Serial · ongoing
The Ward of New Kettering
A boy crosses Route 9 with black cloth wound over his eyes and a gallon of cooking oil on his shoulder, and every woman at the bus stop has an opinion about it. That's New Kettering: a river city where the glassworks limps along, the plant runs second shift, and the neighbors will talk about your blindfold before they'll ask how you're doing. Adrian Voss can see. The book tells you that on the first page and then spends a long time with what it costs him to keep it quiet — Dana, his aunt, who works second shift with a bad neck and a yoga class she never attends, and Toby, thirteen, who asks no questions but has started noticing things about the dog. What he can't keep quiet is the thing in the alley, the office wedged between a wedding chapel and a crematorium, and the man named Eli Krantz who hands him a coin and doesn't flinch. There is a whole order under the city, with ranks and markers and paperwork, and it wants him. It's a book about power, but mostly about invoices: who gets to protect whom, and what it costs to be the one doing the protecting.
Chapter 1: Black Scarf
By four o’clock the asphalt on Route 9 had gone soft enough to keep a shoe print, and the cicadas in the two surviving maples outside the la…
Chapter 2: Cause: Unknown
The county building on Fennimore had been a school before it was a clinic, and it still had the hallways for it. Six steps with nothing on e…
Chapter 3: The Knock
The third stair quit at a quarter past ten, and after that the house was his. He had already shut his door. He had pulled the window down an…
Chapter 4: One for Every Desk
“What's that thing on his eyes—” “It's a scarf.” “That's not a scarf. That's like a—” “It's tied like a scarf. Look at the knot.” “What's he…
Chapter 5: Survival Day
Sean Dooley had a system for second period, and the system was Kayla Brandt's homework. "Two through ten," he said. "I'll take the rest." "T…
Chapter 6: Unbarred
Unbarred The gate at the bottom of the bleachers let them out one at a time and then all at once, and by 9:38 the sidewalk in front of the s…
Chapter 7: Ghost-Face
The barricade was city property: black panel on a steel frame, red letters, a crossbar welded between the feet so it wouldn't walk off in th…
Chapter 8: Thirty Feet
Thirty Feet The wind came up the cut behind the furniture store, off the river. Wet iron, standing water, the sweet rot off the Dumpsters. A…
Chapter 9: Both Ends
It came for him, and then it changed its mind. It was close enough by then that the feet were all there was, and then the feet stopped. It d…