This was the moment.

Cheryl stood about five feet away from Mischa, and it looked like either Mischa would take a few steps closer, or Cheryl would move to give her a quick hug. My scalp burned with tingles; this was exactly what I’d been waiting for, so I wasn’t sure if Jennie—if the tingles were even being caused by her—was trying to warn me, or why. There was no time to think. Henry and I dashed forward to arrive on both sides of Cheryl. As he reached in front of her to pour a shaky line of red brick dust near her toes on the sidewalk, I tossed the vial of blood at Mischa.

“What the…” Mischa looked down at the front of her black dress. There hadn’t been more than about two tablespoons of blood in the vial, but the substance was still recognizable against the dark fabric. “Is that blood? Are you serious right now?”

The blood begins the ceremony, Mrs. Robinson had told me. It’s how you tell the spirit world you’re getting started: with a sacrifice.

Cheryl reached for my arm, trying to stop me from doing whatever I was up to. “McKenna, what are you…” But I shook her hand off of me. Henry and Violet stood on either side of Cheryl, facing Mischa, both tapping the plastic lids of the coffee cans they held to the beat established by Henry.

The drums summon the spirits.

Ignoring Cheryl and Dan, I tried not to notice that Mischa’s hands were balling into fists at her sides, and her scrunched-up face was turning red with fury. And despite the fact that her Hulk-size coach had gotten up from the bench, I continued.

I dropped the empty glass vial to the sidewalk and transferred Henry’s water bottle from my left hand to my right to give me more control over it as I poured it onto the sidewalk on Mischa’s side of the line of red dust Henry had scattered between her and Cheryl. As I tilted the water bottle over and fragrant yellow sludge slid out and down to the pavement, I chanted the French words Mrs. Robinson had instructed me to practice: “Sortez, sortez, méchants.”

The spirits can’t resist the smell of rum and cornmeal.

“What is going on here?” Mischa’s coach yelled at me in a thick European accent.

“McKenna, this is just…” Cheryl shook her head in confusion. She reached for Dan’s hand and turned away from me as if she was going to walk back to the parking lot. But anticipating this, Violet stepped in front of her to block her path. This was why conducting this ceremony inside would have been ideal; if Cheryl made a run for it out here, we’d be in serious trouble.

But Cheryl wasn’t the type of person to ever make a run for it.

And Mischa—or the spirits inside of her—had figured out exactly what we were attempting.

Mischa narrowed her eyes at me with a devilish smirk on her face. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” she taunted me in a singsong voice. Although Mischa was often sarcastic, I had no doubt that these words and the voice that had spoken them were not her own. It had to be a sign of progress, or at least I hoped it was, that the spirits were revealing themselves to us.