But her heel slipped on a patch of ice, and with a lurch, she slid and began to fall, her heart plummeting before her.

Surely Death had caught her at last.

Bluma landed hard in her neighbor’s haystack, shattering the wooden undergirding below. Her heart was pounding. She couldn’t catch her breath, and her head ached terribly.

But only the wood had broken. She seemed—yes, she seemed to be intact.

Far above, the Messenger of Death leaned out of her bubbe’s window, searching the ground.

Bluma had to go.

Now.

But no sooner had Bluma climbed to her feet and made her way out of her neighbor’s goat stall than there she was: the Dark Lady, pushing her way out Bluma’s front door.

Without sparing a thought for her route, Bluma turned on her heel and fled, running directly into the cemetery.

And this was a terrible mistake.

—

If the world of the living were a suit of clothes and the world of the dead the bony flesh beneath, then at each elbow there would be a cemetery gate.

Here the dead rub up against the living world.

Here the living world wears thin.

Bluma had spent her entire life within a stone’s throw of this graveyard, but she was immediately disoriented upon entering it that night. The graveyard no longer seemed centered on the path that ran down its middle: suddenly it revolved around the tidy black blanket of fresh-turned earth beneath which they had buried Bluma’s bubbe.

The young grave drank up all her attention. And for this reason, Bluma was twisted back to look over her shoulder as she ran into the cemetery.

By the time she came to a halt, she had already strayed from the path.

And you must never stray from the path in a cemetery once darkness has fallen.

But where was her pursuer?

Bluma’s slowing footsteps in the crunching snow seemed as loud as rumbling thunder. The night was cold and still. Snow had begun idly to fall, as if it had nothing better to do.

Had she outrun the Dark Lady?

But she had not.

There are certain ancient protocols that restrict the behavior of the Messenger of Death in the world of the living. But once cemetery borders have been crossed, an entirely different set of rules applies.

She came from the direction in which Bluma had been running, blossoming up cold and heavy out of the deep shadow of a moonlit grave: a cloud of frothy darkness, reaching out with long, choking tendrils.

She did not look the same now. But to those who know her, the Dark One is unmistakable.

In a flash, Bluma was running again, fleeing, weaving between gravestones.