the City That Eats Dead: A Dark Urban Fantasy Novel

Some debts are paid in blood. Some in memory. Some in years you'll never get back.Marcus Cole has one rule: don't look too closely at anything in this city.It's kept him safe for forty-four years. Through twelve years as a paramedic - holding dying strangers in burning buildings and flooded cars - and through his wife Claire's death, and through the slow estrangement from his daughter that followed. Chicago's second skin, the thing he's always been able to almost-see, has stayed almost-seen.That was the deal. That was the rule.Then a dying woman appears in his alley at 2 a.m. - one who knows his name, and the number on the back of his dead wife's locket.Then his daughter goes missing.Then Marcus looks.Beneath Chicago runs a second economy two centuries old - a grammar of grief that converts human suffering into tradeable debt, enforced by creatures that don't collect blood or gold, but years. Memories. The felt weight of a life. To navigate it, Marcus has thirty-six hours to learn a language that costs, every time it's used, something real and irreplaceable.By the time he finds his daughter, he has almost nothing left.What he has is enough.The City That Eats the Dead is a dark, cinematic urban fantasy for readers who want their magic with real stakes, their monsters morally complex, and their endings earned rather than easy. Perfect for fans of Richard Kadrey, Neil Gaiman, and V.E. Schwab.The Grey City series continues in The City That Remembers.

Pages: 87, Paperback, Independently published