The Blank Locket

For the first time in her life, Edda Mercer has a family. She has learned to keep her hands clean and her digging quiet, and for one bright season the cost of what she is has gone still.

It does not stay still. Something old and half-known is climbing up out of the fog of the drowned harbour quarter, wearing a face nobody in the family will name. A locket that has hung empty at a friend’s throat since the day they met is about to give up what it holds. And the deeper Edda digs toward the thing the order most wants left buried, the more she learns that the people who love her are the ones it will cost her.

The first time the world takes something from Edda Mercer, it will not be a stranger.