“I do not imagine it will be as easy as it appears,” Sorcha said. “More needs to be done, I’m certain. Something else must be waiting for us here.”

He wished he didn’t agree with her assessment. After all they had encountered, this seemingly clear path proved terribly unsettling.

Holding tight to Sorcha’s hand, he took a single step forward. She did as well. The moment their feet touched the churchyard soil, a flash of lightning cracked the cloudless sky.

Without warning, without sound, without pause, a woman appeared before them. A ghost.

She hovered in the air, her feet not touching the ground, her green dress wafting as if in a breeze. She was impossible to miss, and yet her form was not entirely solid. Duncan could still see the church behind her, through her, obscured by her.

She stared at them, watching them with a look that clearly foretold danger. But she said not a word.

“What is your assessment?” he asked Sorcha.

“If I had to guess, I would say she’s a Lady Grim.”

“I had heard churchyard grims were animals—usually dogs.”

Sorcha nodded. “Traditionally, the first living thing buried in a churchyard is an animal whose spirit guards the resting places of all who follow. But if that is not done, then the duty to protect the spot lies with whomever was buried there most recently. That person’s spirit remains until someone else is buried, who then takes up the role, which is later inherited by the next to be laid to rest.”

To the still silent and still watchful Lady Grim, he said, “We mean no harm. We have come only to fetch water from the mouth of the gargoyle. We need it to cure a very ill young girl in our village.”

The Lady Grim said nothing. She watched him, but her expression changed from anger to something very nearly pleading.

“Is there something you need from us?” Sorcha asked.

The Lady Grim motioned with her ghostly hand toward a nearby grave. Duncan hunched down low enough to face the stone. He wiped the dirt from its face, making the inscription clear. The grave belonged to a woman buried more than one hundred years earlier on what, according to the inscriptions, was to have been her wedding day. She had been merely twenty-five years of age.

From his position, he looked up at the ghostly guardian. “Is this you?” he asked gently.

She nodded.

“No one has been buried here since?” Sorcha asked.

The Lady Grim shook her head.

Duncan stood once more, looking at the dilapidated church and thinking about the crumbling village they’d walked through. She was the last person to have been buried here. And no one lived here any longer. No one else would ever be buried in this churchyard. She was trapped as the guardian of this place, held here for more than a century, unable to obtain her eternal rest.