"Como cadenas, Kaith. Cadenas de hierro. It's so loud it makes my jaw ache. It's so constant that it doesn't stop until he leaves the row."
On the other side of the Atlantic, the line went dead silent for three long seconds. Then, a loud burst of laughter broke through.
"¡Madre mía, Fiona!" Kaith laughed, the sound bright and mocking through the speaker.
"The great rosey Flutter of shanty is falling apart because of an athlete? Is this what the Americans call 'love at first sight'? ¿Amor a primera vista? A handsome boy with broad shoulders sits next to you and your little heart goes clack-clack? Maybe the iron you are hearing is just your own blood rushing to your ears because you haven't looked at a man since we left the Madrid academy."
"No!" Fiona snapped, her voice cracking with a sudden, violent anger that instantly killed Kaith's laughter.
"It isn't love, Kaith...It's the exact opposite... an eerie, suffocating vibe that makes my skin want to slide off my bones. When he looks at me, my inner mind goes mushy. He seems less of a human being and more like a disguise."
Kaith didn't answer immediately this time. Fiona could hear the faint, dry sound of a page turning on the other side—likely the old vellum registries they kept in the San Sebastián cell to track the migration of unlisted assets.
"If his aura is that dense, he might be an affiliate from a different group," Kaith said, her tone returning to that guarded, professional low.
"The MACE outer cells have been active in the Midwest since the seventies. If he's an asset to them then it's not without reason. But that doesn't explain your panic, Fiona. You've handled worse...remember You helped clean the vault in Galicia when the three man hunters were brought back from Verizon"
"That's not everything," Fiona whispered, her eyes tracking a small spider crawling up the wooden frame of her bed.
"There's something else. During the lecture today, while I was watching his drawing... I also saw something."
"A vision?" Kaith's voice dropped into a sharp, disbelieving hiss. "¿Una visión? Fiona, eso no es posible. No somos brujas."
"I know what we are!" Fiona hissed back, her hand shaking so hard she nearly dropped the heavy black telephone onto the floor.
"We are necromancers. Our sight only works through the summons. We see through the eyes of the dust, through the old marrow we pull from the soil. We don't have spontaneous visions while sitting in a restaurant or when we are cooking! But I saw it, Kaith. It was as real as the wood of this floor."
"What did you see?"
"A basement," Fiona said, her voice trembling so violently the English words began to tangle with her Spanish.
"A dark, wet basement beneath a limestone ridge. There was a lady... una mujer desnuda, chained flush against a concrete wall. Her skin was white like lard, and her hair was matted with gray mortar dust. And there was a man... a huge man standing in front of her wearing a yellow oilskin raincoat. He had a butcher's knife on the table, but he wasn't cutting her instead was cleaning her squeezing a towel into a porcelain bowl and wiping the dirt from her ribs with this horrific gaze."
For a moment, the other end of the phone was silent with only the sound of birds chirping being heard.
"Fiona," Kaith said, her voice now carrying a genuine, trembling surprise that sent a chill straight down Fiona's spine.
"If you didn't invoke the dust...and you are sure you weren't placed under the illusion of the suspected vampire, then you're probably seeing something near."
" You mean it happened or rather it's happening?"
"Sí," Kaith whispered through the iron static.
" It means a dead spirit with strong attachment to the victim you saw is seeking your help through Ryan. He must be a flayer or has a strong connection with one to be able to do that."
Fiona sigh
"Listen to me carefully, Fiona," Kaith said, her English sharpening into an icy, deliberate precision. "*Si esto es una frecuencia viva*—if this is a vision—you cannot run from it. If you bolt back to the salt marshes, the drag will follow you across the water. You are already caught in the schemes of someone and until the. Running is not an option."
Fiona leaned her forehead against her knees, her fingers still shaking against the heavy black plastic of the unlinked telephone.
"No solo al aula," Kaith said softly. "No need to avoid it, You need to get closer to Ryan in other to get to the source. If he's a threat to your well being request our help and we will put an end to him."
"And if it tears me apart before I could tell?" Fiona whispered, her eyes tracking the slow progress of the spider on her wall.
"That is why I am going to the high chapel tonight," Kaith replied, her voice dropping into a rhythmic, solemn murmur. "I will consult the other Necromantes—the grand council in Madrid. We have records dating back to the plague years regarding spontaneous sight. If there is a spiritual consequence to picking up a live frequency—if it means your own soul is beginning to fray at the edges—the elders will know the ritual to seal it. But until I send word through the ground line, you must watch him. Do not let the boy out of your sight, Fiona. Búscalo , Find him."
With a pop, the connection severed, leaving Fiona alone in the grey, settling dusk of her dormitory room with nothing but the dull, phantom chime of iron and the whimpering sound of the lady she had seen.
[ Outside on the streets]
Two miles away, where the commercial block of the county line sank into the damp, limestone shadow of the eastern ridge, the evening had settled with a heavy, velvet elegance.
The shopfront bore no grand signage—only a small, tarnished brass plate beside the frosted glass door that read: **W. B. Gumb – Bespoke Clothier**. Inside, the atmosphere carried none of the rustic grit of the precinct or the subterranean damp of the university theater annex.
The air was rich, thick, and almost suffocatingly warm, smelling of boiled linseed oil, expensive French chalk, and the sweet, musk-heavy scent of tanned calfskin bolts stacked neatly against the mahogany wainscoting.
A single crystal chandelier hung from the center of the tin-plate ceiling, its low-wattage amber bulbs casting long, amber-hued shadows across three antique tailors' dummies.
Each form was dressed in half-finished Victorian doublets and modern tweed hunting jackets, their seams pinned with a geometric, almost terrifying perfection.
Buffalo Bill stood behind a long, heavy oak cutting table, his yellow oilskin raincoat completely forgotten, replaced by a immaculate white linen shirt with the sleeves turned back twice to reveal his massive, thick forearms.
He was currently draped in a vintage tape measure, his large, rough fingers moving with a surprisingly delicate, fluid grace as he pinned the shoulder of a midnight-blue velvet riding coat belonging to his last customer of the evening.
"The drape must follow the natural fall of the blade, Mrs. Gable," Bill said, his voice a low and unhurried . He offered a small, polite smile that didn't quite reach his bloodshot eyes.
"If we restrict the lining by even a quarter-inch, the fabric will bunch when you reach for the reins. We want the silk to move like a second skin. Always a second skin."
Mrs. Gable, a wealthy widow from the Columbus hills whose family owned three of the largest limestone quarries in the district, smiled warmly, her fingers brushing the soft velvet of her lapel.
"You have such an extraordinary eye for symmetry, Curt. The tailors in the city don't seem to understand how to handle weight anymore. Everything they make feels so... flimsy."
"Weight is everything," Bill murmured, his thumb smoothing down a crease in the blue velvet.
"If a garment doesn't have weight, it doesn't know where it belongs on the frame. It wanders."
Tinkle.
The small, silver bell mounted above the heavy oak door chimed—a brief, high-pitched sound that cut through the warm, quiet hum.