For thirty years Elara Moss had stood at the edge of the trees and never once looked away from the village. The pact held her there. A child had been promised to her the night she took the last one, and she meant to collect. She did not eat. She did not blink. She waited for the family to give up the daughter they owed. But this morning someone had knelt in her spot and left something in the moss. It was a hair cord, braided in bright colors, tied off with a small charm. A child's thing. Something dark was smeared along its length. Elara bent her stiff neck and smelled it. Blood, and beneath the blood, milk. The villager had mixed the two on purpose. That mixture was the old binding. It forced her to answer whoever left it. She could not ignore the cord any more than she could tear out her own roots. An owl watched from a low branch, its yellow eyes glowing in the gray light. It had watched her for years. Now it turned its head toward the road, where the timber inn stood with its lamps still burning. That was where the offering had come from. That was where the woman lived who dared to beg. Elara had never left her spot. Leaving might break the pact. But the binding pulled harder than the pact held. Her cracked heels lifted from the moss for the first time since the child before this one. She walked toward the inn, and the willows along the way leaned their glowing branches away from her. The woman waited on the porch. She was young, with the same jaw as the girl Elara had come to claim. The mother, then. She held out empty hands and did not run. "Spare her," the mother said. "Take me instead. Take anything. Only not my daughter." Elara held up the stained cord. "You bound me to answer. So I answer. The pact names a child. It does not name yours." The words felt strange in her mouth after thirty silent years. The mother's face broke open with hope, then fear. "Then whose?" "Any child of this village will close the debt." Elara let the cord fall. "You have offered a trade. The binding heard it. Now the village must choose which one to give, or I take yours by dark." She turned back toward the trees. Her answer was given. It could not be unsaid. Behind her the mother screamed for the others to wake, and lamps flared in every window of the inn. Elara returned to her spot in the moss. She stood still again. But the whole village now knew she could move, and knew she was owed. By nightfall they would send someone up the road with a child in hand. She only had to wait, as she always had, and watch which family would climb the hill first.

By dusk no one had climbed the hill. Elara waited in the moss as she always had. But the village behind the inn had gone dark. Doors were barred. Shutters closed. Lamps snuffed. No family came with a child in hand. Her demand needed ears, and the village had chosen deafness. She could not enforce a threat no one would answer. The owl with the glowing eyes shifted on its branch. It turned its head toward the road, where a small figure walked up through the willows. Elara watched. The willows leaned their yellow branches away, their green sap glowing under the dark leaves. A young woman came into the clearing, red-eyed, dressed in dark red under a black coat. She stopped a few steps from Elara and looked her over without fear. Elara knew her by the ground she had marked. This was the one who had dissolved the pact and sent Elara to the lowlands thirty years of standing ago. The vampire who had taken her willows and her road. "They won't open the doors," Stephanie said. "You picked a threat they can hide from." "The binding was answered," Elara said. "The debt still holds." "A debt no one hears isn't a debt. It's a woman shouting at a wall." Stephanie glanced back at the dark village. "You need them to listen. They won't. Not to you." Elara said nothing. The truth of it pressed on her like weight. "So use someone they already listen to," Stephanie said. She lifted two fingers. A second figure stepped from the tree line. A man in a battered coat and a chalk-marked board, red eyes catching the willow-glow. He walked the road for Stephanie now, telling travelers to move in daylight groups. "This is the preacher," Stephanie said. "They believe his warnings. Give him yours to carry." Gideon Ash stopped and studied Elara. He did not flinch. "I've heard the story," he said. "A child owed. Thirty years." He tapped the board. "People open doors for a warning. Not for a threat." "Then warn them," Elara said. "Tell them what comes if they give nothing." Gideon was quiet a moment. "I'll say it plain," he said. "By the next dark, choose. Or the debt chooses for them." He turned and walked down toward the barred houses, board swinging. Elara looked at Stephanie. "Why help me speak?" "You standing here draws my sire's eyes," Stephanie said. "Settle your debt. Take your child. Then leave my willows." She stepped back into the trees. Gideon reached the first dark house and struck the shutter with his fist. His voice carried across the silent village. One by one, lamps flickered back to life. A door cracked open. Then another. Faces returned to the windows. The village was listening again. But now Elara owed the vampire who had taken everything from her once, and the debt she had come to collect was no longer hers alone.