Nadya reached up with her single hand and traced the outline of a pomegranate with her fingers, biting her lip and staring at the fruit like it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Nancy said she spent most of her time as a statue in the Lady’s hall,” said Kade, pushing forward until he was in the lead. No one questioned him. It was good to have someone willing to be the leader. “I suppose that means she might be there now.”

“Is the Lord of the Dead going to be happy to see us?” asked Nadya, finally taking her hand away from the pomegranate.

“Maybe,” said Kade. “He’s got doors. He’s got to be used to people stumbling in without an invitation.”

“But you only find doors you’re suited to,” said Cora. “We didn’t find this one. We made it. Won’t he be upset about that?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Kade, and started walking.

“Why do people always say that?” muttered Cora, trailing along at the rear of the group. “There’s always more than one way to find something out. People only say there’s only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it. There are lots of ways to find out, and some of them even involve not pissing off a man who goes by ‘the Lord of the Dead.’”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t be as much fun, now would they?”

Cora glanced to the side. Christopher had dropped back to walk beside her. He was grinning, looking more at ease than she had ever seen him.

“Why are you so happy?” she asked. “Everything here is dead people.”

“That’s why I’m so happy,” he said. “Everything here is dead people.”

Somehow, when he said it, it wasn’t a complaint, or even an observation: it was virtually a prayer, packed with hope and homecoming. This wasn’t his world, wasn’t Mariposa, and the only skeleton who danced here was poor Sumi. But it was closer than he had been in a long, long time, and she could see the joy coming back into his body with every step he took.

“Do you really want to be a skeleton?” she blurted.

Christopher shrugged. “Everybody’s a skeleton someday. You die, and the soft parts drop away, and what’s left behind is all beautiful bone. I just want to go back to a place where I don’t have to die to be beautiful.”