The carousel was on fire again, and it would be for the next week. This was the week that spirits walked, living, dead, and those that were neither. They came to the clearing in the woods marked by the rusted out corpses of cars, a sacred place lit only by the moon and the Skins that the spirits chose to wear. Many took gourds or pumpkins or old scarecrows and struck fires in the eyes to appear fearsome, deranged, and devilish. Most often, these were the kinder spirits. Those who got a laugh from shrieking humans who stumbled too far into the woods.

No, the spirits one truly needed to be careful of were the ones who didn't let themselves be seen at all. Chiron was one such as this. Treading shadows, folding his arms as the summit convened. He'd been let out of his casket for the night, maybe two, but being immortal meant his life was bound to a contract. He served or died, and Chiron was beginning to think dying was the better option.

Demons clustered in the undergrowth, spitting and hissing at each other, pumpkin heads knocking about, until Chiron flicked his tail irritably and they went still as stone. Their huge, flaming eyes slid terrified looks before they scampered off in a rustle of moldering leaves.

The forest hummed and spat with firelight and crickets until the Lady Gloribelle, Warden of the wood appeared. Silence so fast and so harsh that even the insects stopped. She was fog in lace, dove wings sprouted from her shoulders, spiders trailed in her train. Her eyes were pearls that cast blindness on anyone who got lost in them. Demons went motionless, pumpkin heads stilled. The fire in so many skulls and Skins froze, mesmerized by her presence.

Lady Gloribelle was dead. She had been for time unknown, but she, Chiron knew, was of the Elderkin and her power had come from somewhere deeper, as it did for most Wardens. Death didn't hold her the same way it held others. The way it would've held Chiron if he hadn't signed.

"This is a week of spirits," said Lady Gloribelle, her voice like moonbeams and moths, a thing of the mind and imagined hearing. "This week begins the renewal of our power, a power that the things who crawled up from the mud on this earth have forgotten to fear."

A young fox spirit let loose a howl before she was silenced by her friends.

"They have bound us and controlled us," Lady Gloribelle said, her pearl eyes drifting among the shadows until they landed on the one Chiron had wrapped around himself. "But as the doors open and our power floods back, let this be the week that we remind them what they've forgotten."

Chiron's breath went tight in his lungs. Was the Lady Gloribelle making war? A chord thrummed inside him on a broken string. He'd been a spirit of war once. Death and blood and mayhem until he'd sold it all on a single fear. Still he felt those pearl eyes, waiting to see if he'd break, if he'd look, if he was weak enough to stumble into them and forfeit his own sight. Chiron thickened the shadows until they gauzed his own eyes and then he fixed the Lady Warden with a gaze that said yes.

No more chains. No more caskets. No more contracts.

"My family," said Lady Gloribelle, "my spirits. Let us revel, and let us be free." With a gust of wind spinning leaves and fog, she whirled away and was gone, leaving a hush the size of a canyon.

The carousel continued to burn, as did the sea of eyes all around it, and not just the eyes, but Chiron's heart. He felt more alive than he had in millennia. Each day the doors were open this week, the spirits' power would grow stronger. He would grow stronger. But never before had they been granted permission to break things. To alter the order of things.

What's changed? Chiron wondered. This game was bigger and more dangerous than the pieces he could see, but if he had a chance to undo what had been done, then he was going to take it.