Selene stood on the ridge above the animal graveyard with the moon in her hands. She had held it since she was seven, when it drifted east and she reached up and dragged it back. Her mother had been ash by then, burned out of the sky by the sun. The moon was cold under her palms. It had been cold for eighteen years. She wanted the sun dead. She wanted a night that did not end. She could not begin, because her hands were full. Below her, small stones marked the graves of pets. Someone had left flowers. A patch of moonflowers glowed near the low vine-covered wall, opened toward her because she was the reason they opened at all. She stared at them and tried, again, to think of a way to smother the sun without letting go. She had tried before. She had tried pinning the moon against a cliff with her shoulder. It slid. She had tried wedging it into the fork of the grand oak. It rolled loose the moment she stepped back. The moon obeyed only her grip. Nothing else in the world could hold it up. "You're going to drop it eventually." The voice came from the wall. A girl sat on the stones with her bare feet swinging. Black eyes, white hair, a dress torn to ribbons at the hem. Selene had not heard her arrive because she made no sound. A ghost, then. Selene had seen a few. They usually kept their distance. "I won't drop it," Selene said. "Then you won't do anything else, either." The ghost tilted her head. "What do you want so badly that you'd need both hands?" Selene did not answer. The ghost watched her, patient, the way a cat watches. Then a second figure came up the slope through the moonflowers. Gray dress, white hair, bare feet, older. She walked like someone who had walked a long time. Selene knew the stories. The pale woman. The one who pulled things out of the dead world and did not always give them back. "I can hold it," the pale woman said. She stopped an arm's length away and looked at the moon, not at Selene. "For a while. Not forever. Long enough for one working." "Why?" "I need a name." The pale woman finally met her eyes. "You're the daughter of a goddess. You can find one. When I set it down, you take it back. That is the trade." Selene weighed it. The sun would rise in four hours. Her mother had died at a sunrise. She thought of her hands empty for the first time since she was a child, and what she could do with them. She lifted the moon down between them. The pale woman raised her arms. Selene let go. Her palms were cold and light and free. Above her, the moon held.

Selene lowered her arms. The pale woman held the moon above the ridge, still and cold. For the first time in eighteen years, Selene's palms faced the sky with nothing in them. She flexed her fingers. They shook. Not a small tremor. A hard, useless shake that ran up to her elbows. She tried to close a fist and her knuckles would not lock. She turned east. The sky there was still black, but she knew where the sun slept. Four hours. She lifted her hands to begin the working she had rehearsed in her head since she was a child. A pull. A smothering. A drawing down of light into her own cold weight. Her fingers would not hold the shape. They splayed and dropped. She tried again and her thumb would not meet her palm. Eighteen years of one grip had taken the rest. The ghost girl was watching from the wall. Bare feet, black eyes, torn hem. She hopped down and crossed the moonflowers without bending a stem. "Your hands don't work," she said. "They will." "When?" Selene did not answer. She braced her wrists against each other and tried to force the tremor still. It got worse. A moonflower near her boot closed as her focus slipped. She could feel the moon above her, held by someone else, and her own power sloshing around inside her with nowhere to go. The ghost girl stopped an arm's length away. "I need something," she said. "You need hands that work. Trade." "What." "A deed. Paper. My name is on it. It's in a room I can't enter. Door handle goes through me." She held up her fingers and wiggled them. "Get it out. I'll steady your hands while you work." "You can do that." "I'm dead. I know what a held thing feels like." She tilted her head. "Do you want the sun or not?" Selene looked at the pale woman. The pale woman looked back and said nothing. The moon did not move. Three hours and some minutes now. Selene's own working needed both hands and a full hour of stillness she did not have. "Where is the room," Selene said. The ghost girl pointed past the animal graveyard, past the low vine-covered wall, down the slope to the taller wall beyond, and past that to a pair of dark spired towers rising against the stars. "There. Top floor. West side. The family that lives there took my ground. They sleep through anything." Selene lowered her shaking hands. She could not kill the sun tonight. She had traded the moon for four hours and spent the first on learning that. "Lead," she said. The ghost girl was already walking. Selene followed, hands trembling at her sides, the sun still under the world, the night still hers for a little longer.

Selene followed the ghost girl down the slope. The pale woman stayed on the ridge with the moon. Selene could feel the weight of it up there, held by other hands, wrong and steady at once. Her own hands shook at her sides. The ghost girl walked ahead through wet grass, torn hem dragging without catching. Past the graveyard. Past a low stone fence broken in places. Down to a taller wall thick with vines that swallowed the stones under them. The ghost girl stopped at the wall. She did not climb. She turned and faced Selene with her black eyes. "Not yet," she said. "You said lead." "I said trade. I have not decided if I trust you with the trade." She stepped closer. Her bare feet made no mark in the dirt. "Anyone can steal a paper. I need to know you can carry a name from the dead and not drop it. Say one for me. A real one. From your side of the wall." Selene looked past her at the two spired towers rising beyond the vines, mirrored and joined at the roof, windows dark. Somewhere in the west tower, a locked room. Somewhere in it, a paper with this girl's name. Selene's hands would not hold a pen right now, much less pull down the sun. She had nothing to offer but words. She thought of the graves behind them, the wilted heads of the memorial flowers, the small stones scoured smooth. She thought of her mother. "Elspeth Moonwhisper," Selene said. "She died before her promise was kept. A child was involved. She was tethered by it, and she went north as a lure so the living could pass. Say it back to me and it stays said." The ghost girl's mouth moved around the name once, silent, then again with sound. Her shoulders dropped a small distance. She lifted one hand and held it out, palm up, the way a child asks for a coin. Selene put her shaking fingers over it. The tremor slowed. Not gone. Slowed. The ghost girl's touch was cold and exact, like a splint. "Selene Nightshade," the ghost girl said. "That is my name. Someone paid to scrape it off my stone. The deed is the only place it still exists in writing. Get it out of that room and I will hold your hands through the sun-working tomorrow night. Fail me and I keep my hands to myself." She let go. The tremor came back at once. She turned and stepped through the vines as if the wall were open air, then looked back through the leaves. "Come. West tower. Top floor. The family sleeps hard." Selene set her palm on the vines and began to climb. The moon watched from the ridge. The sun slept under the world. She had a name in her mouth now, and a debt attached to it, and no way back up the slope until the paper was in her hand.

Selene came down the inside of the wall and dropped into wet grass. The two towers stood joined at the roof, mirrored, dark. West tower. Top floor. The ghost girl waited at the base, arms at her sides, black eyes fixed on the door. Selene walked around the tower's foot, running her fingers along the stone until she found the lock plate. It was set on the inside. From here she felt only a smooth iron face and a keyhole flush with the wood. No latch to lift. No bar to slide. Forcing it would mean a shoulder against the door, and a shoulder against the door would wake every room above. She pulled her hand back. Her fingers shook. "I can't see how it's held. If I break it, the house wakes." "Then don't break it," Nightshade said. "Give me something better than that." Nightshade tilted her head. "There is a key. It was made for both towers. My father's key. It went with the deed when they took the deed. They keep it in the same room." "That helps me how." "It doesn't. Unless you find another hand to fit the lock." Selene looked back at the graveyard past the wall. Small stones. Scoured names. She thought of the pale woman on the ridge with the moon in her hands, and of the promise she had already spent. She had one more name in her mouth she trusted. "Meridian Gravesight," Selene said. "She finds graves for spirits who died wrong. She's alive. She lives near a marsh east of here. She owes no one in this house." "Fetch her," Nightshade said. "There isn't time." "Then call her the way the dead call. Say the name at the wall and mean it. If she is close enough to hear a grave, she is close enough to hear you." Selene set her palm on the stone. She said the name once, plain. She said it again, and pressed her forehead to the wall, and held the word there until her teeth ached. A woman came out of the dark along the path with a staff in her hand. Purple robes. White hair. She stopped ten paces off and rubbed her jaw. "My back teeth," Meridian said. "You pulled on them." "I need a living hand on that door," Selene said. "Quiet. Now. There's a key inside I can't reach without you." Meridian looked at the ghost girl. She looked at Selene's shaking hands. "Whose grave am I settling for this?" "Hers," Selene said. "After." Meridian nodded once. She crossed to the tower door, laid her palm flat against the wood, and pushed. The door swung inward without a sound. It had never been locked from outside. Only watched. Selene stepped through. The house did not wake. Above her, three floors up, the deed and the key waited in one room, and the stairs began at her feet.

Selene climbed the stair with Meridian at her back and Nightshade drifting beside her. Three floors up, a narrow door stood ajar. Inside, a table held a rolled deed and an iron key shaped like two towers. Meridian lifted the key and passed it to Selene. Selene closed her fingers on it. They shook, but they held. "The deed," Nightshade said. Selene unrolled it. The signature at the bottom read Selene Nightshade in a child's careful hand. She rolled it again and tucked it into her coat. On the stair down, Meridian stopped. She set her staff across the step and blocked the way. "Before we go out that door," Meridian said, "I need to know what settling her grave means. You promised it. I want the shape of it." Selene looked at Nightshade. "Tell her." "I don't know," Nightshade said. "You said settle your grave." "I said a name back on a stone. That is what I know." Meridian shook her head. "That isn't settling. A carved name on scoured rock washes off again in a season. Settling means the ground accepts her. It means whatever holds her here lets go." She looked at Selene. "You promised me a finished job. What finishes her?" Selene's hand tightened on the key. Sunrise was closing. She had the deed. She had a ghost who would steady her hands. She did not have this answer, and Meridian would not move without it. "Ask her what she wants," Selene said. Meridian turned to the ghost. "What do you want, girl?" Nightshade's black eyes did not blink. "The family off my ground. The stone recut. My name spoken by the one who paid to erase it." "Who paid?" Meridian said. "The grandmother. She still lives. Top floor of the east tower. She sleeps with the key under her pillow, or she did." Nightshade looked at the iron in Selene's hand. "That key." Meridian exhaled. "So settling her means dragging a dying woman out of bed to say a name. In this house. Before dawn." "Yes," Nightshade said. Meridian looked at Selene a long moment. "I'll hold you to it. Not tonight. But before the next new moon, you bring me back here and we cross that hall and we make the old woman speak. Swear it on the thing you love." Selene thought of the pale woman on the ridge with her mother's moon cradled in borrowed hands. "I swear it on the moon." "Then we go," Meridian said, and lifted her staff. They came out of the tower into wet grass. Nightshade was already fading toward the wall. Selene followed with the deed against her ribs and the twin-tower key heavy in her pocket. She had bought her steady hands. She had also bought a second night inside this house, and a debt with a name on it.