Dancing Dead by Deborah Woodworth

flitted sideways.
    â€œIt’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t be angry.”
    â€œI just wanted to thank her.” Mairin twirled a soft brown curl around her finger. “For sending me the kitten. So I sneaked out again, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to.”
    â€œYou went out the next night?”
    Mairin shook her head. “The same night. I got some milk from the kitchen and fed the kitties, and then I moved them one at a time into the root cellar. I didn’t think about making them a bed until the next night.” Regret lowered her voice. “After I moved them the first night, I went to find the angel, to thank her. I went all through this building looking for her. I was getting really tired.”
    â€œBut you kept going till you found her?”
    Mairin nodded. “I went all the way up to the attic, and that’s where I found her. It was really dark up there, I could hardly see. She was moving a little bit, bending over—bowing, I think. She bows a lot. I didn’t know what to say right off, so I made a sound to tell her I was there.”
    Rose held her breath, her excitement growing. “Did she turn around? Did you see her face?”
    â€œShe didn’t have a face.”
    Mairin had whispered so faintly that Rose wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “The angel had no face?”
    Mairin’s lips parted, giving her the look of a much younger child. “I don’t think so,” she said. “She stood up when I made a noise. She was facing away from me, and her hood was down on her shoulders, but . . . I think she had a head maybe. I’m not sure, it was so dark. But she had a black lump like . . . like maybe she’d been dead for a really long time, and . . .”
    The unemotional Mairin had returned, which indicated to Rose that the experience had been terrifying. She hated to press, but she had to. “Did you see the angel’s face at all? Did she turn around?”
    â€œNay.” There was a hint of relief in Mairin’s voice. “She pulled up her hood. So she must have had a head, right? Because the hood stayed up.”
    â€œDid you speak to her?”
    â€œYea. I just said, ‘Thank you, Angel, for the kitty family. I’ll take care of them.’ She just stood there for a really long time, so I said I was leaving to check on them again. Then she bowed again, but not toward me, toward the wall. I was a little bit scared, so I left.”
    â€œShe sounds scary.”
    â€œBut she’s really good. She wouldn’t have given me the kitties if she wasn’t good.”
    â€œOkay,” Rose said, as she lifted the basket and walked toward the sisters’ entrance, “but we might want to leave her off the guest list for your birthday party. I suspect she might frighten the other children.”
    â€œI guess so. Anyway, she’s my angel. I don’t want to share her.”
    They walked out of the gloomy building into a late afternoon that was nearly as gray. Bright spring sunshine was rapidly giving way to charcoal thunderclouds. It would surely be an inhospitable night for ghost watching, and Rose had never been so grateful for a coming storm.

Seven
    â€œY OU SEEM TO HAVE AN INORDINATE DISDAIN FOR THE Shakers, Mrs. Dunmore. One wonders why you wish to remain in their hostel.” With his black eyes fixed in a wide-open stare, Horace von Oswald looked like an owl about to swoop down on its prey.
    Lightning slashed across the thinly curtained window, followed by a blast of thunder that rattled the panes. All the Shaker Hostel guests, trapped by the violent storm, had gathered in the parlor after dinner. Mina and Horace had appropriated the wing chairs nearest the fireplace, leaving the others to make do with rockers or the small settee.
    Gennie had positioned a rocker so she could watch both the fire and the other guests. Learning from Rose about how Mairin had found her