“There, now, sweetheart.” She brushed sweaty hair away from Leanne’s forehead. “We are almost there. Just be still and trust me.”

No. Fight.

The words ran through Leanne’s mind without her understanding them. They felt important. But she was calm, and she was happy. Henry stood not far behind Grace, his face seeming grey in the candlelight. He wasn’t smiling, but he was still happy, wasn’t he?

Wasn’t he…?

No. This time, the words hit her hard enough to hurt. Fight.

Leanne tried to step back. Grace’s hold on her tightened. The skin was turning red around her wrists where the woman pinched her.

Fight.

“Almost there.” Grace’s pretty blue eyes exuded comfort. The sensation was washing out of her like waves, tangible and heavy, trying to drag Leanne down. It was physically painful to reject it. But she did.

She closed her heart, refusing the emotions that were being forced onto her. And she clutched onto the memories.

Children, disappearing.

Grace wiping away the fear with a touch.

Patience whispering, “I have been dead for a very long time.”

Henry, taken in the middle of the night, while she lay paralysed and helpless to stop him.

Leanne sucked in a sharp breath as she escaped the thrall. And, in an instant, the woman ahead of her changed.

She was still recognisable as Grace. But not the Grace Leanne had thought she’d known. The woman ahead of her was twisted and deformed. Her limbs were skeleton-thin. The skin was papery and wrinkled. Her face looked more like a skull than anything else. Round eyes, vicious red behind the sheen of white, bulged out of the sockets above bony cheeks and a lipless mouth. The golden hair was gone, leaving the skin on her head bald and creased.

I always said she looked like a fairy. Maybe I saw more than I thought.

“Come, my darling.” The words had lost their melodic tone. They were rasping, inhuman, and shrill. “We are nearly there.”

Leanne felt herself being pulled. She was listing forward, tipping, about to fall into the circle that had been drawn beneath her feet. It would be the easiest thing in the world to let the bony hands drag her down.

She pulled back, fighting with everything inside of her. Leanne clutched at the memories that had been taken from her as she stared into the monstrous face. Using the fear, anger, and pain to fuel herself, she resisted the pull.

Grace’s face twitched. A whine escaped her throat. The candles around them guttered in the still air.

Carrying children over exhausted her. She became weak and sick. And those children… they were willing. They loved her, and they wanted to please her. She made sure of that. Just like she made sure they were afraid of Patience, so that they would never go to her for help.