Petra Bane kept her shop locked because she was still looking for one thing. Somewhere out there lived a stolen object that had carried a piece of her soul for decades. She was old now, hollow-eyed, wrapped in a black dress gone thin at the elbows. Every strange thing on her shelves wore a paper tag. She let no one buy any of them. She only watched who touched what, and waited to feel the pull that meant she had finally found it. The young customer touched a small clay bell that morning. Petra saw his fingers close around it. She saw them refuse to open again. "Put it back," she said. He couldn't. His hand shook. His mouth stretched wide. A thin, rising wail poured out of him, the sound the tagged things made through the people who grabbed them. It filled the shop and slid under the locked door. Out on the crumbling town hall steps, a knot of people turned toward the noise. Petra's hands went cold. Attention was the one thing she could not afford. She pried at the man's fingers. They held like stone. The wail climbed higher. Someone pounded on her door. Through the dusty glass she saw broad shoulders and thick leather gloves. Tomas Leel, the city's archivist. He catalogued cursed objects. Three of them had vanished from his collection this week, and Petra knew where at least one had gone. Her own tagged shelf held it. She should have run. Instead she opened the door, because the screaming would bring worse than him. Tomas stepped in and shut it fast. He looked at the frozen customer, then at Petra. "That's mine," he said, nodding at the clay bell. "I've been hunting it three days." "Then help me," Petra said. "Or the whole street comes in." He didn't argue. He wrapped both gloved hands over the customer's fist. The leather smoked where it met the object. Tomas grunted, twisted, and peeled the fingers back one by one. The bell dropped into his open palm. The wail cut off. Silence rang in Petra's ears. The customer sagged, breathing hard, and stumbled out the door without a word. Outside, the crowd drifted back to the town hall steps. Tomas turned the clay bell in his gloves. Then he looked past Petra, at the long shelf of tagged things behind her. "You have more than this one," he said. It wasn't a question. Petra's throat tightened. Among those objects sat the two other things he'd lost. And she had let him inside to see them. "I keep what finds its way to me," she said. Tomas set the bell in a pouch at his belt. He didn't leave. "Then I'll be back with a cart and a list," he said. "Every cursed thing in this room belongs to the city." The door closed behind him. Petra stood among her shelves, and knew she had traded quiet for a man who would take everything before she found the one thing she needed.

For two days Petra could not step outside without being seen. Tomas had posted watchers on her shop. She counted them from behind the dusty glass. Two men on the town hall steps. One woman who pretended to sweep the same stones for hours. They watched her door. Any move she made to hide her tagged things would reach Tomas by nightfall. She could not search for her lost soul-object with his eyes on her. She had to break his watch first. She waited for dark. Then she took a jar from her shelf, one she had kept for years. Inside, tiny blue organisms drifted and flickered. They gathered into shimmering clusters and threw cool light across her hands. She had traded three good curses for them long ago. Tonight she would spend them. Across the way stood a sealed stone building, an old asylum blocked tight against the world. No one went near it. That was why it served. Petra slipped out her back door in the black hours. She hugged the wall and carried the jar under her shawl. The watchers stayed fixed on her front glass. At the asylum she pried one board loose. She poured the glowing organisms through the gap. They spread inside, and blue light bloomed behind the barred windows. The dead building glowed like something waking. Petra limped back into shadow and waited. A watcher saw it first. He shouted. The other two came running. The sweeping woman dropped her broom. All three crossed toward the strange light, drawn like the customer to the clay bell. Petra had spent decades learning what pulls people. Curiosity pulled hardest of all. She did not run home. She turned the other way, toward the archivist's own place. She knew where Tomas kept his ledger. His three lost objects had come from that room, and so had the tags in her shop. If any record named the thing she'd searched for across the years, it sat on his shelves. His door held a heavy lock. Petra had opened worse. Inside, lamplight showed rows of cursed things and a long book left open on the table. She read fast. Column after column of names. Then her finger stopped. One entry listed an object taken from a plague ward, sold on decades back. The line matched the hollow place inside her. This was it. Her soul-object had a trail at last. Boots sounded on the step. Tomas filled the doorway, gloves on, breath hard from running. He had smelled the trick and come home early. "You lit that building to move my men," he said. "Now you're in my records." Petra did not deny it. She had the name. He had her cornered. "Then we both know what I want," she said. His watch was broken. But she had traded her hiding place for his ledger, and now Tomas knew exactly what she was hunting.