The sequel to What Moves the Dead, again featuring Gallacian ex-soldier Alex Easton, kan footman Angus, British mycologist Eugenia Potter, and some fresh night terrors.
Several months after their ordeal at the Usher home in Ruravia, Alex and Angus travel to a mountain lodge in Gallacia that was left in Alex's ownership by kan late father. Alex isn't best pleased to be there, as Gallacia is dreary, especially in wintertime, but ka trusts that the longtime caretaker will have things in good order when they arrive. Then the pair find the lodge in poor condition and its caretaker missing, the nearby wilderness is strangely silent and empty, and the nearby townsfolk are spreading rumors of an evil spirit that walks in dreams...
A second sequel, What Stalks The Deep, was published in 2025.
This story contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: Alex muses on this as the mark of a true supernatural story. Made up stories tend to be neat, and tie things up nicely, and make sense. Alex thinks stories that seem like random nonsense are more likely to be real. An example given is a soldier who experiences crossing a room as taking an hour listening to creepy lullabies the whole time.
- Apron Matron: Widow Botezatu, the only person in the village of Wolf's Ear who would take Alex's job offer to look after the lodge once the rumors of evil spirits got around, is a deeply religious and fearsome old woman. She constantly berates Alex for not being god-fearing enough, but ka puts up with it because she is genuinely excellent at her job, and her grandson Bors is a very pleasant man who adores her.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Discussed and justified. Alex says that kan’s initial failure to believe in a supernatural cause for the problems at the lodge might seem strange after the first book, but compares knowing the supernatural exists to knowing exotic animals exist: of course there’s such a thing as an emu, but it would be rare and unusual for an emu to actually show up in Europe, so that’s hardly going to be your first guess.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: At the climax, the moroi pursues Alex through a dream realm where ka cannot interact with anyone, and the world seems to rot away under kan touch. When they end up in one of Alex's recurring dreams of a past war, however, Alex realizes that ka is now armed and, operating on dream logic, can fight back against the moroi in a way that's impossible in the waking world.
- Benevolent Boss: On seeing that Bors is sick Alex immediately insists he take time off. Indeed Alex wants to be even more considerate of his condition, except that doing so would cross into being "charity" and become offensive. So ka comes up with excuses that allow everyone to save face.
- Body Horror: Bors refers to the woman he sees in his dreams as "the woman with the broken face". This turns out to be a pretty apt description when the moroi visits Alex for the third time and finally attempts to kill kan; her face splits open and sloughs off, revealing only a void beneath, while her eyeballs stay in place. Alex also sees the horses rot to pieces under kan touch while trying to flee the moroi.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In the first book, the fungus from the tarn was a Non-Malicious Monster that was merely exploring the world and had no understanding of the fact that its actions were horrific to the people encountering it. The moroi rumored to haunt the Easton family's old hunting lodge is a vampiric spirit originating from Romanian folklore that rises from the grave of a person buried without proper funeral rites and stalks the living in their sleep, intentionally killing them by stealing their breath. In addition to their differing goals and maliciousness, the first had a scientific (if speculative) explanation, while the new antagonist is entirely supernatural in origin.
- December–December Romance: It was implied in the first book that Angus (who is at least in his sixties and probably older), was attracted to Miss Potter, who is of a similar age, and that it was possibly mutual. The whole reason Alex and Angus traveled out to the hunting lodge in the sequel was so that Eugenia could visit them and examine the local mushrooms and fungus, and Alex takes care to let her and Angus spend plenty of time alone together. By the end of the book, it is confirmed that Angus and Eugenia have romantic inclinations towards each other.
- The Fair Folk: Discussed. In Gallacia they are referred to as the Other Families. One of the things that superstitious people in Gallacia do is to hang red thread around the house as a means of warning off any fae who might be inclined to steal children. Alex notices kan hired housekeeper doing the same after Bors falls ill, and reasons that she's probably resorting to any folk remedy she can think of to ward off evil.
- Genre Blindness: Alex's narration lampshades that the problem with being in a ghost story is that you don't know you're in a ghost story at first, hence why ka doesn't immediately pack up and leave after having a nightmare of the Moroi.
- Gentle Giant: Bors, Widow Botezatu's grandson who comes to perform manual labor around the lodge, is a big, strapping young man who is pleasant and patient. Alex also notes that while he's not necessarily quick-witted, Bors is fairly reasonable and intelligent too.
- Ghostly Goals: The moroi is said to be the spirit of a person who was buried on unconsecrated ground, who now roams in the night seeking to kill anyone sleeping nearby by stealing their breath in retribution. Alex muses on what her actual goals might be, and whether she is simply trying to carry on surviving in the only way that she can, or if she has any human reasoning left, when ka faces her in kan dream.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The Moroi's presence brings an unnatural silence that muffles all ambient noise. Alex first notices the phenomenon in the forest without understanding it, then exploits it later to estimate the Moroi's location when it's out of sight.
- Macabre Moth Motif: Moths are said to be one form that the moroi can assume. Alex is given a scare by one early on in the book when it crawls out of the eye of a mounted deer head on the wall, and ka repeatedly sees moths in kan dreams while the moroi is pursuing kan.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Technically, except that everyone is convinced it was magic. Technically Alex could have had a fever dream, combined with pneumonia and sleepwalking, at the same time Bors got better. Technically.
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: In preparation for visiting Gallacia, Miss Potter picked up an English-to-Gallacian phrasebook. Unfortunately, a lot of the phrases it contains turn out to be quite rude in Gallacian, and Alex is both amused and appalled by how she greets kan.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: After Widow Botezatu informs kan of her belief that the moroi was a person buried underneath the springhouse on kan property, and that the water flowing there was what kept her from rising previously, Alex has the stone blocking the water hauled away to give the Widow peace of mind. It actually infuriates the Widow - freeing the river simply prevented it from returning to its body, forcing it to move to dreams entirely and focus on consuming breath to survive.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Speculated, and ultimately left ambiguous. Alex actually prays to God to stop sending ka innocent monsters. But its left entirely ambiguous whether the Moroi was an innocent victim or was a monster while alive, and whether she is human anymore and trying to survive or simply a hungry spirit.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Alex unblocks the spring that had previously prevented the Moroi's spirit from leaving its body. Unfortunately, ka does it while the Moroi's spirit is preying on Bors, preventing it from returning to its body. It's the one time the widow Botezatu loses her temper with kan.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: A major focus in this story, even more than the previous. Alex suffers flashbacks a few times, as well as tinnitus, and muses on how The War feels more like a place ka can stumble into than a time that has passed. This ultimately ends up saving ka, since kan dream with the Moroi becomes a flashback and being in the war allows kan to fight back.