by Zoe Aarsen
“You kids had better be on your way home. The storm’s coming in strong,” the station wagon driver called after me.
“Thanks!” I shouted.
Henry didn’t even wait for me to buckle my seat belt before laying on the gas despite the slippery snow. We drove for a few minutes in silence, allowing me to gaze out my window at the silent highway surrounded by the peacefulness of falling snowflakes. I wished Henry would turn on the radio so that my friends wouldn’t be able to hear my stifled sobs. Losing Jennie a second time around would be even worse than when she’d died because now there was hope in my heart that I might be able to reestablish communication with her, although nothing she’d told me hinted that might be possible.
The blood spilling from Jennie’s mouth had deeply disturbed me. Even though I assured myself that it was just part of the Bloody Heather legend and I wasn’t even sure if ghosts could experience physical pain, the gore—the stench of it, the heat rising off the dark liquid—had been the most realistic part of her presence. It was unbearable to imagine Jennie suffering like that on a constant basis in the afterlife, and I fervently hoped that her having to experience such a disgusting ordeal was just a required part of taking advantage of the snowy night on Route 32 in order to meet with me. The blood had also served as a reminder of the prediction that Violet had given Mischa. Choking, gasping, unable to breathe. The new moon would be rising in about twenty-four hours, and Jennie had just told me that someone was already in the process of dying.
Yearning to see traces of Jennie among the stars, I looked up at the sky, but my view of the fluffy clouds overhead was obscured by lacy falling snowflakes. I felt a sensation inside my heart that I could only liken to the blooming of a flower. It was like an artery that had been closed off since I was eight years old had suddenly opened, and a torrent of hot blood had rushed in, carrying in its current a buzz of happiness that I’d forgotten existed.
Jennie had been expecting me. She’d been holding on to her love for me just as long as I’d been missing her, watching out for me. But I had failed to even ask her if she’d been suffering during the brief time we’d had together. The familiar darkness of knowing that I was the twin who had escaped death—not only once, but twice, since Jennie had prevented Violet from condemning me—crept back into my heart. I was a selfish monster; I couldn’t even remember if I’d thanked her when she’d told me about showing Violet her own death to protect me.
It hadn’t occurred to me to ask her if there was any way that I could make it up to her for surviving the fire that had killed her.
“That was… insane,” Henry finally mumbled, interrupting my tearful reverie.
“So, what’s the deal?” Mischa asked. “Am I gonna die tonight or what?”
Trey reached across the back seat and took my hand in his. Jennie had confirmed our fear that Mischa was still next, whatever that meant. She hadn’t specifically said that Mischa wasn’t the one of Violet’s three current sacrifices who was dying at that very moment.
I took a deep breath and pushed aside the pain in my heart to inform my friends of everything Jennie had told me on our ride back to Willow.
CHAPTER 6
FROM THE FRONT SEAT, MISCHA bellowed, “How the hell are we going to get Violet to play the game again with us? McKenna and Trey aren’t even allowed within one hundred feet of her.” This was true. Violet’s parents had been granted a restraining order against both of us back in November, which was a little overkill since we’d both been sent to schools far from Willow as well.
Henry looked hopeful. “We can figure this out, you guys. Not tonight—I mean, it’s Christmas Eve. We’re not going to lure her anywhere tonight. But we have the answer now!”
He had a point. We had a lot more answers now than we did when I’d left my house earlier in the day. It was hard to get excited when there was still so very much left to do before I went back to Sheridan, but we’d accomplished more in a day than I’d expected. Seeing Jennie in such agony before she vanished made it easy to overlook that she’d told me exactly what we needed to do, as impossible as it sounded like it would be to accomplish.
“What was that bit about the five sisters? Who has five sisters? I thought Violet was an only child,” Mischa said.
“She made it sound like Violet has five dead sisters,” I said, trying to remember exactly what Jennie had said about them being a source of Violet’s power, presumably just as Jennie was a source of mine, although I’d yet to figure out exactly what my “power” was. “That sounds pretty dark, though, right? Five dead sisters?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Trey said. “We just have to play the game and predict Violet’s death, and then we’re done with this.”
“You guys? Don’t hate me, but I told my mom I was out shopping for her Christmas gift with Mischa all day and it’s gonna look really bad if I show up at home empty-handed,” I said. I hadn’t thought about it until that very moment, but my mom was going to be extra suspicious and possibly angry if I made it so obvious that I’d lied about my reason for being away from home all day.
“Would your mom like a Mercedes S-Class?” Henry joked. “Because I’m not sure I ever want to see this car again after tonight.” We all smiled, grateful for a moment of humor. “If I explain to my dad that I trailed a ghost down Route 32, I think he’ll understand.”
“Seriously,” I insisted. “Can we drop Mischa off so she can burn her candle, but then stop at Hennessey’s so that I can get a bottle of perfume or something?”
For the rest of our drive back to Willow, the comforting voice of Bing Crosby singing, “Silver bells, silver bells. It’s Christmastime in the city.…” filled the car. We drove through the security checkpoint at Mischa’s gated community, which was decorated with holiday lights. Henry let the guard scan his driver’s license, and he let Mischa out at the curb in front of her house.
“Call me or text me in an hour so I know you’re okay,” I requested.
She dashed off with her candle in her hands, hopefully to follow Kirsten’s instructions exactly.
Henry idled as we watched her enter her house through the front door. I was wondering if I’d seen the last of Mischa alive, but if I’d interpreted what Jennie had just told us correctly, someone else was in the process of dying that night instead of Mischa. It was rotten that this brought me relief, because I didn’t know who that other person was, but still… I was confident that I’d hear from Mischa an hour later.
The parking lot at our town’s drugstore was crowded despite it being Christmas Eve and getting late. There weren’t too many stores open in our town past eight o’clock at night on any weeknight, but Hennessey’s had a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.
“I’m staying in the car,” Trey announced as Henry parked. “I don’t need gossip making its way back to my mom that I was out shopping when I was supposed to be under lock and key at home.”
Henry accompanied me inside under the pretense of wanting to pick up orange juice for his mom, but I suspected his real motivation was wanting to avoid alone time with Trey in the car. Henry had been kind enough not to make a point of it throughout the day, but he probably had just as many questions for Trey about the night Olivia died as I did.
We split up once we were inside and I ventured over to the cosmetics aisle, having no idea what to bring home for my mom. Mom wasn’t really into makeup; she considered unscented skin moisturizer to be an indulgence. A set of memory foam leg pillows caught my eye. Just as I was reaching for them to check the price, I recognized a female voice farther down the aisle over the Christmas carol playing on the store’s overhead audio system, and I flinched.
“Yeah, we were supposed to fly out yesterday, but my mom was admitted to the hospital, so we rescheduled it for February.” She paused before continuing. “She’s already doing much better. It was just the flu, but my dad wanted her to stay in the hospital because our house is so drafty. Anyway, it sucks that we had to delay our trip, but St. Barts will always be the
re. The good news is that my parents are going into the city for New Year’s. Yep. Mandarin Oriental, every year. So you know what that means.…”
Ever so slowly, I turned my head in the direction of the voice, and even though I knew it belonged to Violet Simmons, my stomach still turned when I saw her standing in front of the nail polish display, phone pressed to her ear. Looking as deceptively angelic as ever, Violet wore a scarlet wool coat and an ivory beret, her dark hair cropped just below her jaw in a new trendy lob haircut. She was completely oblivious to my presence, and kept chatting away.
“Yeah. You know it,” she continued, mindlessly lifting up a bottle of ballet pink and examining it. I couldn’t help but notice that her fingernails looked as if they’d been chewed down below the quick, with bloody scabs on both sides of the nail on her thumb. Violet had always had perfectly manicured nails at the beginning of the school year; I didn’t have a single memory of seeing her biting her nails when we were still in classes together. “You have to hurry up and get well so that you can be there next week! Pete’s brother just turned twenty-one, so he thinks he can get a keg. It’s gonna be bomb.” She paused, listening, before adding, “Well, I’m sure she’ll turn up. I mean, first-world problems, right? It’s one thing to be sad that you got dumped, but a little much to have the entire police force looking for you on Christmas Eve.”
I was caught between desperately wanting to hear more of her conversation and needing to slip away unseen. Technically, even though it wasn’t my fault, I was violating the restraining order I’d been issued by Judge Roberts. Despite the danger of her spotting me, I couldn’t resist listening for just another second, so very much more curious about her after my encounter with Jennie’s ghost. Five sisters… What could that have meant? If Violet had sisters, why hadn’t she ever mentioned them? And why hadn’t I seen traces of them when I was at her house?
As I carefully placed the leg pillows back on the shelf with the intention of sneaking away to find Henry, I noticed him appear at the other end of the aisle, no doubt looking for me. I shook my head at him in warning, but it was too late.
Violet had noticed him, and she followed his line of sight over to where I stood.
“Tracy, let me call you back,” Violet said, and tapped her phone to end her call. Ignoring me, she waved at Henry and said to both of us, “Well, this is unexpected. Merry Christmas, I guess. Are you guys, like, together now?”
Henry replied, “We’re just friends.”
I turned to walk away, knowing nothing good would come from engaging with her, especially not in public. We were going to somehow have to get her alone to play Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble with us, and having a showdown at the pharmacy on Christmas Eve was not going to make arranging that any easier.
But she said calmly to Henry, “I’m really sorry for your loss. I didn’t get a chance to tell you at Olivia’s wake, but she was a wonderful person. She was very welcoming to me when I first moved to Willow.”
Henry’s green eyes darkened as he processed Violet’s words. She obviously didn’t realize that Henry knew she was responsible for Olivia’s death, and that he was just as intent on getting justice as I was on preventing Violet from killing more people. She really had some nerve, making such a kind gesture toward him right in front of me when back in the fall she’d practically confessed to me what she’d done. I hoped Henry would have the sense not to rip into her, but when I saw him furrow his brow as he struggled to form a response, I stepped past her and grabbed him by the arm to lead him toward the checkout area.
“That’s very kind of you to say, Violet,” I said, trying my best to sound sincere. To Henry, I commanded, “Let’s go.”
He glared angrily at Violet over his shoulder as he followed me down the aisle until he lifted the leg pillows he’d seen me holding off the shelf. “Did you want to get these?” he asked me, remembering that we’d come to the store in the first place to pick up a gift for my mom.
I was nodding in reply, my back to Violet, when I heard her ask, “How’s Mischa?” There was no bitterness in her voice insinuating that Mischa should have been dead by then, even though I knew that was why she was asking. She sounded just as polite and sweet as she had at the beginning of the school year, as if she actually cared about Mischa’s well-being.
“She’s just great, actually,” I answered cheerfully, not wanting to let on that Mischa was probably lighting her seven-day candle at home at that very moment and not even allowing herself to drink water for fear of choking.
We stepped into line, and as the clerk gave me change from my twenty-dollar bill, I noticed Violet walking toward the checkout area with her father.
The voices in my head stirred, and I commanded them to stop. I managed to successfully keep them at a low murmur as I thanked the clerk. The eyes, the eyes, they seemed to be saying. Although I knew whatever they were trying to convey was probably important, I just didn’t want to hear them at that moment. And yet I involuntarily turned to look once again at Mr. Simmons over my shoulder.
When he and Violet’s mother had sat in on all of my court hearings in the fall, I’d noticed that he was exceptionally handsome, just like Mrs. Simmons was remarkably beautiful. Neither of them looked like the other parents in town, which wasn’t to say that everyone else’s parents were unattractive. Mischa’s mom did Pilates and had a forehead frozen by Botox. Candace’s mom always had a flawless spray tan and wore skinny jeans.
But Violet’s parents looked like movie stars. Her father had broad shoulders, a square jaw, and just a hint of silver at his temples to make him look sophisticated, and was slim enough to suggest that he could probably compete in a triathlon if he felt like it. In his charcoal-colored wool-and-cashmere coat, with his leather driving gloves folded in one hand, he presented himself more like the prime minister of a foreign country than as a suburban dad in Wisconsin stepping into line at the pharmacy to buy a roll of wrapping paper and bottle of mouthwash.
For a split second, Mr. Simmons’s eyes met mine. He recognized me—how could he not? But if he was angry to see me at Hennessey’s, his expression didn’t suggest so.
“Come on,” Henry said, leading me toward the store’s exit. The Simmonses did have a restraining order against me, and I was definitely within one hundred feet of Violet inside that store. “Nice and easy. Let’s just leave.”
When we returned to the car in the lot, it felt strange to climb into the back with Trey and leave Henry alone in the front as if he were our chauffeur, so I took the front passenger seat.
“You saw who went in there, right?” Trey asked us.
“The princess of death and her father?” Henry said as he started the car’s engine.
“I wish I had a phone so I could have warned you guys,” Trey said. “I was a little afraid things were gonna get rough in there.”
As we backed out of our spot, Mr. Simmons and Violet exited the store. I watched them walk across the parking lot in the side-view mirror as Henry navigated us back onto State Street, and wondered how Violet could sleep at night knowing what she’d done, and continued to do, to innocent people. The day Trey, Mischa, and I had confronted her on the track about killing Olivia and Candace, she had seemed overwhelmed with emotion, insisting that the deaths weren’t her fault while admitting that spirits guided her on what to do. Now she was acting completely oblivious about the tragedies, practically daring me to correct her in her apology to Henry. What had changed? Had she convinced herself of her innocence? Did she think perhaps I’d forgotten she’d confessed her involvement?
I thought once again of her ragged fingernails and wondered if Violet’s new cavalier attitude was actually a cover. Maybe she was putting on a brave face to convince herself that she was strong enough to do what was required even though she was just as afraid of her actions as we were. I wondered if anyone in Lake Forest had ever gotten as close to figuring out what she was doing as we were getting, which made me curious once again about who had sent the lunar cal
endar to the Richmonds. Violet wasn’t as good at covering her tracks as she believed herself to be, and maybe she wasn’t the heartless villain her dilemma required her to be either.
“Check it out,” I told Henry and Trey. “I overheard her talking to Tracy Hartford on the phone. I guess her parents are going to be in Chicago on New Year’s, so Violet’s going to throw a huge party at her house.”
“The perfect opportunity to predict more deaths,” Trey grumbled.
“Yeah, but then she said something that I think was about Stephani deMilo. You guys know she’s missing, right?” I asked just as Henry hit the brakes. Two police cars raced through the intersection of State Street and Wisconsin Avenue, cutting him off. Their sirens were roaring and lights were swirling. Just then, my scalp began tingling again, which was kind of infuriating. Why hadn’t it tingled at Hennessey’s to make me aware of Violet’s presence? Kirsten hadn’t given me an explanation for the purpose of the voices and the tingling, at all. The police cars were headed in the direction of the deMilos’ family farm, and suddenly everything clicked into place.
Everything.
“Stephani deMilo? Isn’t she that senior who’s on pom squad with Violet?” Trey asked from the back seat. But his voice was a blur as my eyes followed the police cars. Yes, Stephani and Violet were friends. It made perfect sense that Violet knew Mischa wasn’t dead yet because if Mischa was next, according to Jennie, and would always technically still be next in the order to die as long as the curse kept skipping her every month, then Violet would have had to make a different sacrifice that month.
She hadn’t sounded the least bit concerned that Stephani had gone missing when she’d been on the phone with Tracy. Honestly, I’d kind of forgotten about Stephani’s disappearance since Mischa had mentioned it that morning because I didn’t know Stephani too well. But it was definitely odd for any kid in our town to vanish for more than a day, and now that I had seen police heading toward Stephani’s family’s property and my scalp was tingling, I got a bad hunch that Stephani wasn’t missing.