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girls (it had been a girls’ school then) who had held a charity ball for the soldiers in South Africa. Their faces seemed so grown-up and confident. Not like her at all.
    “I knew it!”
    Steve held up a fragile, yellowing newspaper,breaking Belladonna’s self-pitying reverie. She scuttled around to the other side of the chest and looked over his shoulder. It was a copy of the local paper from 1912. The headline read: “Local Girl in Terrible Tragedy!” And there was a picture of the victim, looking just the same as the girl outside Miss Parker’s office, only a little more stiff. Her name was Elsie Blaine.
    “It doesn’t really do me justice, does it? I had a really nice one taken just the month before in a new lawn dress. Made me look quite ethereal, according to Mamma.”
    Steve dropped the paper. “What was that? Did you hear something?”
    Belladonna looked at him suspiciously. “Like what?”
    “Like . . . like . . .” He looked around nervously. “Like talking. Whispering.”
    “Saying what?”
    Could he really have heard it? Could there be someone else?
    “I don’t know, I couldn’t hear it properly. Something about a lawn and ether.”
    Belladonna smiled and nodded slowly. “It was her.”
    “Who?”
    Belladonna hesitated . . . Steve looked like spiders were running up and down his back.
    “Elsie,” she nodded toward the paper. “It was Elsie. She said she didn’t like the picture and that she’d had a better one taken right before she died. In a white lawn dress.”
    “I didn’t say it was white, I said it was lawn.”
    “Did you hear that too?” Belladonna hardly dared hope. “Can you see her?”
    “No. Wait.
See
her?” Steve backed away, stumbled over a pile of cardboard boxes, and fell down.
    Belladonna reached out a hand to help him up. He took it, but as he scrambled to his feet, his face froze.
    “Oh, my god! There’s someone there! Right behind you!”

 
     

The Hound
     
     
    “W ELL, OF COURSE! ” said Mr. Johnson. “Why do you suppose they hold hands at séances?”
    Mrs. Johnson looked up from her béarnaise sauce long enough to remark, “Yes, but those things are nearly all a crock, dear.”
    “I know, but the point is that the tradition—the holding of hands—started somewhere. There had to be a reason for it in the first place, didn’t there?”
    Belladonna had to agree that it all sounded plausible. She tried to think back to remember if she’d ever touched anyone else when she’d seen a ghost.
    “I always thought the reason was safety,” said Mrs. Johnson as the silky sauce poured itself into a small bowl. “If everyone’s holding hands, then you know no one’s leaving the table in the dark to play the part of the wandering spirit.”
    “Or steal the silver,” remarked Mr. Johnson, grinning.
    After dinner, the family sat down in front of the television, but Belladonna’s attention really wasn’t on the convoluted lives of the families in the small fishing town of
Staunchly Springs
, where everyone was either in love with someone who didn’t like them, engaged in nefarious business practices, or burying their nearest and dearest under the new patio at the bottom of the garden. She looked at her hands.
    “Why should someone be able to see what I see just by touching my hands?”
    “It’s not just your hands,” said her father, “it’s anything. He probably heard just a little of . . . what did you say her name was? Oh, Elsie, that’s right. He probably heard Elsie because your shoulders or arms were touching while you leaned over the chest. But with layers of shirts and jumpers between you, the signal didn’t come in very clear.”
    “So I’m like a radio?”
    “More like a hot pan,” he gestured toward the television. “He’s not laying that concrete very well. They’ll be finding the body before it’s dry.”
    “A hot pan?”
    Mrs. Johnson was beginning to get irritated—
Staunchly Springs
was her favorite show and she