The Longhold

Eliza Hoyle keeps a pawnshop above the flood line of a city where magic only lasts as long as strangers remember watching it. Touch an object, and she can witness a working years after it was cast — and make it stand again. It is a hanging crime. When a mill guard-charm is struck from the sworn books and girls die on the spinning floor, Eliza discovers the Attestation Office is not policing memory but harvesting it, and the whole drowned quarter is marked for clearance.