PROLOGUE
It was easier, she’d been told, if you kept a tune in your head.
Clementine sat as still as she could at the claw-foot vanity, searching her memory for any of the songs she’d learned on the piano in the parlor. But her mind had been blank ever since the auction, leaving only a wordless wail of fear like the keening of the dead. Behind her, mumbling around a mouth full of hairpins, Mother Fleur crowed over what an honor it was for Clementine to have fetched such a high bid, and how proud of her she was. The housemistress had spent the last hour preparing Clementine for her Lucky Night, lacing up her frothy white dress, rouging her cheeks, and shadowing her eyes with soot.
“You ought to be proud of yourself, too,” the older woman went on. She brushed Clementine’s woolly black hair away from her face and pinned it up in an elegant knot. A weary sigh tickled the nape of Clementine’s neck. “Sixteen years old, finally a woman proper. I remember when you were just a cricket—you and your sister both. But she did fine, Clementine, and you will, too.”
Clementine found no comfort in the words. Mother Fleur was well past working age herself. Her favor, a carnation, had begun to wither on her wrinkled white cheek, the cursed ink long since faded to gray. Clementine wondered how much she even remembered of her Lucky Night. Had she been this frightened? Had anyone? Sundown girls were discouraged from talking to daybreak girls about the business. They’d only told Clementine the essentials. Not whether these last minutes were supposed to stretch out like the held breath between lightning and thunder, or whether her stomach was supposed to drop like she was falling down a gorge. Even Clementine’s sister, Aster, had never given any details about her Lucky Night.
It had been Aster’s suggestion, though, to keep a tune in her head. It doesn’t have to be your favorite song, she’d said. In fact, it’s better if it isn’t. Just pick one you know in your bones, and think of nothing else.

Aster had also insisted that Clementine didn’t take any Sweet Thistle, the soothing tincture sundown girls were required to use to settle their nerves. She’d even gone as far as to tell Clementine to lie to Mother Fleur about taking her dose. Clementine hadn’t asked why, even though she’d been surprised. She trusted Aster in everything.
Now, though, she wondered if a drop of Sweet Thistle might not have been a bad idea.
Mother Fleur finished fussing with her hair, sticking the last pin in place. “Almost done,” she muttered. Clementine tried to relax and let herself enjoy being pampered. In her six years at the Green Creek welcome house, this was surely the kindest Mother Fleur had ever been to her. She’d never been prettied up like this before, and it was a welcome distraction from the duty that lay ahead.