by Zoe Aarsen
With me.
Mom had tried calling me twice by ten p.m., and knowing that it probably seemed unforgivably rude that I hadn’t answered, I called her back. Our house was completely unscathed, but a tree had fallen over on Glenn’s property and wrecked his roof as well as one of his walls. He’d be staying with her at our place for a while. She hadn’t heard any news about the Portnoys, but that wasn’t surprising. Mom didn’t socialize much around town, and said she hadn’t ventured past the corner to check out the damage since getting home from campus earlier that day. In futility, she urged me not to worry as we said good-byes, and tried to assure me that the fire department was taking care of “everything.” Figuring that following Mrs. Robinson’s wacky instructions couldn’t hurt, I still felt a little self-conscious as I strung an old shoelace through the hole punched in the gris-gris so that I could tie it around my neck. She’d told me to put something inside of it that had belonged to Jennie, which was easier said than done since I was at Dad’s and not in Willow, where Jennie’s few remaining possessions were stored in Mom’s garage. But then I remembered that I had an old school photo with me in Florida, tucked into a page in a photo album with all of the Polaroids I’d taken in middle school. It was one of two wallet-size school portraits I had of her, first grade and second grade.
I snapped a picture of it with my phone before I cut the original photo to fit inside the leather pouch.
All night, I kept one eye on the WBAY-TV website for local news from the Green Bay area while testing out various radio apps on my phone, trying to find a signal that would allow me to hear Jennie’s voice. Ever since Trey had read Requests from the Dead in the fall and had assured me that it was difficult for spirits on the “other side” to manipulate objects in our world, I’d trusted that they were limited in their ability to make good on their threats. Perhaps their stronghold in our realm was increasing now that they’d made the leap from Violet to Mischa, or they’d always been stronger than I’d realized. I fell asleep wondering if causing three tornados and nearly killing Amanda Portnoy was just a modest sneak preview of their capabilities.
* * *
Henry—thousands of miles away in France—had the full scoop by the time his FaceTime request woke me up in the morning. The buzzing of my phone woke me up, and I tapped its screen to speak with him before realizing that my hair was completely askew, and I had weird crease marks on my face from my pillowcase.
“Hey,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “You heard about the tornados?”
He wasn’t wearing his preppy pastel tennis outfit for work. “Both of Mischa’s parents,” he said without emotion. “Dead. Totally random—they were on opposite sides of town when the storm hit. And Amanda’s on life support. Rumor has it she won’t live until the end of the day. If she dies, then that’s only three casualties in a town with a population of almost five thousand people.”
I fell back on my pillow, feeling like I’d been punched in the solar plexus. “How did you find out? Did your parents hear that?” If there was any possible chance that this was an unconfirmed rumor, I needed to know.
“No,” Henry said glumly. “Chris Stephens is a volunteer firefighter in town now.”
The name was familiar, although I couldn’t remember what Chris looked like. He’d graduated the year I was a freshman, and he’d been on the tennis team with Henry—that much, I remembered. It was easy to retain at least a vague memory of kids in other classes when your high school only had about four hundred students, total.
Henry continued, “He texted me last night and said it was surreal having to put Amanda’s body on a stretcher. He was her orientation buddy on her first day of high school. He said he cried all the way to the hospital to drop her off. Even if she survives, he said her spinal injury is pretty severe. She’ll never walk again.”
A chill ran through me despite the fact that it was hot in my room. I watched the ceiling fan overhead turn in lazy circles. The time had arrived when I had no choice but to tell Henry the truth about what had been happening since January. He was in danger; we all were, and so were our families. “She knew this was going to happen. Mischa. Ever since we went to Michigan and played the game with Violet again, she’s been getting weird signals. We think the curse was passed to her when we took it off Violet because it skipped her when it was her turn. Mischa was supposed to die before the end of November. And then Stephani died before the end of December. Maybe Violet killed someone else in November, but I think she was planning on catching up on however many souls she was behind with her big ski trip stunt in January.”
Henry shook his head, and when he spoke, he sounded angry. “Why didn’t you tell me, McKenna? I’m out here prancing around on a tennis court like—like—an idiot—and all these months, Mischa’s been in danger?”
“I told you about the candles. We thought we had it under control,” I admitted.
“Well, now Mischa’s parents are dead, and Amanda could die at any second. And I’ll tell you what else,” he said. His eyes had gone steely in a way I’d never seen them look before. “I’m flying home to Wisconsin today to deal with this once and for all. This has to end.”
I saw his hand reach for his phone screen as if he was about to tap to end our call, and I shouted, “Wait! Henry!”
But he was gone.
Deal with this once and for all? What could he have meant by that? I desperately hoped that he didn’t think that hurting or even killing Mischa—or even Violet—would end things.
And a second later, Dad knocked on my door. “You up in there? Coffee’s ready.”
I knew better than to play sick or plead my case for staying home. There was no way Dad would have sympathy on me because of bad weather back in Wisconsin. Not even for the tragic death of a friend’s parents. So I threw on clothes and tied the gris-gris from Mrs. Robinson around my neck. As I locked the door behind me to begin my walk to school, I realized I had completely forgotten to do all of my homework.
It was still raining. I pulled the hood of my raincoat over my head and hunched my shoulders, beginning my walk to school at a faster-than-usual clip. I wouldn’t have considered myself to be much of a daydreamer before Violet Simmons entered my life, but in the months since I’d moved to Tampa, I’d become a full-time space cadet, always lost in a deep spiral of what-ifs. It was probably for the best that I wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. That morning I was dazed by imagined scenarios about what might happen if Henry actually did try to take out Violet when he arrived in Willow.
When I reached the first intersection on my path, with a strip mall of small businesses on one corner and the freeway overpass ahead, I stopped to wait for the light. But as the light turned green for me to cross the street, I stepped off the curb, and an oncoming SUV just a few feet in front of me attempted to roll to a stop through an enormous puddle and hydroplaned.
The back end of it whirled unexpectedly toward me faster than I could make sense of what was happening. Move! my brain commanded my body. But I stood there, paralyzed with fear, until suddenly I was slammed against the pavement.
“Are you okay?”
My entire body hurt. It took a second for me to realize that I was still alive—and lying on my side, looking into the treads on the rear wheels of the SUV that had almost just hit me. My heart pounded in my ears. A kid I recognized from school was climbing off of me; he’d knocked me out of the SUV’s path a fraction of a second before it would have hit me.
Shaking, I got to my feet, noticing that my jeans were soaked from the puddle into which I’d fallen. “Yeah. Wow. Thank you,” I sputtered. “I don’t know what came over me. I couldn’t move.”
The middle-aged female driver, frantic, hopped out of the driver’s seat and dashed toward us, apologizing profusely as other cars slowed down to see if we were all right. Her children, inside the SUV, were screaming at the tops of their lungs. In a daze, I noticed the street signs on the corner where I’d nearly just died—South Willow Av
enue and West Platt Street.
I broke into a cold sweat under my raincoat despite the humid morning as I shook off everyone’s help. Fear took over, and—practically disassociating—I ran the rest of the way to school. Once inside the building, I was able to pull myself together enough to look normal, but my hand still shook as I twisted the combination code to my locker. Because that was a warning.…
Violet’s spirits had the upper hand now. Mischa was going to obey all of their orders… and this time, they were going to do everything they possibly could to stop me from interfering.
Including killing me.
Now I understood that Mrs. Robinson had given me the gris-gris because she’d known—and maybe hadn’t wanted to tell me for fear of scaring me—that I was in imminent danger.
I still had moments before the homeroom bell, so I went straight to the cafeteria. I breezed right past the cereal bar and coffee station, and I grabbed a handful of salt packets from the condiments counter. Knowing that there wouldn’t be many people in the outdoor eating area at that hour, I stepped through the double doors and used the compass on my phone to figure out which way was east.
Then I tore open two of the tiny salt packets, poured them into my hand, and threw the salt in the air. A girl sitting at a nearby table with huge headphones over her ears looked up at me in annoyed curiosity. But I ignored her, and instead looked down at the pavement where the salt had landed.
And I involuntarily gasped.
The salt had turned red.
According to Mrs. Robinson, this meant something was “on my tail.” Presumably… something bad.
* * *
Throughout the school day, I completely ignored my teachers and scanned the dials on all of the radio apps I’d installed on my phone with my earbuds mashed securely into my ears. I refreshed the Willow Gazette website every minute or so hoping for updates, and worked myself into a state of outrage by lunchtime that news coverage about the damage in town was so vague. I figured that Henry wouldn’t arrive back in Willow until around noon the next day with all of the connections he’d have to make, and not only did I need to figure how to get myself back to Wisconsin before he could hurt Violet, but I also needed more than ever to open some kind of a communication channel with Jennie. Without her direction, I had absolutely no idea what to do.
In calculus, my second-to-last class of the day, I found myself face-to-face with the guy who’d saved me that morning. “Hey. That was wild this morning,” he said as he sat down at the desk next to mine.
I agreed. “Yeah.” I was lost in thought about how I was going to get back to Willow, but he had no idea what a huge risk he’d taken by trying to save my life. So I added, “Thank you again. Really.”
“I’m Ernesto,” the guy said. He was a head taller than me, with broad shoulders, glasses, and an earring in one ear.
“McKenna,” I said.
“You’re from Wisconsin, right?” he asked.
I felt a blush creep into my cheeks. I didn’t think anyone at Hyde Park High knew anything about me, at all. “Uh, yeah.”
Ernesto smiled, pleased with himself. “Knew it! I recognized you from the news! When you showed up in this class, I was like, It’s that girl!”
Great. All this time, I’d thought I’d been a low-key, under-the-radar new kid who no one cared to meet, which had been fine with me. Ernesto was making it sound like everyone knew my story and had been gossiping about me since February. “There’s more to the story than what you saw on the news,” I muttered.
“All right, everyone!” Mrs. Orian, our teacher, said as she entered the classroom and pulled the door closed behind her. “Let’s take out last night’s homework.”
Just as I was digging out the worksheet I’d started in study hall the day before but failed to finish at home, I received a text message that almost made me jump up from my desk in shock.
VIOLET 12:53 P.M.
Call me. We need to talk.
Mrs. Orian scowled at me. “Miss Brady. Care to share with us?”
All eyes in the classroom were on me. I hadn’t realized that I’d gasped so loudly when I’d seen Violet’s name pop up on my phone. I collected my backpack and stepped away from my desk. “I have to, uh… bathroom.”
I rushed out of the classroom to a chorus of snide remarks and giggles. Once in the cool hallway, I jogged toward the double doors that led to the side courtyard, where I would be able to talk on the phone with some privacy.
Violet didn’t even greet me when she answered her phone. “Thanks for calling. I didn’t think you would—”
“Have you heard from Mischa?” I interrupted her.
“No, of course not!” Violet replied. “I’m the last person she’d ever contact. Every time I run into her around town, she’s still pissed off at me. She doesn’t seem to have any idea that you guys made me play the game again, or that none of what happened in the fall was really my fault!”
I resisted the urge to argue with her. Two of my friends were dead, and Tracy Hartford had lost most of her hearing during her bout with meningitis over the winter. But reminding Violet that all of those things were, indeed, kind of her fault, wasn’t going to get me far. I was very aware that I might need Violet’s help to keep Mischa from giving in to the spirits—especially since there was no way Trey was going to be able to get a leave from Northern Reserve approved any time soon.
“Yeah, we didn’t tell her about any of that,” I said. “It’s complicated. Better that she not remember anything from January.”
“Listen,” Violet said. “The curse clearly jumped from me to her. I mean, there’s just no other explanation.” She didn’t have to mention the tornados for me to know what she was referring to.
“You told me that when you first inherited the curse from your grandmother, you tried to ignore the spirits when they demanded souls,” I said. “And they threatened to kill your mom? Well, Mischa’s been getting weird messages about the number three. And now both of her parents are dead, and Amanda’s probably going to die soon too.”
The line fell silent. “Well, at least she’s caught up now.”
“Are you kidding me, Violet?” Her casual attitude about death never failed to blow my mind every time it surfaced.
“I’m not making light of it, okay? It’s awful! I feel so shitty! I’m just saying, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it. At least the worst is over now. Plus, my life isn’t all that great now that the curse isn’t on me anymore, but that’s irrelevant.”
I ignored Violet’s defeatist attitude, refusing to believe there was nothing we could do. We hadn’t broken the curse, but we’d changed the circumstances, and that made me believe more than ever that it was possible to end this. But dealing with a murderous version of Mischa was more than I could handle on my own. “Do you have any idea how bad this is? Mischa was ignoring the spirits because I begged her to. Now she’s probably furious! She’s going to come after me. She’s going to come after you!” I hissed.
“I know, I know! That’s why I texted you! The next new moon is on April twenty-second. Maybe we can figure out how to end this before then.”
I felt, once again, as if I was going to start crying. “How?! I’m all the way in Florida! And I thought we’d already ended it!” Kirsten had told me shortly after our adventure in Michigan that she believed the original spell that Violet’s grandmother had cast to help Violet’s mother with fertility had mixed with another spell or curse. “Spell interference” was what she’d called it. But we were back at the starting line in terms of solving the dual mysteries of exactly what was happening and how to undo it.
“You need to get back to Wisconsin. I’m not dealing with Mischa alone. She won’t even talk to me, so it would be impossible. And it’s only going to be harder if she’s sent away now that her parents are dead.”
Violet told me that she’d heard Mischa had spent the night at Matt’s house, but we agreed it was unlikely that she would be allowed to live with
her boyfriend for long. I knew Mischa had at least one living uncle, her uncle Roger, but he lived in northern Wisconsin.
“There’s a memorial for Mr. and Mrs. Portnoy on Sunday, and their funeral is on Monday,” Violet told me. “They can’t really sit shiva because the house is totally destroyed, so they’re just having people pay respects at Gundarsson’s. Tell your parents that you need to be here for that.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. “It’s not as easy as just hopping on a plane. Even if my parents are open to the idea of my coming back to Willow to support Mischa, a flight on short notice is going to be expensive. My parents aren’t like yours. They can’t just drop hundreds of dollars on a whim.”
“Whatever! I’ll pay for your flight. Just get their permission, and tell me whether you can fly tonight or tomorrow.”
I took that in for a moment. Wisconsin. Suddenly, it seemed very real that I’d be home again within the next twenty-four hours.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, almost forgetting. This wasn’t going to be good. “One more thing. Henry Richmond is on his way back to Wisconsin right now. And… um, he wants to murder you.”
“What?!” she exclaimed.
“I just wanted to warn you. He may have gotten it into his head that killing you will break the cycle. So I guess if you see him…” I trailed off, not wanting to explicitly tell her to call the police.
“Great,” Violet muttered. “Remind him that we have a private security service, and my dad keeps guns in the house.” She ended the call before I could reply.
Since I’d taken my backpack with me when I’d left the classroom, I hung out in the courtyard rather than returning to class. Violet’s mention of guns had made my heart start racing again; we were all in enough danger without lethal weapons as part of the equation. The enormity of the possibility that my life in Florida—and maybe my life in general—might have been coming to an end cemented me in place. I felt, not for the first time since September, an anxious churn in my stomach like I was waiting in line to board a roller coaster. I was excited because there was nowhere in the world I would have rather been than Willow. But I was equally terrified of what would happen once I arrived.