding in certain directions was enough, but among the faded symbols spray painted on the road by a utility company, was something different. Geometric and unique. And it did not belong.

There was no doubt it was a marker. The marker.

‘I must be mad,’ she whispered under her breath, but madness felt easier to embrace than despair.

The gold locket skimmed Pepper’s fingertips one last time before being enclosed in a fist. The jewellery was a crucial component of the job in hand. It had to be old. It had to be important. For the woman, it couldn’t have been any more treasured.

She closed her eyes and repeated the words she had rehearsed dozens of times. But when Pepper spoke them, they didn’t sound like magic. They sounded almost like begging.

And when she opened her eyes . . . nothing.

Nothing had changed. The run-down factory still loomed in the darkness, inconvenienced by slipped piles of debris from multiple collapses. It was simply abandoned. Just like Pepper’s last hope.

She scrunched up her eyes in disbelief. Of course, it was bullshit. Of course it was! How could any of it be real? Was she actually insane? Why had she bought into this ridiculous fantasy that others had been feeding her?

Behind her, a delivery van honked at a teenager on a bike who crossed dangerously close, causing her to look over her shoulder. When they had finished exchanging hand gestures, Pepper rubbed at her face as she turned back.

And among the dark obstructions of her fingers were cracks to the outside. Past that were subtle happenings, like catching movement from the corner of your eyes and turning to find nothing there. The broken yard shimmered. The air grew denser with the introduction of spice and smoke. Pepper lowered her hands slowly as warm orange flares of light emanated above the ground, painting trails in the deserted space. No, not deserted, not anymore. The lights illuminated brick paths, paths that sported small tents and wooden stalls, some with white and red canvas tops, matching stretching strings of bunting. Tables, cages, crates – all bloomed into existence. Then, obstructing some of the paths, huge fabric canopies of tents shifting into view, here, there, with signage and . . . people.

Individuals chatted, haggled loudly with vendors, laughed and cheered, while others stood sentry, dressed in striking suits with elements Pepper couldn’t quite discern. The delicate singing of someone caught the breeze that had now returned.

But the ordinary world behind just didn’t care. The city continued its routine regardless. Laughter bubbled from a couple, private and carefree. A man barked into his phone across the road. Someone swore as they decorated the pavement with half a kebab. And not a single one who passed Pepper paid the slightest bit of notice to the grand spectacle she gawked at.

The factory yard, once lifeless, had been transformed into a festival filled with the sounds of music and excited chatter.

No, not a festival.

Pepper knew exactly what this was. And she could scarcely believe it.

Holy shit.

It was real.

The Night Market was actually real.