That was when Cora noticed another woman clinging to the
shadows of a door stoop, her dress oddly childlike and several years
out of fashion. Her hair draped across her collar and down to her
knees in an impossibly long braid.
The witch.
“Thomas!” Cora gasped. He was immediately by her side, and
recognition dawned on his face with the same mixture of surprise
and horror.
The elegant woman spoke to Mary, reaching up to tuck a
strand of hair back in the braid. Then she took Mary’s hand, pat-
ted it, and pulled Mary alongside her.
“She’s rather upright for a dead woman,” Thomas said, his
voice dry. Cora didn’t know whether to be relieved at this proof
of life, or cross at the witch for pulling such a horrible trick on all
of them.
“They know each other,” Cora said. “No one knows the
witch — Mary, I mean. She never comes out of her house. Why
would she now?”
“Let’s follow them.”
Cora hesitated, but found the pull of answers too strong to
resist. She felt as though Mary owed her. She’d spent too long
being terrified of everything she associated with that house and
that woman, and now to see her walking down the street as
though everything were normal? Cora wouldn’t have it. This was
her town.
They hurried after the women, keeping a discreet distance but
careful not to lose them. Mary drifted as she walked, constantly
pulled back to the sidewalk and redirected by the other woman.
They disappeared around a corner. Turning it, Cora and
Thomas pulled up short, horrified to be nearly on top of their