Lamora Shadebloom knelt in the dark and pressed another white flower into the soil. She had tended this ground longer than she could remember. She stopped counting the years after the first hundred. The garden bloomed only at night, and only for her, and she had promised herself it would never go untended. Tonight she was searching too. A soul had slipped into this realm, small and lost, and she meant to find it and walk it to rest. The mist around her carried tiny white blossoms like scattered stars. She worked between them without hurry. Her grey candle sat in the dirt beside her hand. Its flame leaned gently, the way a flame should. Then a sound came from the black trees. A dry click, like a branch breaking under a slow foot. She did not turn. She watched the candle. The flame rose. It stretched tall and thin and stopped moving. No flicker. No smoke. The worst sign the candle could give her. Lamora set her hands flat on her knees. She had learned this a long time ago. If she ran, it would follow. If she stood, most things passed through her like wind through a curtain. She kept her breath quiet under the grey veil. Something moved at the edge of her sight. A shape low to the ground, slipping between the roots of the old tree at the garden's far side. Mist curled off its back. Blue eyes caught her candlelight. A cat. Black, edges blurring into the dark. It stopped at the border of her flowers and stared past her, into the trees. Lamora followed its stare. A child stood there. A little girl in a worn sleeper, pigtails hanging crooked, a stuffed mouse crushed against her chest. Her feet were bare on the cold ground. She was not shadow. She was still herself, still solid, still frightened. The lost one. Here. Closer than Lamora had dared hope. But the candle had not warned her about the child. Behind the girl, the dark thickened. Something tall gathered itself out of the mist between the trunks. It had no face Lamora could name. It was moving toward the child's back on slow, careful feet. The cat's tail lashed once. Lamora made her choice. She lifted the candle. She did not run. She rose to her full height in her mist-grey dress and stepped between the child and the trees. She held the small flame out in front of her, tall and still and terrible, and let the thing come to her instead. The girl saw her then. Big wet eyes. A gasp behind the stuffed mouse. "Don't move," Lamora whispered. "Stand where you are. Look at me." The child obeyed. The thing in the trees kept coming. Lamora planted her feet in her own soil and waited for it to reach her.