Chapter I
The Last Lamp on Wickery Lane
Odessa Vane had lit four hundred and eleven lamps in Hollowmere every night for nine years, and every one of them had caught on the first touch. Until Tuesday.
The lamp at the dead end of Wickery Lane would not light. She tried her pole, then her matches, then the trick her father taught her, cupping the wick and breathing on it as if it were a cold hand. Nothing. The glass stayed dark, and the dark behind the glass seemed, she would swear later, a little darker than the rest of the night.
Tied to the post with a red thread was a card, folded once. She knew what it said before she opened it, the way you know a letter is bad news by the weight of it.
You owe me a light.
No name. Just a smudge of soot in the corner, shaped like a thumbprint, still warm. When she touched it, a single rose from the card, hung in the air in front of her face, and drifted off toward the Office of Unclaimed Light.
Odessa followed it. Of course she did.