By ghostlight, Cat consulted her blank gray bedroom carpet. The twenty-four-hour laundry on the corner of Bleak and Lattice had taken the sackful of clothes from her hamper without comment. She’d refilled the hamper with clothes from the floor. Clean, her room seemed both smaller and larger.

She touched the statue at her neck.

Cat had fought for Seril, and saved her, and argued with her, and would fight again. She’d risked her body. But she had never risked her soul. To fly, we must invite the wind.

She had never, quite, prayed.

She took the statue on its chain from around her neck and opened her blinds so the moon could peer through.

Abelard knelt once again before his altar. Priests at late-night services across the city preached to full congregations.

Dr. Hasim, seated with pen and paper on the hospital roof, examined the moon and wrote. Behind him the orderly stood with arms crossed, wary and wondering, primed to lunge should the patient turn suicidal.

Ellen rocked. A door opened behind her, and she recognized Claire’s footsteps. “I’m fine,” Ellen said. “They tried to kill the moon last night. That’s why I collapsed. She’s better now, but they’ll try again soon.”

Claire lowered herself to the roof. Ellen read loneliness and exhaustion on the planes of her face—emotions that would one day frame themselves into lines. “I don’t know what to do,” Claire said.

“Sit with me.”

She did. And because Claire was not used to sitting, she spoke. “We could kick him out. Cut him off. But he’d stay Dad, somewhere. I went to the hospital. I wanted to confront him, but I couldn’t. I’ve spent so much time trying to keep our life together, I’m not brave enough to break it. So what good am I?”

“You’re my sister.”

“I haven’t been here for you in the last few days, or for Hannah. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t said more words to Ellen at once in months. Years, maybe.

“I need your help,” Ellen said.

“With what?”

“The moon.”

“Ellen—”

“She’s in trouble. She needs strength. I’ve prayed to her, but I can do only so much alone. She’s helped so many in the last year. I could bring them together. But I don’t know how to start. I need help.”

“Okay,” Claire said.

Even the moon casts shadows, when bright enough.

A brass band marched through the Pleasure Quarter, and revelers wound behind it, a gyrating snake of hips and arms and naked backs. Hairy, big-bellied men and sweaty women pounded feet against cobblestones. A gymnast in gemmed pink cartwheeled alongside; two acrobats tossed a spinning third into the air in place of a marshal’s baton.

In many rooms and on some balconies, people made love.