“I play for skeletons, not souls,” protested Christopher, even as he raised his flute to his mouth and blew a silent, experimental note. The specks of light abandoned Sumi, rising into the air and swirling wildly around him. He continued to play, until, bit by bit, some of the light peeled away and returned to the air, while some of the light began to coalesce in front of Sumi’s skeleton. Bit by bit, particle by particle, it came together, until the glowing, translucent ghost of a teenage girl was standing there.

She wore a sensible school uniform, white knee socks, plaid skirt, and buttoned blazer. Her hair was pulled into low braids, tamed, contained. It was Sumi, yes, but Sumi rendered motionless, Sumi stripped of laughter and nonsense. Rini gasped again, this time with pain, and raised her remaining hand and the stump of what had been its twin to cover her mouth.

The specter of Sumi looked at the skeleton. The skeleton looked at the specter.

“Why is she like that?” whispered Rini. “What did you do to my mother?”

“I told you, we have her ghost, but not her shadow—not her heart. Her heart was a wild thing, and this isn’t where the wild things go,” said Nancy. “If it were, I wouldn’t be here. I was never a wild thing.” She looked at the shade of Sumi with regret and, yes, love in her eyes. “We’re all puzzle boxes, skeleton and skin, soul and shadow. You have two of the pieces now, if she’ll go with you, but I don’t think her shadow’s here.”

“Mama…” The word belonged to the lips of a much younger girl, meant for bedtimes and bad times, for skinned knees and stomach aches. Rini offered it to Sumi’s shade like it was a promise and a prayer at the same time, like it was something precious, to be treasured. “I need you. Please. We need you. The Queen of Cakes will rise again if you don’t come home.”

The Queen of Cakes would never have been defeated: Sumi had died before she could return to Confection and overthrow the government. Rini wasn’t just saving herself. She was saving a world, setting right what was on the verge of going wrong.

The carefully groomed shade of Sumi looked at her blankly, uncomprehending. Nancy, who understood the dead of this place in a way that none of the others did, cleared her throat.

“It will make a mess if you don’t go with them,” she said.

The shade turned to look at her before nodding and stepping forward, into the skeleton, wreathing the bones in phantom flesh. Rini started to reach for her with her sole remaining hand, and stopped as she saw that two more of her fingers were gone, fading into nothing at all.

“We have to hurry,” she said.

“You have to pay,” said a new voice.