THE GIRL WAS about seven or eight years old, blond, wearing a simple white dress and no shoes. She crouched down just off the road, her back to me. She seemed to be looking at something on the ground.

“Hey,” I called, frozen at the edge of the road. She didn’t look up. Her shoulders moved, and I realized she wasn’t just looking at something—she was digging at the ground in front of her. “Hey, are you okay?” I called again, and drew closer, uneasiness prickling at my skin.

She didn’t answer. She scraped up handfuls of dirt from the ground and shoved them aside, moving with frantic efficiency. I approached cautiously, a knot in my throat. The ground was stiff with frost, and yet she kept digging, her hands red and chapped, one nail torn and bleeding.

“Your hands!” I said, reaching for her. She turned, and I balked.

She had no face—none that I could see. There was only the crazed distortion of an ocular migraine, like a jagged crack in glass shot through with strobing light.

“We’re not safe here,” she said, and her voice was distorted too, like I was hearing it underwater. “Please. You have to find me.”

She sprang to her feet and dashed away, off along a deer track that shot through the trees.

“Wait!” I called, and without thinking or hesitating, I plunged after her. The path snaked ahead of me. A flicker of white flashed around a bend in the narrow trail, out of sight. “Stop!”

“Find me,” the girl said—and her voice was a whisper, but it echoed through the trees. I ran after her. “Hurry.”

I spilled out onto a wider path, this one lined with gravel that crunched under my heels. White bell-shaped flowers were scattered here and there. I caught glimpses of her flickering away at each bend in the path, but no matter how much speed I put on, she kept darting out of sight.

I came around a bend and halted abruptly. I was standing at the edge of the graveyard. My grandfather’s grave was a rectangle of brown earth among the green.

A young woman stood with her back to me beside a headstone that was covered with clumps of moss and so worn that it was little more than a featureless lump. She wore a long gray dress and had a leather satchel at her hip. Her hair fell in waves around her shoulders, dark as the shadows among the trees. With a small, hooked knife, she scraped some of the moss into a little glass jar before tucking it into her bag.

The young woman twisted, looking over her shoulder, and spotted me. She scowled. Her face was sharp, almost foxlike; not a comfortable face to look at for long, even from this distance. My heart beat fast in my chest, but I couldn’t tell if it was fear or something altogether different.

I drew forward, step by faltering step, and stopped a few feet from the gate. “Hi,” I said weakly.

She arched an eyebrow. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—there was this girl,” I said. “Blond, maybe seven or eight? I think she might be lost, so I was following her, but . . .” Except I hadn’t really thought she’d been lost, had I? Why had I run after her? I couldn’t remember now, and that sent a cold shiver of dread down my spine.

“It’s not a good idea to follow strange things into the woods,” she replied.

“She’s a girl, not a thing,” I snapped.

She gave me an appraising look. “She’s not lost. She’s not dangerous, but it’s still not a good idea to let her lead you around,” she said, as if this clarified things.

“She’s . . .” I took a deep breath, dropped my voice to a whisper. “Is she a ghost?”

She gave a sharp, startling laugh, like a bark. “No. There are no ghosts at Harrow.”

I flushed. “Right. Ghosts aren’t real. Obviously.”

“That’s not what I said.”