The Debt Eaters

She has taken forty-seven years from forty-seven people and never lost sleep over a single one. Then she reaches into a six-year-old boy — and finds her own name in his debt. Someone has borrowed against her life. She has nine years left. The Debt Eaters is the story of what she does with them.

Adaeze Nwosu has taken forty-seven years from forty-seven people. As a debt collector for the city of Ànùn's most powerful founding family, her gift is precise and brutal — she reaches into a person and extracts time from their life, cancelling what they owe in the only currency that cannot be counterfeited. She is very good at her job. She has never lost sleep over it.

Until the night she reaches into a six-year-old boy and finds her own name stamped into his debt.

Someone has been borrowing against Adaeze's life — against her years, her mother's years, her grandmother's years — and building a city's financial empire on the foundation of Nwosu women's stolen time. At current rate, she has nine years left.

Now Adaeze must do the one thing her training never prepared her for: stop collecting, and start asking who built the system she has spent her whole life maintaining — and why the people of the Obi Ward have always known the answer.