Olive was flipping through one of the books on witchcraft when she came across a section on magic symbols.

She actually gasped, like some stupid girl in a horror movie.

There, on the page, was a design that was nearly identical to Mama’s necklace: a circle with a triangle inside it, and inside that, a square with another circle in it. Olive read the words below it:

Squaring the circle is an important symbol used in ancient alchemy. To square a circle was thought to be an impossible task, uniting shapes that are not meant to come together. The circle represents the spirit world; the square, the physical world with its four elements. Some believe the triangle represents a door in which the dead, or possibly even demons, can walk through.

“Holy shit,” Olive said.

A door the dead (or demons) can walk through.

She thought of the symbol chalked on the floor of Dicky’s hotel. Was that what they’d been doing there? Trying to open an actual door to the spirit world?

And what if they’d succeeded?

Who, or what, might have come through?

“Ollie?” Daddy came into the living room in his work clothes.

Olive jumped.

“I’ve gotta go to work. Break in the water main over by the high school. Getting time and a half, though,” he said with a wink.

“Okay,” she said.

“What’re you reading?” he asked, looking down at the books. “Something for school?”

“Not exactly,” she said.

He scowled when he saw the titles.

“Where did these come from?” he asked, weirdly angry all of a sudden. His jaw was clenched and he was breathing through his nose like an angry bull. “Did Riley give them to you?”

“Aunt Riley? No,” she said. Olive thought. She didn’t want to get Helen in trouble. “I borrowed them. From the library. See?” She turned the book on its side so he could see the sticker on the spine with the call number on it.

“I don’t want them in this house. I don’t want to see another witchcraft book in this house again. I won’t have it.”

“Again?” she asked. Then, “Did…Mama have books like these?”

His face hardened even more, like he was turning to stone. Becoming a statue man. “I want them gone, Olive.” He forced the words out through his clenched jaw. “In fact, here, I’ll take them and drop them off at the library myself on my way to the school.” He grabbed them, held them tightly in his dirty hands.

“But, Daddy, you—”

Library books clutched to his chest, he turned and went out of the living room, his body rigid, his boots stomping too loudly on the unfinished plywood floor.

FINISH WORK

CHAPTER 37

Helen

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

LAST CHANCE