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"Who was the last one?"

Her hands come apart.

"Evelyn. Who was the last one, and what happened to her."

"She burned," Evelyn says.

Every lamp in the hall goes out at once. All six of them, and the one in the lovely room behind me, and something in the walls of that house knocks twice and settles.

Neither of us moves.

"Who burned her?"

"The town did."

"Where was the Lantern Coven?"

And there it is, whatever it was that moved behind her face on Friday when Gage pushed. Grief that's been carried so long it's turned into a different shape.

"At the edge of the field," Evelyn says. "Holding the line."

My mother's handwriting, in a journal with the last pages torn out.

Do not trust the Lantern.

"You held the line," I say slowly, "so nobody could get in and stop it."

"So nothing could get out." She doesn't look away. It would be easier if she looked away. "That's what we were told it was for. Four generations ago and I wasn’t there but it doesn’t matter, because the women who were there wore this." Her fingers touch the little silver lantern at her throat. "And I wear it."

The tall thin woman in my mirrors. Behind the glass with her arm up, pointing. In my bedroom with no face. On my porch, smiling, in the fog.

Bare feet in the frost, all the way around Gage's house, once, and no scent at all.

Not hunting me.

Trying to reach me to warn me.

"She's been in my mirrors since the first day," I say, and my voice has gone strange and far away.

"She wasn't threatening me. She was screaming through a wall and I'm the first one on this side who could hear anything at all."

Evelyn says nothing, which is a yes.

"So what's tonight?"

"Tonight is All Hallows' Eve."

Something in me falls over.

I have loved that holiday my entire life. I built a shop out of it. I have a six-foot skeleton in a feather boa. And she says it in that old careful voice like a name off a stone, and I understand that this is different. This is from ancient times and is real and dangerous. The holiday that I've loved since I was four years old was just for show and fun. Not the same thing.

"At midnight the veil is thinner than it has been in four generations," Evelyn says. "And there’s a seam under this county that has been shut for a very long time. Anyone can push on a door. Only you can open one."

"So the Veiled Hand needs me."

"Yes."

"And you need me where they can't get me."