And the smell of warm blood has a way of attracting demons.

Soon the fracas began to grow: petty little goblins barking and screaming, hawking their wares at the outskirts of the swarming.

“Come buy!” they squawked. “Come buy!”

Neither Lilith nor the Lileen paused even a moment to listen, but Bluma’s ear could not help but catch on their promises:

“You there! I have the smell of mountain stones after a long summer rain!”

“I have a melody without beginning or end!”

“I have a long night’s sleep!”

“Come buy!”

“Come buy!”

“Come buy!”

Bluma’s feet were slowing, and a chiding gray voice spoke into her ear: one of the Sisters of the Lileen.

“Take no notice,” she said. “They are too stupid to deal plainly. And besides, they rarely have anything real to sell: only memories and lies.”

“Memories?” said Bluma. “How can one sell a memory?”

The gray lady chuckled. “Why, by picking it up when it falls and trading it for something of value. Loose memories are like autumn leaves in the Far Country—the dead shed them easily.”

Bluma found her hands patting nervously at her shoulders and skirts. She had not dropped any, had she?

“And besides,” said another voice of the Lileen, “memories such as those rarely last. By the time they’ve come into goblin hands and made their way to market, they’re overripe and fading fast.”

“Then who would want them?” said Bluma.

“Oh,” said the Lileen. “The demons are desperate for anything that can make them seem more human. The better they can hide their true nature, the more respectable they become—and, eventually, the better able to deal directly with the humans they wish to ensnare.”

Bluma swallowed hard. Ahead of her, she could see Lilith’s bare feet padding pink through the snow.

The crowd was thick now, demons of all stripes surging toward the little Zubinsk graveyard like a rain-flooded river. If Bluma had been alone, she would’ve been subsumed, swallowed in the tide for certain, but traveling with the Sisterhood of the Lileen had its advantages: Lilith was known to all, and feared by those with any sense. The crowd had a way of parting to let her through.

More and more, though, as the blood welled up on her lip, the demons’ eyes began to pass from Lilith back to Bluma.

Before long, the whispering began.

“Lilith! Why, Lady Lilith!” a demon with slick hair called out from a clique of tittering followers, and after a long moment, Lilith turned to see who spoke.

“Let him through.”

The formation of gray cats behind Bluma opened and closed again to admit the smarmy demon.

“What is it, Belial?” said Lilith, without bothering to look at him.

“I must say, Lady Lilith: you cut a very fine figure in this shift of yours. Is it new?”