I still couldn’t get the unsettling service out of my head. The trails were on the ground, easy enough to follow, and I wanted to follow them. But it was all I could picture. And we’d left Margaret’s mother there, so it was all she wanted to talk about.

  “With magic like yours, it would be all too easy. My mother is in there, right now, and I know her mind isn’t her own,” Margaret insisted. I was walking toward the market and had to respond under my breath.

  “Would you have had me kill you when I learned who you were?” I asked. I couldn’t just kill someone. I didn’t care that it was a loop. That wasn’t who I was, and no amount of desperation could drive me to it. I had to believe that.

  “Yes,” she immediately agreed. “I would have wanted you to kill me, rather than let me keep going as I was. I’m glad you gave me a second chance, I am. But if you hadn’t been able to convince me? If I hadn’t gone back? I would have preferred today, each and every day. Wouldn’t you?” I tightened my lips as we walked. But she wouldn’t let me off so easily. “If I could go back and kill you before you handed your sister’s head over to an angry mob, would you not want me to do it?” She insisted. She was right. I would. In an instant. But that was only half the picture.

  “Yes,” I admit. “And I know. Your mother is alive. She’s back. And if I’m right, she is being hurt. But–”

  “But what?” Margaret interrupted. “Whatever we saw back there—that was grotesque. It was horrifying. He’s robbing people of their dignity, and you can stop him!” I winced as she snapped at me, remembering a dozen times she had lashed out at me violently, when she had the magic to do so. A dozen times she had crushed and wounded me. Each harsh tone from her mouth felt like the earth was about to open beneath my feet and crush me. But I was safe. I knew I was safe. I just had to answer.

  “I would have wanted to die, rather than let myself sacrifice Camilla like I did,” I agreed again. “But I was ready to kill as well. To protect my grandmother from who I thought Camilla was. I tried to kill her, Margaret. It may have been only words, but I tried to kill her the same way you tried to kill me. And we were both wrong.” This hit her like a slap to the face, and she took a step back from me. It bought me a few moments to take in the environment more. We entered the market at the edges, and I wrinkled my nose. Again, something felt wrong. But it was hard to tell what. It was obvious that everything was different. There was no mystery there. But it had been so long since the first loop. I needed to identify not just changes from Margaret’s loop. I needed to spot what had changed from the first time around as well.

  “Fine,” Margaret finally said. “You’ve scored your point. But what are we supposed to do? Let him hold my mother like that? Let him keep those girls you love locked away and starving next to their mother? You can stop him. You know you can stop him.”

  “I don’t know that I can,” I replied quietly. “I really don’t. I barely managed to face you, and I still don’t actually know what is going on this time. What exactly is being done to people. I faced you and failed so many times. I just… I can’t do this. Not that way.”

  “Then how?” Margaret pressed. I sighed and looked up at Aethon in the sky.

  “All I can do is help people. Isn’t that what matters most? I can get people to safety, and we can figure out what’s happening while I do. Besides, these sparks of aura… they make me stronger. In more ways than one. We just… we have to try this first. Please,” I pleaded. She was silent for a long moment as I stopped in the middle of the market.

  “Fine. But what happens when you’ve helped everyone, found the person responsible, and the only way to stop them is to kill them? Will you fight then?” she asked. I gave her a baleful look.

  “I’ll… I’ll try to fight, if that happens,” I reluctantly agreed. She let out a deep breath and fixed her eyes on me. I stopped walking and waited for her response, and she eventually offered a slight nod.

  “Alright. But I want to help my mom either way,” she insisted. I nodded.

  “We will. If there is anything I can do, I’ll do it, I promise.” The words were quiet, but they carried all the strength I had. It was enough. Margaret was finally placated, and I could ask for help.

  “Just please… help me just… learn first. That’s all I want to do. Learn. Just take a look around, can you see anything strange about the market? Something is off about it, and I can’t figure out what.” Margaret glared at me for another moment, then rolled her eyes and gave a cursory look around. Then she paused and took a longer look.

  “The shops,” she finally replied. “Their workers are missing.” I followed her eyes but was left confused. Few of them were abandoned. Only some smaller stalls and carts were unattended. In fact, most shops seemed fairly well visited. Even more than they had been on past iterations of that day. I’d assumed this was because the quieted weren’t taking anyone with them when they died. That theory didn’t hold up to a closer examination, but the claim that they were abandoned made far less sense.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “I don’t understand, they are all busy. What do you mean?” I asked. She took a few steps forward, leaning into a stall and crossing her arms.

  “They are busy, sure. More than you’d think for the panic that’s settled over the town in recent days. But they have the wrong workers. I suppose you wouldn’t recognize them, since you aren’t from Beddenmor. But if you look, none of them are being run by the right people. This isn’t a large town with a lot of variety in the day-to-day. You grow used to the same clerk behind the same counter and the same vendor selling the same fruit every day. But they are all missing, replaced with people I’ve never seen selling any of these things before. The workers who belong there are missing,” she explained.

  “Couldn’t the regulars have fled? I’ve seen the crowd that gathers around the gate, trying to get out. Or the Quiet may have taken them. Is it really so strange that they’ve changed?” I asked.

  “It is,” she insisted. “Few of these people were missing on this day before. And now all of them are. It’s strange.” I followed her eyeline and watched the women behind the counter in the nearby cobbler’s shop. She seemed familiar enough with what she was doing. Cheerful, even. But that on its own was strange. It was rare to find a cheerful face in Beddenmor, and it would be odd for the replacement of a dead or missing worker to wear a genuine smile. Margaret was right. The entire city had felt strange to me all day, and it wasn’t just the temple service for the dead that felt that way.

  “We should go to the gate,” I suggested. Margaret gave me a quizical look, inviting me to elaborate. “You’re right. Something is strange about these shops, and it’s not just the people running them. They have too many customers. Everything is all too lively. But the gate—the crowd trying to leave—if it’ll be obvious anywhere, it’ll be there.” Margaret nodded after a moment, then returned her weight to her feet and started walking ahead of me.

  It didn’t take long to reach the front gate, but it was longer before I recognized my surroundings than I expected. There were still people trying to leave, but the guards weren’t nearly as busy. The crowd itself seemed far more sparse than it should have been. Far more manageable. “This is definitely not right,” Margaret said when we were only a hundred or so paces from the gate. “This crowd should be twice this size. Where is everyone?” I was too close to other people to respond to the ghost I brought with me. Instead, I furrowed my brow and turned toward the tent where I knew Captain Octavia was running command. It didn’t occur to me until much later that I usually would have hesitated. I simply walked into the tent and made eye contact with the woman in charge.

  “What is it now?” the woman groaned. It seemed the smaller crowd hadn’t improved the woman’s mood at all. I didn’t care.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I just noticed a few people were missing…” I trailed off, allowing her to finish the thought. I didn’t have specific enough details to justify questioning her, but I remembered how easily irritated this woman was and how quick she was to snap at me about the Quiet. Just a little push would be enough.

  “Everyone is fine, ma’am. No one is missing. In the uproar, a few people panicked; that’s all. They always show up within a few hours. Go home and wait. Like everyone before you, whoever it is you’re worried about will show up by the end of the day, I promise,” she dismissed. I suppressed a furrowed brow.

  “There have been other reports of missing people?” I asked. Octavia rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  “Yes, and before I ever had the chance to look, their friends showed up on their own. They, and you, are all just wasting time I don’t have. That’s all I have for you. Now get out of here so I can go about my work,” she shooed.

  “R-right. Well, that’s relieving to hear. Thank you,” I replied, then awkwardly left the tent. I wondered how true that was. That the missing people would return. Even if it was, going missing in the first place was strange. Going missing for only a brief period was stranger, and the different ways people were behaving was the strangest of all. I had to assume it was related to Junia and Melody. People acting differently than they should be. Strange church services in closed gardens with bodies in the pews. Shopkeepers being replaced and fleeing crowds diminishing without reason. It all felt like the world at an angle. I could feel the ground tilt beneath my feet. My body wanted to slide down the side of the stone road.

  “Alright. So what do we do now?” Margaret asked. I watched the ground. Those familiar trails of teal sparks webbed out in all directions like tree roots. We could follow them. I knew we’d have to start, sooner or later. They led to people in pain, and I was the only one who could see them. But I wasn’t ready yet. I’d been doing that, day after day. I’d shown up and saved lives. I’d returned bodies to death when Margaret sent them to kill. It had only been half a day since I finally stopped all of that, and everything was already unravelling so quickly. I needed rest, and I needed to work through what I had already seen today. I also needed to know what to do when I got to the end of a trail and found someone who needed help.

  I left the gate, waiting until we were a bit further from potential listeners before answering. “Back to the girls, for now,” I answered. “We need to make sure they are alright.”

  “And all this?” she pushed.

  “We can work through what to do next from a safe place. I want to see if we can free Junia from whatever is confusing her. Once we can do that, maybe we can help your mom and everyone else. I don’t know. I just. I need to go back to the girls,” I answered quietly. It wasn’t much of a plan yet, but it was enough.

  End of the First Day