A bunch of kids from the lower school were playing jump rope on the back lawn of the main house. They had a whole line of double Dutch stations set up, each counting down to see who could jump the longest without tripping. Brandon was in a hurry—he had to catch Maria before she disappeared again—but he still had to go all the way around the twenty-plus kids. The prepubescent crowd at Acheron took their jump rope competitions very, very seriously, and their rhymes always got stuck in Brandon’s head.

“Thrice to the flame in blanket dark,

And thrice again to grieve her heart.”

Brandon tried to cut between two sets of jumpers, but the girl swinging the nearest set of ropes gave him some major stink-eye without breaking her chant. She couldn’t have been older than ten, but she was scary enough that Brandon backed off and went the long way around toward the top of the hill, where the house sat perched and looming, its white faux-marble columns gleaming despite the setting sun. On the hill beside it, the tiny family cemetery from the house’s plantation days rose up, the weathered tombstones shining bright.

“For a charm that’s strong and true,

Give what I ask. I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do.”

Brandon quickened his step as he came around the last group of kids and up the hill. The chanting went on, but soon he was out of earshot.

He’d spent most of dinner helping Felicia study for her ambassador test—she was applying to be one of the student ambassadors who gave campus tours, hoping it would up her chances for the Kingsley Prize when she was a senior—but all night he’d kept one eye on the door, looking for Maria. She’d promised to meet him there. But the cafeteria closing time had come and gone, and she still hadn’t shown up.

Brandon had to find her. It had been three days since the séance, or whatever you called it, and Maria had been avoiding him. The only times he’d seen her were in class, where she was always so raptly focused on note taking he couldn’t catch her eye, and that time he’d tried to talk to her in the hall. She’d acted just as weird then as she was acting now.

He reached the big house and strode across the shiny white portico, through the open back door, and straight down the hall to Maria’s room. When he knocked, though, there was no answer. He checked his phone. Nothing. This was the third time she’d promised to meet up, then ditched him without so much as a text to explain.

Brandon ran a frustrated hand through his hair and took the stairs up to the fourth floor. Maybe one of the other seniors had seen her.