Selene Nightshade had been dead for sixty years, and tonight she meant to kill the moon. She walked the edge of the family's orchard between moonrise and dawn, the only hours she could hold a shape at all. Above her hung the last silver moon over Copsefire. Three more had already gone dark this season. When the last one drained, night would stay, and the house that stole her land would lose the light it depended on to guard its locked room. Inside that room sat a deed with her signature, kept behind a door her fingers slid through like smoke. She had the ritual. She did not have the place. The draining needed a pool of moonlight thick enough to sink a hand into, and she had walked the grounds four nights running without finding it. Pale apples hung in the orchard, each one glowing faintly, but the light on the grass beneath them was thin as paper. Dawn was six hours off. After that, another month of waiting, and she was not sure she had another month left in her. She crossed to the small graveyard behind the orchard. Wilted bell-flowers leaned over cracked headstones. Her own marker stood among them, the name ground off by paid hands, the stonecutters who had sworn it was weather. She pressed her palm to the blank stone. It went through. "You are looking in the wrong yard." The voice came from the row of ghost carrots at the graveyard's edge. A shadow stood over the greens, tall, long-eared, shaped almost like a man. Selene had seen the bunnyman before, always at a distance, never speaking. He pointed one dark arm past the orchard toward a stone basin she had taken for a birdbath. "The light gathers where something already drinks it. Look in the water, not on the ground." She went to the basin. The rim was carved with worn marks. Inside, the water held the moon whole, not a reflection but the moon itself, pressed flat and shining, silver piled on silver. Light thick enough to cup. She had walked past it four nights running because she had been searching the grass. Her hand hovered over the surface and felt cold rise into her wrist. This was the pool. This was where the ritual began. Across the water, a second figure formed in the shine, a woman in a pale gown with the moon behind her head like a second face. Lady Moon met Selene's eyes through the basin. She did not speak. She smiled once, thin, and the moon in the water dimmed by a hair, as if something in it had already begun to leak. Selene stepped back. The draining had started the moment she found the place. She had five nights, maybe six, before the sky above Copsefire went black and the family inside the house woke to a dark they could not lock a door against. She turned toward the house and the room she still could not enter, and began to count what she would need before dawn.

The basin still held the moon when Selene turned back to it an hour before dawn. The water had thinned by another shade. She meant to sit beside it every night until the sky went black, guarding the ritual, feeding it what little shape she had. But she had not planned for the pull. Twice already the ground under her own blank headstone had tugged at her heels like wet rope, and she had lost minutes she could not spare. She felt the tug again now. Her feet dragged across the grass toward the row of cracked stones behind the orchard. She fought it and lost. The pull set her down on her knees at the unmarked grave, and she stayed there, useless, while the moon in the basin kept leaking without her. A small voice spoke at her elbow. "You keep coming back because nobody says your name over you." The lost little ghost girl stood in the wilted patch beside the stone, barefoot, hair pale as milk. Behind her, another shape drifted low over the graves, a soft round ghost with tapering edges. "We felt you from the hill," the girl said. "An empty grave calls. It will call every night until it's answered." Selene tried to rise and could not. "I have five nights. I cannot spend them here." The drifting ghost sank closer to the stone. It touched the blank face with a wisp of its edge. "Then let us hold the seat," it said, in a voice like breath on glass. The little girl knelt in the dead flowers and began to arrange them. She pulled the wilted stems upright. She lined smooth pebbles along the grave's edge in a small, careful border, the way a child tends a doll's yard. She set two imagined lanterns at the head. "We'll sit here in your place," she said. "We'll answer when the ground calls. It won't know the difference if someone is here." Selene felt the rope at her heels loosen. Not gone. Loosened. She stood, testing it, and took three steps toward the basin without stumbling. Above the graves, a taller figure formed against the fading moon, pale gown, long hair, eyes fixed on Selene. Lady Moon did not smile this time. She tilted her head once toward the basin, a clear order. Get back to work. Selene ran. She reached the basin as the sky began to gray and pressed both hands into the silver water. Cold climbed to her elbows. The moon in the bowl dimmed another notch under her palms, and above her the real moon dimmed with it. The pull at her back had gone quiet. Two small ghosts sat by her stone, keeping her seat warm. She had bought her nights. She had also bought a debt to the hill, and she did not yet know what the hill would ask for it back.

Selene came back to the basin the next night with the little girl and the round ghost already at her grave, sitting quiet in the wilted flowers. She had bought her nights. Now she had to spend them well. The moon in the water was thinner than before, a bruised silver skin. When she leaned close, the surface trembled. Rings ran across it. Light lifted from the edges and spilled down the stone lip into the grass, where it faded to nothing. Every ripple was moonlight lost. If the basin could not hold still, the draining would fail before dawn. She knelt and cupped her hands above the water without touching it. The trembling did not stop. Something below the graveyard was shaking the ground. She pressed one palm to the dirt and felt the beat of it, slow and heavy, like a sleeping animal breathing under the roots. She followed the tremor away from the basin. It led her past the orchard, past a plum tree heavy with dark fruit, to the far edge of the yard where an old stone wall stood choked in vines. On the other side of the wall the twin towers rose against the dimming sky, two grey spires joined at the middle, every window dark. The tremor came from beneath them. She had heard the old name for the place. She had never gone close. Tonight she pressed her hand to the vine-covered stone and felt the beat run up her arm. A voice answered from inside the wall. Not words. A long, low sound like a bellows in a deep room. Something large was breathing down there, and each breath rocked the ground under the basin. She thought of scales. She thought of a folded wing. She did not need to see it to know what shape made that sound. She could not fight it. She could not wake it further. She could only quiet the surface above it. She went back through the orchard at a run. Near the crooked fence she found the pale carrot patch the hill ghosts had told her of, the roots faint as smoke in the dirt. She pulled six and carried them to the basin. Beside the basin she found the sunken ring of old stones the villagers used for their dead flowers, wilted heads bowed over cracked graves. She broke a handful of the dry stems and laid them across the water in a woven mat. Then she set the ghost carrots around the rim, root-ends pointing in. The ripples slowed. The mat held the surface down. The faint roots drank the small spill at the edges and glowed a little brighter. The moon in the bowl settled and dimmed another clean notch. Above her, the real moon dimmed with it. Selene sat back on her heels. The basin was still. The breathing under the wall had not stopped. She had quieted the water by drawing on the hill's gifts again, and the hill's debt had grown. Somewhere below the twin towers, the thing that shook the ground was waking a little more each night, and she had four nights left.

The next night Selene came back to the basin and found the little ghost girl already there, but not alone. The round hill ghost floated at her shoulder, and behind them stood a taller shape she had not seen before: a gray-robed woman with long pale hair. The woman did not speak. The little girl looked up and said the hill wanted to talk. Selene understood. The debt had come due. The round ghost drifted close to the basin. It said the hill had lent her nights, and carrots, and dried flowers, and a guard at her grave. It said the count was full. If she could not pay by moonrise tomorrow, the guard would leave the grave. The pull would take her back. The basin would go untended. The ritual would end with the moon still half-bright in the sky. Selene knelt in the wet grass. She had nothing. Her name was ground off stone. Her deed sat behind a door she could not touch. She said so, flat, to the three of them. The gray-robed woman spoke then. She said her name was Elspeth Moonwhisper. She said she was bound the same way Selene was: by a thing left undone. She said the hill would take a promise in place of coin, if the promise had weight. A smaller ghost came up out of the grass beside Elspeth. A boy in a torn sweater, white hair, dark eyes. He did not look at Selene. He looked at the basin. Elspeth said his name was Ollie. She said he had forgotten his own name once and was afraid to try it again. She said if Selene would carry his name for him, hold it steady until he was ready to speak it, the hill would count that as payment. A held name was worth a night, she said. Worth four, if held clean. Ollie finally looked at her. He said, "You keep it. Don't say it out loud. Not until I ask." Selene said she would. He leaned in and whispered two syllables into the space where her ear had been. She felt them settle in her chest like a small warm stone. A pale owl drifted down from the wall and landed on the basin's rim, watching. The little girl smiled for the first time Selene had seen. The round ghost dipped, satisfied. Elspeth said the debt was cleared through the last night of the ritual. She said the guard would stay. She said nothing else, and turned, and was gone. Selene looked into the basin. The moon in the water was thinner still, a curl of silver on black. Three nights left. The breathing under the twin towers went on, slower now, or she had grown used to it. She had bought her nights again, and this time not with anything the hill could grind away. She had bought them with a boy's name, and she meant to keep it.

Selene came to the basin on the second-to-last night with the boy's name humming in her chest. It had started as a small warm stone. Now it was a bell. Two soft syllables, over and over, louder each hour. She could feel them push at her teeth when she opened her mouth. She had promised not to say them. If they slipped out during the drain, the moonlight in the water would break, and the ritual would end with the moon still bright. She knelt at the basin's rim. The moon in the water was a thin silver hook. She began the drawing gesture she had used for four nights, palms low, breath slow. The name pushed harder. She clamped her jaw. A syllable pressed against the back of her tongue and she swallowed it down like a hot coin. The boy was already there. He stood on the far side of the basin in his torn sweater, watching her hands shake. He said, "You're going to say it." Flat. Not a question. Selene shook her head and could not answer, because opening her mouth would spill him. Elspeth stepped out of the dark behind him, gray robe still, hair pale. She said, "She can't hold it another night. It wants out." Elspeth looked at the boy. "You said not until you asked. Ask now, or she loses the moon." The boy's face went tight. He looked at his shoes. Then at the basin, where the silver hook trembled. Selene watched him decide. He walked around the rim and stopped in front of her. He said, "Give it back. I'll try." She nodded once, hard. She opened her mouth and let the two syllables go, straight at him, not at the water. His own name struck him in the chest. He flinched. Then he said it himself, out loud, angry the way he had told her he needed to be. He said it three times. On the third, a patch of white moonflowers behind him opened all at once, petals lifting like small lit cups. The little ghost girl came out of the flowers. She took the boy's hand. He did not fade. He stayed, and he was steady, and his eyes were dark and clear. He looked at Selene and said, "Thanks." Then the girl led him into the flower patch and the light there folded shut around them both. Selene turned back to the basin. Her chest was empty and quiet. The silver hook in the water was still there. She drew again, clean now, and the hook thinned. Elspeth watched from the grass. "One night left," Elspeth said. "And something under the towers is awake enough to listen." Selene heard it then, under her knees: the slow breath below the stone had changed pitch. It was no longer sleeping. It was waiting.

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.