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afraid of the dark or the trees. There was far more to fear from people than from whatever might be out here. Usually.
    It didn’t take her long to get to the graveyard, but her slippers were soaked through with damp, and she was covered with leaves. Imagine if anyone saw her out here like this in the middle of the night. What a mess she was.
    She’d been here before with The Burning Girl. The tiny church was just a ruin, little more than two jagged stone walls. It was covered with graffiti. The small, weatherworn gravestones tilted among the wildflowers and tall grass. Finley knelt among them, whispering.
    Eloise was angry at herself for letting Finley’s tough-girl act fool her. The girl was every bit as delicate and sensitive as her mother; Eloise should have seen it. The Three Sisters had their hooks in her because she’d been vulnerable. An unhappy home life, a mother who wanted her to hide and suppress what she was, a grandmother too far away to help her. There were plenty of dark places inside Finley for the sisters to find a home.
    Eloise summoned her inner resources.
    “Finley Montgomery,” she said, in her deepest, sternest voice.
    Finley turned slowly around. Her eyes were blank, her face slack. She didn’t even look like herself.
    “Finley Montgomery,” Eloise said again, lower, deeper.
    The girl stood then, shaking her head. Then she pressed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. It was clear she was disoriented, like someone waking from a very deep sleep.
    “Finley,” said Eloise more gently.
    “Mimi,” she said, looking up. It was just a whisper. “What are we doing here?”
    “You tell me, dear,” said Eloise. “I followed you.”
    “I was dreaming,” she said. Finley looked up at the sky, around at the trees. It was a lovely night, cool but not cold, with a gentle breeze. The Whispers were strong here. Eloise listened.
    “Patience wanted to show me this place. They want to be buried here. But their ashes were fed to dogs. Can you believe that?”
    Eloise wove her way through the overgrown weeds and the gravestones toward her granddaughter.
    “Dogs were believed to be the familiars of witches in the late 1600s,” said Eloise, with a nod. “It was not an uncommon practice.”
    Ignorance and fear were responsible for so much horror in the world. All the most heinous acts throughout history could be linked to those demons.
    “They’re so tired,” said Finley. She looked up at Eloise. Finley looked exhausted as well, and very sad. “They want to rest.”
    Eloise looked around for the sisters, but apparently, they were only for Finley to see.
    “Let’s see what we can do to help them,” said Eloise. She reached Finley and put her arms around the girl, and held on tight.
    “I’m tired, too,” Finley said into Eloise’s shoulder. “Does it get any easier?”
    “It does,” Eloise said truthfully. “When you learn to set your boundaries, when you get right with yourself, it’s a lot easier.”
    Eloise didn’t want to tell Finley that it took her nearly twenty years to do those things. And she didn’t even want to tell her about the failures. Eloise carried those around with her like a sack of boulders. The graveyard made her think of Ella, the child she hadn’t been able to save. Eloise took her granddaughter by the hand and led her out of the woods.
    Back on the road, Eloise made Finley ride in the Prius.
    “What about my bike?” asked Finley. She looked at it with worry.
    “We’ll come back for it in the morning,” said Eloise. “It’ll be fine there.”
    Eloise hoped that someone would steal it. But they couldn’t get that lucky. It stood there shining in the scant moonlight, taunting Eloise. The woman in the black dress stood beside it.
    “Let me ask you,” said Eloise. They were on the way home. “Who really wanted that bike? You or Abigail?”
    “Me,” said Finley without hesitation.
    “ Why , Finley?” Eloise asked, unable to keep the exasperated worry