Maren had rung the hollow bells over six hundred graves. Each toll dragged a dead soul up just long enough for one last word. She'd done it so long it bored her. But tonight the bell rang before she touched the rope. One cold iron note rolled across the frozen yard. She opened her casebook to write it down, and the page was already full, in handwriting that was not hers.

Maren had a rule: never answer a bell she didn't ring. So she tore the strange page out, held it to the lantern flame, and let it burn. The writing didn't char. The letters lifted off the paper, hung in the cold air, and rearranged into new words. "Burning the message," they spelled, "does not cancel the debt."

Maren backed away from the hovering words and ran for the chapel, bolting the heavy door behind her. For one breath there was silence. Then every candle blew out at once, and in the dark the same calm voice spoke right beside her ear. "There is no door between us. There never was."

Maren stopped running. In the black chapel she turned toward the voice and stood her ground. "If there's no door, then talk to me. What do you want?" "A grave. The one you owe me," it said. "Dig it, and we are even." She lit her lantern with shaking hands and went out to the yard. One grave, one last bell, and the voice was gone for good. Her dead could finally rest.