Olive held still and listened. Her legs went to sleep under her, but she didn’t dare move. The light coming in around the cracks in the heavy window drapes got dimmer as the sun set. The talking went on and on, and Olive started to wonder if there had been any point at all in coming here for this. The room filled with cigarette smoke. At last, Carol arrived with a story about car trouble.

“Are we all here, then?” a man with a high-pitched mouse squeak of a voice asked.

“Yes,” a voice Olive recognized as Dicky’s answered.

“And we’ve got the diary?” a woman asked.

“No,” Dicky said. “Not anymore.”

“Well, where is it?” asked the woman.

“Hidden,” Dicky said. “It’s back at Lori’s. In the shed. Don’t worry. Everything’s been taken care of.”

Olive’s mind whirled, thoughts spinning like a pinwheel. What diary? Hidden in the shed at her house?

“It doesn’t sound to me like things have been taken care of at all,” another woman said. “Lori’s girl is poking around. The newcomers are asking questions, digging things up.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Dicky asked. “To ask for guidance. For protection.”

“We need more than guidance!” a man argued. “We need to stop that girl and those people building on Hattie’s land!”

“Plans are in place,” Dicky said. “But now we need help from the other side.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“Well, then, let’s begin,” a man with a deep, gravelly voice said.

More footsteps, the rustle of fabric. The sound of chairs being pulled back and rearranged. There were a few soft murmurs from the group gathered. Olive could make out Dicky and thought a couple of the other voices might be familiar, but she couldn’t place them.

These are people you’ve probably been seeing in town your whole life, she told herself.

The murmurs built to a hum. A hum that filled the room and sounded, to Olive, almost insect-like, as if she were suddenly in a hive of bees, a nest of some sort of strange winged creatures droning. Above the buzz, a single voice rose: Dicky’s voice, loud and sure, speaking with his fake Texas twang: a rodeo cowboy turned preacher.

“Spirits of the east, of the north, of the west and south; creatures of water, air, earth, and fire, we call upon you. We compel you to open the door.”

Then the hum changed, morphed into a chant:

As above, so below

The door is opened

Let the worlds unite

Let the spirits walk among us

Olive’s skin prickled.

“Hattie Breckenridge, come forward,” called a man.

“We give ourselves to you,” said another.

“We offer ourselves to you,” said a woman.

“We are your faithful servants.”