When Marie Rosalind Gupta found her aging cat, Miffy, hunched up and stiff beneath her bedside table, she made a solemn, silent promise: she would do everything to never feel such terrible loss again.

“That lantern holds the soul of the unborn child. If it dies, so will the baby. And mind the Crooked-Neck Woman. She’ll stop at nothing to get her hands on a fragile spirit.”…