Selene Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The last night came in cold and still. Selene left the basin with the moon in the water down to a thread. One more draw at dawn's edge would finish it. But finishing the moon meant nothing if she could not open the door when the dark fell. Her hand still passed through the deed room's handle like smoke through cloth. She had one night to find a body, or a hand, that would hold. Elspeth walked beside her along the graveyard path. "You need a carrier," Elspeth said. "Something living that will do what you say." Selene shook her head. "The living can't see me now. And I have no potion left." Elspeth stopped at the old stone gates that marked the graveyard's edge. She pointed past them, toward the low mound where the earth opened into a wide burrow. "Then borrow one that isn't living or dead. Ask the shadow that sleeps in the hollow." Selene went alone to the burrow's mouth. The tunnel breathed cold. She knelt at the lip and spoke the name the little girl had taught her nights ago. Something inside shifted. A tall shape came up the slope on two legs, ears long and pointed, body flat and black as cut paper. The bunnyman shadow. It had no face. It waited. "I need a hand," she said. "One turn of a handle. One door. Before dawn." The shadow tilted its ears. It lifted one thin arm and showed her a palm that was not smoke. She reached and her fingers met something firm and cool, like river stone. She almost cried. "What's the cost?" The shadow pointed at her chest, then at the burrow. She understood. When the work was done, she owed it a night inside the hill. She agreed. They crossed the yard together to the house where the deed slept. The vine-choked wall behind it leaned under its own weight. The house sagged on its foundation, porch boards split, windows dark. Selene stopped at the door she could not touch. She pointed. The shadow stepped past her, closed its paper hand on the handle, and turned. The lock clicked. The door swung in. Selene walked through. Inside, on a shelf above a cracked desk, a folded page lay under glass. Her signature. Her name, unerased. She could not lift the glass, but the shadow could. It set the deed on the desk. She bent close and read her own hand for the first time in sixty years. Above, through the broken roof, she saw the sky. The moon was a hair of silver. Then it moved. A tall woman stood in the gap between the rafters, hair floating, eyes pale, the last moon burning behind her head like a plate. Lady Moon looked down at the open deed, and at Selene beside it, and smiled the way a knife smiles. The dark was coming. She was coming with it.