I whirled, tripping over the long hem of my robes, and landing on my rear again.

I was not alone.

This was not a ghost.

This was so much worse.

The source of the slow clapping behind me looked like a woman. As I stared, she grabbed an errant soul with her bare hand, balling it up like it was a kitchen rag, and then tossing it (just like a used rag) away from the door.

I watched, open-mouthed, as the spirit was caught in some invisible current, rushing along toward the gleaming golden curve of what looked like a bridge support. The Eternal Bridge. I ignored my curiosity and turned my attention to the more immediate problem.

The woman loomed above me, her elegant hands curved and ready to grab either me or the next spirit, I wasn't entirely sure. Even if she had not had the small curved sickle hanging at the side of her full skirts, I would have known what she was. A Soul Gatherer. A Death Bringer. A Grim Reaper.

I scrambled backward as she stepped forward, but she wasn't looking at me any more. Instead, she had drawn her sickle, and she now swept it into a graceful arc, like a fan in a dancer's hand. I watched as it sliced through the spiraling spirits like a knife through warm butter. Her movements were also like those of the traditional fan dancers, all broad brush strokes of motion and swirling skirts, but leaving a trail of empty space behind her as she quite literally reaped souls.

I knew I was going to die. No mortal is supposed to see such things, and I had just caught the attention of Death Herself. But in that moment, she was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen, and I almost forgot my regrets.

But that sentiment disappeared the moment she turned her gaze back to me. Her eyes were dark, the solid black of a moonless night, the same as the Spirit who had summoned me. Like the Spirit, she was also breathtakingly beautiful, but more solid.

"Well," she said, pursing her blood-red mouth, "this is a mess, isn't it." She sighed as she hung her sickle back on the high belt that disappeared beneath the edge of her cropped crimson jaegori, the short jacket-like top that most women wore, back in my world.

"I thought Reapers wore black," I stammered. A moment later, I almost died on my own because I realized I'd said it out loud, instead of just thinking it.

One of her perfectly shaped black brows winged up, and she glanced down at her red jacket and full, bell-shaped white skirt. The hem of the skirt was embroidered with red spidery looking flowers that looked eerily familiar. Only her hat was black, the traditional broad-brimmed hat with its chimney-shaped top, the black satin ribbons tied in a very elaborate bow that framed the delicate point of her chin.

"I expected you to be cowering in fear and begging for mercy, after what you've done," said the Reaper, disregarding my previous statement.

That's what I would have been doing, had I a shred of the sense other people seemed to have. But now that I hadn't been instantly executed for my crimes, I found my innate curiosity to be rebounding with enthusiasm.

"My Lady Death," I began, unsure of the proper way to address a Reaper (none of the books had said anything about this). "I'm afraid an untold number of souls escaped. And one very powerful Spirit." I only winced a little as I said it, the presence of this superior being making me long to appear professional and serious.

Her brow arched again, and her expression hardened. "That is why I'm here. And just when I thought I would finish my thousand years in peace." The last bit was muttered, as if she was thinking out loud herself. "No, I refuse." She nodded, as if she'd decided something she'd been considering earlier. "And you're going to help me."

"Yes?" I answered reflexively, the polite way. But inside, I was a blaze of confusion. "I, I'm sorry?"

Her lips twisted into a tiny smile. But it was not reassuring. "You heard me, Speaker. I'm tired, I want to be finished. And you have a lot of penance to do. We'll start with determining just how many spirits escaped. And then we'll clean them up one by one. As for that last one . . ." her lips flattened into a crimson slash, and her eyes glittered like glass. "I will take care of It in time."

Her voice had gone all deep, and there was something very dangerous in it. A simmering rage I wouldn't have expected in a Death Deity. A rage more like I had sensed in the Spirit who had lured me here.

I sensed a history to her rage, but I had gathered my wits enough to not ask about it. But I was desperately curious, as you might imagine. "My lady," I began again. "What do you mean, help you? How can one such as I assist Your Eminence?"

The Reaper's expression calmed again, her face as cold and inhuman as a white jade death mask. "I should reap your soul where you stand. But that would be too convenient. Do you realize what you've done?"

I dropped my gaze, the dam of terror breaking in my mind and letting the shame roll through, flattening all other thoughts. I think I've destroyed the world. But I didn't say that. Instead, I dropped onto my knees, bowing in the humblest posture of submission that I could. "I deserve to die," I said, miserably, feeling the ghost of tears but not crying, as this was impossible in a spirit form.

"Yes," her voice floated down, cool and deep and dangerous as a river in spring. "And you will. But not yet. Not while there's a use for you."

I am sure you would think me pathetic, groveling and aching with the weight of my failure, but in that moment, I felt a thrill rush through my tangled emotions. No one had ever had a use for me. Not my parents, not my fellow students, not Their Reverences. Not, I had suspected, even the gods or ancestors had given one thought to my existence.

"I'll do it," I blurted, though I should have waited in obedient silence for her to explain. "Anything. I'll do anything to make it right. I swear on my ancestors."

Her laugh was more chilling than her voice. Crystal clear and humorless, and deeper than I expected. "You are a rash one, aren't you. But I suspect you don't know what you've just offered me."

I honestly didn't care. I was still riding the high of knowing I wasn't going to die just now, and that Death Herself had some sort of purpose for me.

"Well, get up then," she said. "We have our work cut out for us. Four thousand. An ill-omened number, of course."

"Four thousand?" I asked, scrambling up, still terribly clumsy even in spirit form.

"Four thousand souls." She was no longer facing me, and in the curve of her porcelain cheek I caught a glimpse of a black hollow and white bone jaw.

I flinched back, but she didn't move, a bright splash of scarlet and funeral white against the endless darkness surrounding us. "So many."

She snorted, which was both unladylike and seemed strange for a nonmortal semi-deity. But then, I suppose she wasn't really a "she" at all, that was just how she appeared to me, and therefore couldn't be compared to any human standards.

How delightfully liberating, I thought, before trying to yank my unruly mind back to my current (and horrible) plight.

The Reaper waved an elegant hand, and molten silver lines formed the shape of a door, cutting through the darkness. So simple, so effortless, silver slashes of light with only a twitch of her fingers.

"Four thousand souls unleashed upon the world of the living. And one great and terrible Spirit that I have hunted for centuries." The Reaper looked over her shoulder, and I saw the shadow of the skull again, in the hollows around her eyes and mouth. "We must hurry."

"But my mirror, my amulet . . ." They were both terribly ruined, and I had no other tools to protect me from the dead. In my world, even their touch would kill me. In fact, even in my spirit form, I could still feel the cold spot on my forehead from where that Spirit had kissed me.

The Reaper smirked, terrible with that beautiful face showing over the skull. "Mere childrens' playthings. I can do far better." The door swung open then, a blaze of white light hitting the Reaper and setting her edges ablaze. For a moment, all I saw was a flaming figure, wings of fire curling out from a slim silhouette, in her place.

She grabbed my arm, and despite my spirit form, her touch was cold. "Death doesn't wait."

And just like that, we were gone, hurtling and spiraling and screaming (me, I was screaming), as an inferno of wind and light engulfed my spirit, buffeting me and burning my conscious thought to ash.

And then it was dark.