Free Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) by Jennifer Paetsch

finally. Marie was right to be scared. At least Wolfgang had a soul, something the demon might want, something it might bargain for. But monsters were largely useless to demons, except as slaves. Or food. Or amusement. Or all three at the same time.
    "Question: Why isn't there one of you, Pilgrim?" Wolfgang asked, looking up at him.
    "Dunno, Chief." The horse shook his mane. "You'll have to ask whoever made them."
    After a pause, Wolfgang cleared his throat. "Let's go."
    "Home?" Marie asked with a weak smile. The answer obvious, she didn't even wait to hear it but instead pushed forward, cutting a trail through the mist as through slimy water.
    The sun set ever deeper, the darkness growing ever longer as shadows spread out all around like pools of oil in a sea of mist, and still they found nothing. No portals, no attackers--nothing. Just trees and more trees, sky, and fog. Wolfgang looked at his watch: It was an old watch that his father had given him, a watch from that other world, just like everything in Doors was. While perhaps the elder fae had the intellect and desire to create from time to time, the fae as a whole were not creators. They did not have the mind for it. They made nothing, just consumed. Everything in Doors had been brought from somewhere else. Even--and especially--the people. Tapping at the watch, its little gold hands unmoving beneath the scratched glass, Wolfgang realized that it must have stopped when they'd jumped the gate. He listened to the time piece: Dead. As he listened, he became aware of a low humming or buzzing, almost like a huge beehive in the distance, that he hadn't noticed before. Only in trying to hear the watch did he realize that he had been trying to hear over the hum. As he struggled to pinpoint the sound, something else became clearer to him: He wasn't hearing bees. He heard voices. "This entire place is disorienting," he said. "In fact, I think we're just going in circles."
    Marie turned her gaze to the surrounding fog that did its utmost to close in on them. Figures of white rose and fell as the mist clustered and broke apart, becoming more like clouds and less like a mist as time went on. "I wouldn't be surprised if that were true," she said. "The Hindernis surrounds the city."
    "Seriously?" Wolfgang asked. He took a step or two closer to Marie, careful not to trip on the slick, leaf-littered and stone-ridden forest floor that he could only hear and feel but not see. "I thought only No Man's Land surrounded the town, and that beyond that, there was something. No idea what, but something. Like the Hindernis and other places." Wolfgang had tried to find out more about the No Man's Land before, but it wasn't like the fae to keep notes or write things down. At least, not in a way accessible to humans.
    "Oh, no. That's why no one ever leaves the town this way. Ever. Only through the doors." She gazed off into the fog, her hair and clothes now shades of gray in the dim light that was fast fleeing. "They're rings, spreading from the town. It's Doors, No Man's Land, Hindernis. So now you see why the doors are so very important."
    Wolfgang looked up. Fast turning purple as if bruised, the sky, their only source of light, was still visible in spite of the fog. "Above, too?" Wolfgang asked. "And below?"
    "Below, I don't know. You'd have to ask an earth fae. Or a water fae, I guess. But the sky...I've talked to Johnny, and he's seen...things." She didn't need to explain. Wolfgang took that to mean the same kind of things they were finding here. Wolfgang imagined Johnny finding a cloud copy of himself with the head missing. It was a strangely fascinating thought.
    Johnny wouldn't follow them out here. No one in their right mind would. Johnny was just as likely to be destroyed himself here as destroy them. There were no gods here to give him his power, no elder fae. If anything, the No Man's Land was a place the gods made to exile. Who would cultivate a place designed to be neglected, a place