Henry shook his head. “No. We were both right here, watching! I mean, did you notice what happened with the sound around us? We did something just now. I think we broke the curse.”

But Violet pointed down at our feet, and when my eyes followed her finger to the sidewalk where I’d poured the rum and cornmeal, I knew that we were in real trouble—worse than ever before. What had just, moments ago, been a bright yellow, grainy liquid was now unrecognizable from its original form. It was completely black and charred, as if it had been baking in the hot sun for days. Mrs. Robinson hadn’t mentioned anything at all about spirits actually consuming the rum and cornmeal, or transforming it into something. Even with my limited knowledge of the occult, I guessed that any kind of matter suddenly being burned to a crisp was a very, very bad sign.

“We have to find her,” I whispered. “Whatever we just did, we have to undo it. Now.”

Without waiting for Henry or Violet to agree with me, I spun on my heel and broke into a run in my uncomfortable shoes. Frantic thoughts raced through my head as I wondered what the hell we could have possibly gotten wrong. I’d followed all of Mrs. Robinson’s directions. Even with the unanticipated change in location, we’d done everything right. “Do you think the spirits went inside Cheryl?” I heard Violet ask Henry behind me.

“Cheryl seemed fine,” Henry replied.

There were even more guests inside the funeral home when I burst in through the front door than there had been when we’d stepped outside. More people from Willow High School and others I didn’t recognize. “Excuse me,” I mumbled as I squeezed my way among clusters of people, trying to reach the viewing room.

Mom spotted me across the crowd and waved. We’d been there almost forty-five minutes. That was about as long as she could tolerate any social situation. But I couldn’t leave yet—not without figuring out what we’d done. I flashed a half-hearted smile at Mom but didn’t wave back, instead ducking my head down and turning sideways to squeeze in between two large men.

When I finally stepped through the open French doors into the viewing room, it became very obvious that whatever we’d just done to Mischa was bad. Very bad. Henry caught up to me and stood on my right side, Violet on my left, and the three of us watched in sickening wonderment as Mischa returned to her place at the back of the room.

With each step she took, the atmosphere seemed to sour. The velvety petals of the orchids in the flower arrangement closest to the two caskets began to wilt, shriveling up and turning into blackened buds among the greenery. Then the same thing happened to each of the other flower arrangements. Roses wrinkled, and the buds dropped to the carpet. Bright white petals dropped off daisies and were scraggly and yellowed by the time they hit the floor. The black shroud placed over the mirror at the back of the room slipped off on its own and landed in a pile.