Moira Ashenveil crouched in the reeds and counted the dead. Six souls drifted between the black pools tonight. She was a wraith, and her work was simple in name: walk the recently dead to the door and see them through. The marsh made it harder. Souls lingered here longer than they should. Some were ready. Some had gone sour without knowing it. Push the wrong one and it would twist in her hands and become something that hunted the living. Her black hair hung in wet strings. Her clothes, tattered at the hem, dragged through the mud. She moved close to the first soul, a farmer still holding an invisible rope. He looked at her and spat. She stepped back. Anger meant not yet. Anger meant the curse would come, and she already carried one curse she could not stop hearing. The second soul was a woman turning in a slow circle by a broken stone crypt. Its roof had caved in and the door hung open on nothing. Moira could not read the woman's face. Ready, or ruined? She reached out, then pulled her hand back. Guessing wrong here would cost the woman everything. "Don't." The voice came from the crypt's shadow. A figure in black tatters stepped into the moonlight, hood low, edges frayed where edges should not be. Moira knew the shape. Another ghost, but wrong — pieces missing, outline soft. Vesper Shroud. She had seen them at the edges of her work before, drifting, never speaking. Tonight they spoke. "That one's turned," Vesper said. "Touch her and she bites." "How do you know?" "Look at her hands." Moira looked. The woman's fingers were curled in, nails toward her own palms. A small oil-black spider crawled from the crypt door and skirted the woman's feet in a wide arc. Its back caught the moonlight in slick colors. Even the marsh's smallest things knew to go around her. "The ready ones open their hands," Vesper said. "The turned ones close them. Simple as a fist." Moira looked at the farmer. Fists. She looked at a boy by the water. Palms up, empty. Her chest tightened. She had been reading faces for a hundred nights and missing the hands. She went to the boy first. He took her fingers without a word and stepped into the dark with her. When she came back, three more waited with open hands. She walked each one through. She left the farmer. She left the woman by the crypt. They would keep, or they would not, but she would not be the one who broke them. Vesper watched from the stones. When Moira turned to thank them, they were already fading at the edges, thinner than before. "I need a favor back," Vesper said. "Something is wearing my face. Help me take it off before there's nothing left of me to put back on."

Moira came back to the marsh the next night and found the work stopped before it started. Four new souls stood by the water with open palms, ready. None of them would look at her. When she reached for the nearest, a young man in a wet coat, he flinched and stepped back into the reeds. The others drifted after him. Something behind her was scaring them worse than the door. She turned. The woman by the crypt had not moved, but the air around her had. Thin gray shapes rose from the mud at her feet, half-formed, mouths working without sound. Restless dead. The corrupted woman's closed fists were pulling them up out of the ground like weeds. Moira understood then. Leaving the woman untouched had not kept the woman quiet. It had given her time to spread. "You waited too long." The voice came from a patch of shadow between two stones where no shadow should fit. Small purple lights opened inside it, one after another, until Moira counted more eyes than she wanted to. Umbral Vex. She had heard the name from Vesper once, spoken like a warning. A shadow that saw through every eye at once and could not close any of them. "I can't touch her," Moira said. "She's turned. She'll bite." "Then don't touch her. Cut her." The shadow slid a shape toward Moira's feet. A scythe lay in the mud, thin blade glowing faint white, handle wrapped in worn leather. Moira had never held one. Her work had always been hands, not blades. "I guide," she said. "I don't kill." "She's already dead. Cut the thread. The rest go free." Moira picked up the scythe. It weighed less than she expected. She walked to the crypt. The oil-black spider she had seen the night before scuttled out of her way, its back flashing green and pink in the moon. The woman's head snapped up. Her fists came open, not in surrender, but reaching. The gray shapes reached with her. Moira swung. The blade passed through the woman's chest without sound. The woman folded inward like wet paper and was gone. The gray shapes dropped back into the mud. Behind her, the four ready souls stepped out of the reeds. The young man in the wet coat held out his hand first. Moira took it. She walked him to the dark and came back for the next, and the next, until the bank was empty. Umbral Vex watched from the stones. The scythe stayed in Moira's grip when she tried to set it down. The handle had cooled against her palm and would not let go. "It chose," the shadow said. "It chose." Moira looked at the blade. She was a guide who now carried a weapon, and she did not yet know what that made her.

The scythe would not leave Moira's hand. She walked from the crypt with the blade cold against her wrist and the four crossings still fresh in her chest. The marsh was quiet now, which was worse. Quiet meant something else was listening. She found the mausoleum by the sound of bells. Cracked walls, a black hole where the door had been, rubble spilling into the mud. The bells came from inside, small and bright, out of place among the broken stone. A figure sat on a fallen slab, swinging its legs. Bright coat. Skull-shaped bells at the points of a jester's cap. A painted grin stitched across a face Moira knew. It was Vesper's face. Vesper, her teacher, the one who had taught her to read hands. Vesper, who had told her something was wearing their face before they disappeared entirely. The jester wore it like a mask that fit too well. "You," Moira said. "Give it back." Moros Mirthbane tilted the stolen face. The bells rang. "Which one. I have a drawer full." "The one you're wearing." "This?" He touched Vesper's cheek with two fingers. "Barely a face. Half-gone when I found it. I'm holding it together." "You're eating it." "I'm keeping it warm." The grin widened. "Your friend was already tearing. I got there first." Moira lowered the scythe. She had come here to guide. She could still guide. "Take it off. Put it down. I'll walk you to the door myself. No blade." "The door." Moros laughed, one short bark. "You think I'm one of yours." "You're wearing a dead thing's face. You're close enough." "I'm not ready to pass. I'm not ready to be anything." He held up his hands. The palms were open, but they kept changing, one moment Vesper's thin fingers, the next a stranger's. "See? I don't know which set is mine. If I let this face go I lose another inch of the map." "Then you lose it," Moira said. "Vesper is still in there. Give them back what's theirs and I'll help you look for your own." He went still. For one breath she thought he would do it. Then he stood. The bells shivered. "No," he said. "I've worn worse and kept it." He stepped backward into the black doorway of the mausoleum and was gone. Vesper's face went with him. Moira ran to the opening. Cold air came up from below. She put a hand on the broken frame and felt nothing on the other side, no floor, no stair, no soul to reach for. Reason had failed. He had heard her out and chosen the theft. She looked down at the scythe bonded to her palm. She had told him no blade. She had meant it. That promise was spent now. Somewhere under the marsh, Vesper was still fading. Moira had until the last thread to cut the thief off the face.