The keeper of small hours had one rule, and the rule was this: whatever arrived between midnight and the first bird was not required to explain itself.

It had been a long time since anything had taken her up on it. The town slept honest and early, and the things that used to knock had mostly learned to knock elsewhere. So when the light came down the stairs that night — slow, and wrong, and warm as bread — she set two cups on the table before she let herself turn around.