“Dance with me,” she said, holding out a skinny hand.

Mark felt the bones under her skin, saw the hollow eye sockets, heard the music floating through the night air.

With her arm around his waist, she led him into the throng of slow-moving dancers. “Come,” she said. “It’s time.”

Pauline Rendall writes crime as Paula K. Randall, and has self-published a novel under that name. She has a story in the collection In a Word: Murder. Pauline lives in Essex and loves opera and cats.