The Burning Girl Read Online Free

Agatha’s line about being seventy-five percent theater. Not at all.
    Agatha held on to Eloise tight.
    “You’re giving them too much,” Agatha said. “It’s eating you alive, Eloise. You don’t have to give them everything. You have a right to live.”
    Eloise blew out a breath.
    “I don’t know how to stop,” Eloise admitted.
    Agatha gave a gentle nod. “Or is it that you don’t want to stop?” she asked. “Grief has such a powerful pull toward destruction. And the living have it so much harder than the dead.”
    Her words touched some kind of chord, and Eloise bit back tears.
    “I don’t know,” said Eloise. “I just don’t know.”
    Agatha drew away, giving Eloise’s hands a final gentle squeeze as she did. “Think about it.”
    They sat in silence for a minute, a blue jay singing in the trees, a woodpecker knocking somewhere. Then:
    “A haunting is a relationship. It’s a give and take. Energy adheres—to people, to places. It seeks fertile soil. Then it burrows in and plants a seed. If conditions are right, the seed grows. It might literally be the land that The Burning Girl is attached to. You said that Miriam is depressed; that makes her vulnerable. It might be her that The Burning Girl wants.”
    Eloise listened.
    “It’s not about slamming doors and cold spots, demons dragging you from bed. That’s for the movies.”
    “Then what is it about?”
    It was true that in all her years doing this, Eloise had never seen anything like what she saw in the movies. In Eloise’s experience, this thing (whatever it was) was all about people needing help or justice, people who were lost and wanting to be found. It was about people who didn’t have voices or about unsettled energies broadcasting themselves. Only certain people could pick up the signals. But The Burning Girl was not like the others.
    Agatha shrugged. “What is any relationship about? People act out of only two motivations—love or fear. Everything else—greed, revenge, jealousy, sadness, kindness, generosity, passion, desire—are products of one or the other of those two motivators. Of course, it’s often hard to tell the difference.”
    “What do you think The Burning Girl wants?” Eloise asked.
    “It could be anything,” said Agatha. “But it doesn’t matter because you are going to stay away from her. Don’t let her get her hooks into you. You can’t help her. Right?”
    “Right,” Eloise said. She tried to make herself sound more certain than she was. Agatha frowned, unconvinced.
    This wasn’t the kind of answer Eloise had expected from Agatha, but she felt better than when she’d arrived. Agatha had given her something, some love, some kind of energy infusion. And Eloise was grateful, because Agatha was the only person who never took anything from her. Even Ray wanted and needed so much from her. If it hadn’t been for Agatha, her guidance, her friendship, her advice, Eloise wasn’t even sure she’d have survived the last fourteen years. She often felt bad that she had nothing to give Agatha. Eloise hoped that the old woman had someone or something that filled her up.
    “Don’t let them have everything, Eloise.”
    “I won’t,” she said.
    Neither of them believed it.
    • • •
    When The Burning Girl came to call that same afternoon, Eloise told her, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. You have to go home.”
    But The Burning Girl wasn’t having it. She proceeded to set everything on fire—the couch, the curtains, the clothes in Eloise’s closets. The whole house smelled like smoke, but of course only Eloise could smell it.
    Eloise still hadn’t told Ray about the girl. He had taken on a cold case, and he was consumed in the way he always was when he had a new one. Ray was always certain that he would be the one to find what no one else had been able to find. Eloise loved his confidence and his passion—until she didn’t.
    Ray’s new client, Tim Schaffer, had been searching five years for his