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the ground. The young woman's breast was heaving, gasping for air. Her eyes stared up in terror; her
hands twitched ineffectually at her side. What to do? Two puncture wounds on her neck trailed twin
rivulets of blood. A rattle sounded in her throat. Ann wanted to take the girl's head between her hands,
but she dared not.
"Breathe!" she shouted at her. "Breathe!"
Her command still hung in the air as the girl's last breath sighed away. The stare turned glassy. Ann let out
a small sound of shock or despair. She recognized the girl. It was Molly who worked in the tavern. No
better than she should be, Uncle Thaddeus had said, but no one deserved this. Ann felt the stranger's
presence above her. Somewhere she heard shouts. She turned up toward him. "She's& dead."
He said nothing, but looked up, behind Ann.
Ann turned and saw a crowd of men carrying flaming torches, pistols or cudgels at the ready, coming up
the path from the tavern below.
"You there!" Squire Fladgate, the doughy justice of the peace, called. "Stand where you are. Who
screamed?"
"I did," Ann said, mustering what composure she could.
The crowd of men in work clothes clustered around Ann and the body of the girl, and the stranger. Their
faces were demonic in the flickering torchlight as they stared at Molly. 'The Van Helsing chit has done it
now," a voice from the center of the pack called.
The squire eased his bulk onto his knees. "We thought it was Molly who screamed. She was working at
the tap one minute, and the next minute& " He touched his fingers to the girl's throat, then shook his head.
"She's dead."
"I alays know'd the Van Helsing girl was a killer, the mad ones alays are." This was Mrs. Bennigan. She
had reason to hate Ann. In the disturbing onset of her powers Ann had blurted out the woman's
infidelities when Mrs. Bennigan was shaking her for knocking over a tin of nails in the ironmonger's store.
"Mad? She's a witch pure and simple, and she killed Molly!" Ahhh. Mr. Warple. He had his reasons for
hating Ann, too. By the time Mr. Warple brushed against her she no longer blurted things out. But he
must have seen in her eyes that she knew he suffocated his sick wife with a pillow when he couldn't stand
her moaning anymore. Ann didn't blame him. She knew he did it to spare his wife the pain, as much as to
escape the yoke of her sickness. She knew too that he suffered every day for it. But that didn't make him
love her for knowing it.
"Hanging's too good for her."
"Oughta be burned!"
The voices clamored around her. All of them wished her dead or gone. Ann shrank back. They mustn't
touch her! She had to get out of here! "It wasn't me," she whispered. "I didn't kill her, I swear." But her
voice was lost in the shouting. Angry faces closed in around her. She could hardly get her breath.
"You might hear her out." The commanding voice from behind her silenced them as if the man had waved
a wand.
Eyes shifted from her to the stranger and back again. She looked up. A hard look had come over the
stranger's face to replace the pain and remorse. That was even more frightening.
"Tell them," he ordered.
And somehow, she did. "There& there was a man leaning over Molly as I came up the path. I& I
surprised him. He looked up." Would they believe what she had seen? "I think& I think he was biting
her."
"Nonsense," Fladgate said. "I see no man." He heaved himself up awkwardly. "And these bites could not
have caused her death. See? They bleed but a little."
"You'll find her drained of blood, I think, if you examine her," the stranger said.
Ann stared at the stranger. Drained of blood? She turned back to Molly. Yes! Dear Lord, her flesh had
sunk as though the capillaries that supported it were& empty.
"It's her. The witch did that. Who else could?"
"She did it with her evil eye."
From the rear of the crowd came a commotion. Uncle
Thaddeus pushed his way to the front, gasping. "Uncle," she cried, and clasped her hands to her breast to
keep from gathering him in her arms. "You shouldn't be here. You don't look well." His face was gray.
"I won't let you harass her, Fladgate," he gasped, his hand to his chest.
"We don't need your help, Brockweir."
"Then why did you come to Maitlands?"
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