The crack in the sky above the koi pond had grown a finger wider since dawn. Sova hovered close to it, small and round and white, gold filigree catching the light where light still behaved. The rose gemstone on its chest pulsed a slow, tired pink. Not dark. Not yet. Sova pressed one wingtip to the edge of the split and pushed a thread of boundary magic into the wound. The thread held for three breaths, then frayed. Sova was older than the trees below it, and it had mended this seam alone for a long time. Tonight, alone was not enough. Sova needed a second pair of hands. Someone who could feel the seam the way Sova felt it. The block party universe was full of people, but boundary magic was a narrow craft. Sova had never trained anyone. It had never needed to. It flew low over the water and found her at the reef edge below the pond's overflow — the mermaid with the oil-slick tail, dragging herself along grey coral. Petra. Sova had watched her before. She kept coming back to sick water. That was a kind of stubbornness Sova recognized. "Petra." She looked up. Her hair floated dark around her face. "You're the owl." "There is a crack in the sky. I cannot close it by myself." Sova hovered lower. "You feel edges. I have watched you touch the dead coral and know exactly where it stopped being alive. That is the same sense." Petra rested her hand on the grey brain coral. "I can't leave the reef." "The thing behind the crack eats reefs too. Eventually." She was quiet. Then: "Show me." Sova led her up through the overflow to the pond's surface. The split hung in the air above them, light bending wrong at its lip. Sova pushed a thread of magic into the seam and held it out toward her like a rope end. "Take it. Pinch the edge where it wants to peel." Petra reached. Her fingers closed on nothing Sova could see, but her face changed. She flinched, then set her jaw. "It's slippery." "Hold it." She held. Sova drew a second thread and stitched. For the first time in a long time, the seam closed under two hands instead of one. The crack shortened by a finger's width. The gemstone on Sova's chest brightened from tired pink to clear rose. Petra let go and swayed. Blood ran from her nose in a thin dark line. She wiped it on the back of her wrist and looked at the smear like it was information. "How often," she said. "Every day. Until it holds." "I get sicker every day already." "I know." She nodded once. That was the whole answer. Sova had an apprentice now, and an apprentice who was already dying.

The next seal went wrong at the last stitch. Sova felt it — a cold thread slipping between its wingtip and Petra's fingers, small as a needle, quick as a fish. Then gone. The crack closed anyway. The gemstone on Sova's chest brightened, then dulled a shade darker than before. Something had come through. Sova sent Petra back to the reef and followed the cold. The trail was not a smell or a sound. It was a smear. Where the thing had passed, color sat wrong on the grass, like a wet thumb dragged through paint. Sova flew low and tracked the streak across the pond, over a fence, and into a lane where a fox in a white shirt and blue jeans was picking up a dropped basket. "Osterfuchs." Sova hovered at his shoulder. "Something came through the crack. It went this way. Did you see it?" The fox straightened. His ears turned before his eyes did. "Cold spot passed me a minute ago. Didn't look at it. It went that way." He pointed one orange finger down the lane. "Toward the little white barn. The petting zoo." "Thank you." "Sova." His smile was gone. "There are lambs in there." Sova flew. The petting zoo sat in an open field, tidy and white, a wooden fence around a patch of grass. The smear went under the gate. Sova landed on the top rail and stopped. If it saw Sova, it might bolt deeper, or worse, sink into a warm animal. Sova needed a scout it could not hurt. A small black kitten sat licking one paw beside the trough. Its coat was the same nothing as a night sky. Its eyes were two white circles. Void, not flesh. Shadow could not bite shadow. "Kitten." The kitten looked up. "Something is inside the pen. It is made of shadow. I need to know where." The kitten yawned, showed one small fang, and trotted through the gate like it had been asked to fetch milk. Sova watched from the rail. The kitten crossed the grass, stopped by the barn wall, and sat. Its tail flicked once. Then it looked directly at a patch of shade under the eaves and stared. Sova followed the stare. The shade was too thick. It had edges. As Sova watched, the edges lifted — thin dark fingers, then a long thin arm, then a head crowned in a mess of curling black wires. Two white eyes opened in the dark of the face. The figure stepped from the wall without sound and moved along the barn toward the open door of the pen where the sheep slept. It did not see Sova. It did not hurry. Sova's gemstone dulled another shade. Sova stayed on the rail and did not move. Rushing a shadow would only teach it to run. Sova needed a plan before it touched anything warm.