“It’s more than just standing there,” said Nancy. “Hello, Nadya. You’re looking well.”

“I’m drying out, and this world has no good rivers,” said Nadya.

“We have a few.” Nancy shook her head. “I don’t ‘just stand there.’ It’s like a dance, done entirely in stillness. I have to freeze so completely that my heart forgets to beat, my cells forget to age. Some of the statues have been here for centuries, slowing themselves to the point of near-immortality for the sake of gracing our Lord’s halls. It’s an honor and a calling, and I love it. I love it so much.”

“It seems stupid.”

“That’s because you weren’t called,” said Nancy, and that was true, and simple, and complete: it needed neither ornamentation nor addition.

Nadya looked away.

Kade took a breath. “Things have been going well at the school,” he said. “Aunt Eleanor’s feeling better. She hardly uses her cane these days. We have some new students.”

“You brought one of them with you,” said Nancy. She laughed a little. “Is it weird that I kind of feel like that’s more disturbing than you bringing a skeleton?”

“Her name’s Cora. She’s nice. She was a mermaid.”

“Then she still is,” said Nancy. “There’s always hope.”

“Sumi used to say that hope was a four-letter word.”

“She was right. That’s why it never goes away.” They had reached another closed door, this one a filigree of silver, containing an infinity of blackness. Nancy raised her hand. The door swung open and she continued through, into the dark—which was, once entered, not so total after all.

Gleaming silver sparks swirled through the air, darting and flitting around the room, as swift and restless as the rest of the Halls of the Dead were still. They would fly close to a nose or a cheek, only to jerk away at the last second, never quite touching living flesh.

Rini gasped. Everyone turned.

Sumi was covered in the dots of light. They clustered on her bones, hundreds of them, with more arriving every second. She was holding up her skeletal hands like she was admiring them, studying the shimmering specks of light that perched on her phalanges. Dots of light had even filled her eye sockets, replacing her empty gaze with something disturbingly vital.

“If she’s here, she’s one of these,” said Nancy, spreading her arms to indicate the room. “The souls who come to rest here arrive in this room first. They dance their restlessness away before they incarnate again. Call her, and see if she comes.”

“Christopher?” said Kade.