Another terror of the night. She was baffled by the grievous encounter with a bloodsucker. Finley was dear and kind, not a creature with teeth bare and an axe to grind. She held on to the one unbothered and misunderstood. She cried tied in a rope with a piece of cloth stuffed in her mouth.

    “Don’t make a sound,” Catherine yelped. She slowly plucks out the saliva-drenched cloth from Mary’s mouth.

 This was bad. Very bad.

    “Let me go,” Mary pleaded. “I swear I only broke in because—“

     “That doesn’t matter right now,” Catherine said with her eyes darkened with a shallow depth of angst.

Mary grew confused by the...