Joy to the Morgue

Joy doesn't die quietly. It goes out like the last song at a party nobody wanted to end.

Dekker Kohl woke up on a morgue floor with no memory of how he got there, no Conservatory authority, and a dead girl he doesn't know yet but is already certain matters. The professional move is to go home and let someone else handle it.

He doesn't go home.

It's been six months since Columbus lost Whimsy. The city is fragile but holding, and Joy, unlike Whimsy, moves through people like weather. She cannot go quiet. The people who want her gone have chosen their moment carefully.

Dekker has no resources, no standing, and a case the Conservatory has quietly decided isn't a case. He also has a new ally whose motives he can't fully read, an apprentice who keeps asking better questions than expected, and a six-legged cat with a very specific opinion about where he should be going.

He still doesn't remember what happened before the morgue.

Because without Whimsy, the world got quieter. Without Joy, it gets something worse.