Rain slicked the cobblestones like a polished mirror, and the city smelled of smoke, wet iron, and secrets. That’s when she walked into my office. Well, not an office exactly, more like a crooked attic I called headquarters. But it had a desk and a whiskey bottle, so it passed.

She was small, hood pulled low, cloak the colour of spilled blood.

“They say you find missing people,” she said. Her voice trembled, but her eyes didn’t.

“That’s the rumour,” I muttered, lighting a cigarette I couldn’t afford. “Who’s missing?”

“My grandmother.”

Classic. Always the grandmother.

The cops had written her off. Said the old woman was half-mad, seen last on the edge of the Blackwood muttering about wolves with teeth like silver. Nobody cared much when you lived that close to the fairy-tale districts.

But me? I had a habit of sticking my nose where the stories festered.

The city’s a patchwork quilt stitched out of bedtime tales and crime reports, and every square’s got its own kind of rot.

The Docks were our first stop. Sirens owned the nightclubs there. Velvet dresses clinging like seaweed, voices sweet enough to drown you twice. Sailors lined up for the singing, stumbled out glassy-eyed, pockets light. Some didn’t make it home at all. “Missing persons,” the cops called it. Everyone else just called it admission.

Red kept her hood up, knife strapped to her thigh, but I noticed her eyes flick to the doorways, counting exits.

Smart.

“You don’t flinch easy, kid,” I said.

She slid me a look, sharp as her blade. “Flinching doesn’t stop wolves.”

Point taken.

We worked our way north. The Glass Slipper District glittered in the gutter. Pawn shops where palaces used to stand, glass shards catching the streetlamps like fallen stars. The Queens ran rackets from thrones of splintered mirrors, and if you crossed them, you didn’t get a second chance. We asked questions. The answers were all the same: old women, vanishing.

Downtown wasn’t any better. The Magisters ran their towers like stock exchanges, selling enchantments instead of shares. They wore pinstripe robes, drank gold-dusted cocktails, pretended they didn’t bleed.

But everyone bleeds in this city. And rumour said they’d been buying up charms stripped from empty houses. Cheap, too cheap.

The threads all pointed the same way: back to the Blackwood. It's always the Blackwood. The city’s spine. Trees so old they’ve learned to whisper, roots deep enough to choke the bones of whatever kingdoms came before. You go there if you’re desperate, stupid, or both. Me? I’ve been all three.

By the time we hit the treeline, the night was too quiet. No crickets, no wind. The kind of silence that listens back. That’s when he stepped out from behind a hollowed tree. Broad as a man, teeth too long, hat tipped low.

The Wolf.

Every district whispered about him. Broker of deals between monsters and men. Always came out the winner.

“Well, Red,” he drawled, voice slick as oil. “You brought company.”

I went for my revolver. She went for her knife. My hand was shaking before I even touched the grip. Instinct, like every part of me already knew: you don’t walk away from him.

“Where’s the grandmother?” I asked.

He grinned, teeth like cut steel. “Which one?”

The pieces clicked. Grandmothers missing all across the city. Too many for coincidence. The Wolf wasn’t hunting.

He was collecting.

Red lunged, blade flashing like lightning. He caught her wrist, tossed her aside like she was made of paper. She hit the ground hard but rolled, came up with murder in her eyes.

Tough kid.

I fired twice. One round took his hat clean off. The other punched into his chest. He staggered, looked down, snarled, and yanked the bullet free.

“Silver,” he spat, throwing it aside. “Always silver.”

We ran. Because sometimes survival’s the only kind of victory left.

Back in the city, we started digging. Records, rumours, missing-persons reports stretching from the Slipper District to the riverfront. Always old women. Always their homes stripped bare of charms and talismans.

That’s when it hit me: grandmothers weren’t just sweet old ladies in this city. They were keepers. Witches who remembered the old bargains, who held the districts in balance. Take them out, and the whole rotten quilt comes unraveled.

Which meant the Wolf wasn’t freelancing. Someone downtown was paying him to erase the past.

Red sat across from me, sharpening her knife, eyes like storm glass. “We go after them,” she said, steady as stone.

“Kid,” I told her, pouring the last of the whiskey, “this isn’t a rescue anymore. This is a war.”

She pulled her hood low, the red draping across her forehead like a battle flag.

“Then let’s make sure it ends with their blood on the floor.”

And just like that, I didn’t just have a case.

I had a partner.

And the city had a reckoning coming.