The Secrets of Smoke and Magic

The Keys — Chapter One The war was ending, but the city still smelled like it

had been burning for a hundred years. Smoke clung to the air like a second skin,

heavy and bitter, turning the morning light into a copper haze. The streets of Boston

were quiet in the way only broken cities could be — too many dead, too many scared,

and the rest too damn tired to make noise. Atlas was eight years old the day

his father carried him through the East Docks, weaving between stacks of rusted

shipping crates and protest signs warped from rain. In the distance, mounted police pushed

back a mob outside the courthouse, their clubs rising and falling in the haze.