It was easier to focus knowing the girls were as safe as I could make them. And I needed the extra focus. Margaret and I waited in Hadley’s home, watching the garden through the window. The presence of his corpse beside us made me shudder, but it was better than sitting in some kind of outdoor temple service surrounded by the dead, set up and posed like toys in a dollhouse. We arrived before the first service ended, and we waited and watched. We saw the new group of parishioners arrive just as the last was leaving. Margaret grimaced as we watched Melody arrive, and I bit my lip as an unusually chipper Livia left. It was like watching the world behind a mirror, where everything looked familiar but in the wrong place and backwards. I hated it.

  Once both groups had either entered or left the garden, we were left in silence. I’d considered hiding in the garden; I already knew ‘Still World’ could get me in and out unnoticed. But I ultimately decided it was too dangerous. If I were spotted, it could have ended up preventing any further efforts to learn about Luke for the rest of the loop. That and… the sermon he was preaching felt like getting dressed in soiled clothing. It had the stench of a friendly lie, the kind I’d grown up believing. The kind designed to tell me which person, rather than which god, I was supposed to worship. It was really that, more than anything else. It was unsafe for my mind to listen to the same music which had hypnotized and hurt me for so much of my childhood. So we watched from outside the garden. We considered Luke may leave through the ground somehow, like the quieted had done under Margaret’s control. But Margaret had earth magic, somehow. It was possible Luke had the same, but rather than working against the guards, this group clearly had a connection with them. He would have little reason to hide his coming and going.

  Once the sermon started, we had little to do but wait for Luke to leave. We sat in silence for a long time, waiting for the sickly meeting to end. Until Margaret started to hum. An unfamiliar tune, gentle and soothing. It was barely audible at first, only the accents and rises in the music obvious in her voice. But as time passed, it gained traction and weight, until every hum could be easily made out. It actually calmed my nerves and alleviated the sweating of my palms.

  “What is that?” I finally asked. Margaret paused after a moment, then looked down and tucked some of her hair behind one ear. Her entire body may have been teal in color, like some kind of ghostly gemstone, but she had the body language of an embarrassed blush.

  “It’s just… a song my mother used to sing to me, when I was scared,” she replied. “When our candles burned out or the thunder shook our house. It always made me feel better. At least until Dad… Well. Once she was gone, it hurt to hear. Scylla would still try to sing it to me. She tried, for a long time, to replace what we had lost. At least for me. It was kind, but it only ever made me feel sick. Because she didn’t know what I had done. She didn’t know how guilty I was. How ashamed. How much of my childhood I spent living in that dark room watching my father preserve my mother’s dignity. But she did stop eventually. I haven’t heard the song in years.”

  “But you’re singing it now,” I said. She nodded.

  “I am. I suppose seeing my mother alive, but not herself… it brought it back to mind. I don’t know how, but I didn’t fail her in this version of the world. And that gave the song its beauty again. And seeing her like this reminded me of what it was for,” she explained. The song she’d been humming rang through my mind like a tuning fork. I supposed that was why it felt comforting to me. Because the woman making the music felt comfort while she did, and I could taste that in the sound. I don’t know why it mattered to me, but I had to ask.

  “You said she would sing it to you. So it’s got words? What’s it about?” I asked. Margaret sniffed as she stared through the window. The gate was still silent, and the service was showing no external signs of ending. Two guards remained, waiting and watching in return.

  “It was called 'Moon’s Angel',” she answered. “I always thought it was strange—that she would sing a song to children about such a thing. Not an angel of Aethon. No one who carried sunlight or life. The song that comforted me was about a messenger of Luna. An angel of death. Not Aethon’s grace, but Luna’s gift. It should have scared me. But it never did. Perhaps because my family has always seen death differently than everyone else. You have to, to keep a cemetery. I didn’t even realize I was humming it until you said something. But even now, it’s comforting. An old song about an angel of the moon.” I didn’t respond, except with a nod. For some reason, learning more about the music only made the tune feel richer. Something about it felt so gentle, and I couldn’t understand what.

  But the conversation was cut short as people finally began to emerge from the garden. They all carried a cheerful veneer, but the memory of the service they’d just sat through and the smiles on the faces of unwilling shoppers poisoned the effect in my mind. Those smiles had pointed teeth and hooks in the corners, forcing them to remain regardless of the hearts behind them. My entire body tensed with each body I watched leave the garden. My heart ached with their passing, and sweat beaded on my head. I needed Luke to come out. I needed to know where he went. Because Margaret was probably right. If anyone was responsible for what was happening, this man seemed like the most likely culprit. He carried himself like a man proud of the pain he inflicted on those below him. Amiable in a poisonous way, used to bleed those around him of their defenses. I didn’t know he was responsible, but he was the closest we had to a lead, and we needed to find out. Margaret, especially, needed to know if he was the one hurting her mother.

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  But when the last parishioner had left, Luke had still not emerged. “Where is he?” Margaret asked. “Why isn’t he out yet?” I took a deep breath and narrowed my eyes. “Mars, we have to get in there now, before he leaves. We have to find out where he is going!” I shook my head.

  “No, not yet,” I insisted.

  “Any longer and it will be too late, he’s going to get away! I don’t want my mother living through another loop like this. We can’t let her, please!” Margaret begged. It was almost surreal. She was right; she’d been so confident when we first met. Now she was so anxious. I shook my head again.

  “If they leave with earth magic, we can’t follow them. But look, the gate is still open. The guards are expecting someone else to leave before they close it,” I pointed, and Margaret followed with her eyes. She remained frantic for a moment, but marginally calmed when she realized the gate was actively being held open with one guard’s foot. Someone else was, in fact, coming. Her hand rested on my shoulder, which was a strangely unsettling experience. My lips tightened and, despite my reassurances, my pulse quickened with every empty breath that passed without the emergence of our target.

  But we didn’t have to wait too long. After what couldn’t have been more than a few moments, however slow they felt, his face finally appeared, still smiling and brimming with confidence. What was surprising, however, was that he wasn’t alone. Another woman was with him, leaning heavily on both a cane and one of Luke’s arms with each step. She didn’t look old enough for age alone to require such support, perhaps her late fifties. The pain which occasionally splashed across her face indicated there may have been another cause as well. The two stopped and chatted with the guards for a few moments as my heart rate anticipated my attempt to quietly follow the two. Finally, both Luke and the older woman left, and the guards closed and locked the gate behind them. “Come on,” I whispered, then walked to the door, quietly opening it. Margaret had no quip this time, all of her focus entirely on the man she believed had stolen her mind. I was concerned about the guards saying something about us if they saw me follow the other pair, so I began the chant for ‘Still World’.

  The world halted around us as we moved silently across the open courtyard, no witness capable of observing our passing but Luna and Aethon themselves. With the woman on his arm, the pair moved slowly. This made them easy to follow after I ended my spell. They seemed in no hurry to return to wherever they called home. We followed them through crowds and stopped the march of the world when no camouflage existed for us. They first went to the market, stopping at every single shop as they did. It was the first of many stops. As we followed them, from the market to the front gate to the inn, I noticed something strange. It was first the woman whom anyone spoke to, if Luke didn’t initiate a conversation. ‘Ada’ was her name, it seemed. Everyone they met would first greet Ada and ask how she was doing.

  “My mother is quite well,” Luke would respond. It was like that everywhere they went.

  “Ada, your order is ready!”

  “My mother would like to arrange a delivery.”

  “Ada, I haven’t seen you in days. Have you been fasting again?”

  “My mother is eating quite well; I appreciate your concern.”

  It happened again and again, and each time it felt like some part of the woman was being shaved off. I didn’t like it.

  The day went on in much the same manner, with errands run while Luke spoke over his mother before she could answer a single question. I was growing more convinced Margaret was right about him with every step. But never convinced enough to act in the way she wanted. I couldn’t kill a person, or I would have killed her first. I suppose I almost had, in a way. But only by giving her death as an option. But I wouldn’t take another person’s life. I couldn’t. It wasn’t a moral line I’d drawn in the sand so much as a crack in glass skin that would shatter under the pressure such an act would put on me. The sun was setting when they finally began their slow walk home. I didn’t even realize that was where they’d been heading until they went inside. It wasn’t in a residential district, rich or poor. Rather, their final destination for the first day was the temple on the east end of the city. I’d never visited the temple in all my time in Beddenmor, which seemed strange if I focused on the fact. But I was too distracted to dwell on it.

  It wasn’t until Luke put a key into a lock on the gate that I realized the two must live on the temple grounds. They were finally going home. I felt relieved for Ada. With the need for so much support to walk, such a long day on her feet must have been exhausting. I’d been walking the same distance, and even I was fatigued. But they were home at last. I had to cast again to get inside, 'Still World' freezing the gate open as Luke tried to close it behind him. I had to hold my breath as I walked through the frozen world, and the disparity between the expressions on the two faces twisted in my gut. Ada was grimacing as Luke wore a soft smile. Again, I felt anger boiling in my belly even as I struggled to keep myself from releasing the breath in my lungs. But I made it.

  The path only led in one direction, so I followed the neatly kept stepping stones through the weary road and past the various statues of Aethon. I wasn’t able to release the spell until I’d passed a large fountain placed prominently in front of the temple entrance. I waited in the shadows, a little way away from the building, for Luke to open the door. I had to muffle the sounds of my gasping for breath as time and the air it contained began to move again. The well-trimmed hedge I hid behind obscured my view of the approaching couple, and I had to lean into it as I watched the entrance to the building. Margaret, invisible to the couple, stayed in the open to watch them. I spotted a side door I might be able to sneak through instead of another exhausting attempt at ‘Still World’.

  This, however, turned out to be a moot point. The sound of moving stone was quickly followed by Margaret’s voice. “Mars, you need to see this. It’s safe, come out, now,” she ordered. I didn’t hesitate, quickly following the other woman’s advice. What I saw left me confused. The previously dry water fountain was now completely full, and the fountain itself had moved several paces. I emerged after Luke and Ada had disappeared, and was able to walk directly to the edge of the now vibrant fountain. Where it had been, I now saw a spiral staircase, leading deep into the dark.

  End of the First Day