This both comforted and angered Bluma: she desperately wanted someone to understand, but she didn’t see how anyone possibly could.

Wheeling about, Bluma held out her hand. “The spoon,” she said. “Give me the spoon.”

Lilith raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

It took a long moment for Bluma to collect herself. All she wanted was to be left alone—by the people in Tupik, by the demons in the graveyard, and, most of all, by the Darkness that Prowls at the End of Everything. “It was my name,” she said. “Someone called me by my name.”

“Ah,” said Lilith.

“I want to cut it away,” said Bluma. “Give me the spoon.”

With a sigh, Lilith ran her long hand into the pocket of her shift.

But then she hesitated.

Bluma felt the anger stabbing up through her chest once more. “What are you waiting for? It’s mine! Give it to me!”

“Very well,” said Lilith, producing the spoon. “But I must admit, I am not certain how you mean to accomplish this thing.”

Bluma’s lips folded into a light, tight frown. “I’ll do just what I did with my face.”

Bluma took the spoon from Lilith’s fingers and gazed into its basin. There was no one there.

“Yes,” said Lilith. “But how do you intend to put your name into the spoon?”

The reflection above was cold: only snowflakes and the thick sheet of cloud that smothered back the stars.

“Maybe…,” said Bluma, and, bringing the spoon up to her lips, she whispered a puff of steaming breath. “Bluma.”

But even before she flipped the handle of the spoon, she knew it hadn’t worked.

“No,” said Lilith. “What you wish to shed is not simply a sound—it is something beneath, is it not? A handle, a bellpull?”

Bluma nodded. This was correct.

“Here,” said Lilith, placing a hand on the small of Bluma’s back. “Come and stand where I am.” Lilith’s hand was so cold that Bluma could feel it there, frigid through the thick fabric of her coat.

“Now raise the spoon and watch over your shoulder,” said Lilith. “Shortly, you shall see yourself coming down the alleyway, and when you recognize yourself…”

“Then I can call out my name,” said Bluma.

“Just so,” said Lilith with a smile. “You are very clever.”

But with a lurch, gazing up at Lilith above her, Bluma realized something.

“Wait,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Oh?” said Lilith.

“I thought you couldn’t cross into the town.”

“Ah.” Lilith nodded. “Shrewd as ever, Bluma. And you are correct, of course. I cannot pass into mortal territory uninvited. But, as I am sure you know by now, there are places that belong to both the living and the dead.”

Bluma’s eyebrows fell. There were no headstones or graves here, no crypts or markers to be seen.

“This is a graveyard?”