The boy whispered her name.

Maria had screamed, and Altagracia had come running. Maria told her about the boy, and Altagracia searched her room from floor to ceiling. She didn’t find anything, but Maria knew what she’d seen. What she’d felt.

That was when Altagracia first told her about La Llorona. She was a guardian angel, Altagracia said. She watched out for girls like Maria and protected them fiercely. She’d watched out for Altagracia, too, when she was a girl. As long as La Llorona was with her, and Maria hid her fear, she’d be safe from the dark spirits that walked the earth.

Maria had forgotten all about La Llorona, and Altagracia too. She’d thought about her old nanny only a handful of times since she’d come to Acheron.

Today, though, Maria hadn’t been able to stop thinking about either of them. Ever since she’d listened to the audio from their Ouija session.

Most of the recording was Brandon giggling and shuffling papers around, but the knocking was there, too. It sounded ten times louder on the playback than it had last night.

As soon as the knocking ended, the humming began.

On the recording, Maria recognized the tune the voice had been humming in her ear. Something about it was a little off, but it sounded like “Estoy Contigo.” The song Altagracia used to whistle under her breath as she baked.

“Estoy Contigo.” In English, it meant “I Am with You.”

Maria couldn’t quite make sense of it all. There had to be an explanation. Some key answer that connected all the pieces.

Altagracia had died the summer before Maria’s first year at Acheron. She could’ve become a spirit, Maria supposed, and followed Maria away to school. To protect her from the dark spirits, like La Llorona.

That all felt so far away now, sitting on the floor of her dorm room, surrounded by the people who made up Maria’s new world. The Truth or Dare game had gotten off track. Caitlin and Ryan were kissing on Maria’s bed. Austin and Mateo were telling dumb jokes. Delilah was wearing that idiotic look she always got when she was high and playing with her stupid plastic lip gloss tube.

Maria peered down at her notepad. She should really double-check the math, but she was sure she’d gotten it right.

That afternoon she’d gotten back her French extra-credit paper, an essay on the paradox of free will in L’Étranger. That paper counted as an extra test grade, and she’d gotten an A-plus. When she factored that in to her overall grade, it canceled out the quiz from the week she’d had bronchitis and brought her semester average up to a solid A.