Anna Ngel had been dead for six minutes when the wrong prayer left her mouth. She remembered most of it. She had rehearsed the words in the hospital, in the car, in the bathtub, so she could cross the river with her dog. But at the end she forgot the middle line, and the veil only opened a crack. Enough for her to slip through. Enough for something else to slip in with her. She stood ankle-deep in cold water she could not name. A raft waited on the bank, dark wood twisted like roots, red symbols burning along its floor. Beside her feet sat a small white chihuahua with feathered wings folded neat against his back. Taquito. Her dog. He had died first, three months ago, and she had spent every night since trying to find the prayer that would let her stay with him on the other side. The thing on her back was not Taquito. It had climbed onto her the moment she crossed. She felt it now, a wet, heavy shape draped over her shoulders, arms of black water dripping down her chest. When she turned her head she saw a face made of sediment and river, eyes white and hungry. It leaned close to her ear. "Take me across," it said. "You are the boat." Her knees buckled. The water at her ankles rose to her calves. The raft drifted an inch farther out. She tried to shrug the thing off. It only pressed harder. Her feet sank. The current tugged. She understood then that it had mistaken her for a ferryman, and if she stepped onto the raft it would ride her down, not across. She would drown here in the shallows and Taquito would wait on the far bank forever. "Taquito," she said. Her voice came out thin. "Help me. Please." The little chihuahua lifted off the sand. His wings opened wide, and light spilled out of him the way heat leaves an oven when the door swings down. He hovered at her chest and barked once, clean and bright. The spirit on her back shrieked. Its water-arms loosened. Taquito barked again, and the light burned through the thing in patches, steam hissing off her shoulders. Anna reached up, grabbed a fistful of cold sludge, and pulled. It came free in a long, sucking rope. She threw it into the current. It broke apart and washed downstream, mouth still open, still asking. Anna stood on the bank, shaking, dry. Taquito landed at her feet and pressed his head to her shin. The raft waited, patient, empty. She could see the far shore now, and she could see that she was not standing on it. The prayer she needed had a middle line, and she did not have it yet. But she had her dog, and she had her own body, and the river had not taken her. She knelt in the sand and started trying to remember.