She sounded very pleased with herself when she asked, “Did your sister reach out to you yet? They put her behind kind of a curtain, can you believe that? It took me some time to find her—yes, it did.”

“Yes. Thank you. I can’t believe you were able to find her, but I sensed her this afternoon. I haven’t had a chance to connect with her,” I admitted. It didn’t seem fair to burden Mrs. Robinson with the details about the house fire, so I didn’t mention that I was calling her from a hospital cafeteria. “Mrs. Robinson, I’m sorry to bother you. But something went terribly wrong today when we followed your directions.”

Mrs. Robinson sounded surprised by this. “This was a very simple procedure. Draw the spirits out, catch them in the jar.”

“I did catch something in the jar, but I don’t think it’s the five spirits of Violet’s dead sisters,” I said, side-eyeing the jar on the table.

“Well, let’s back up. You had your rum and cornmeal?”

I confirmed that we did.

“And where’d you get that from?”

I told her that we’d used rum from Henry’s parents, and plain old cornmeal from the grocery store.

“And the drums? You had some kind of a beat?”

I waffled before replying; we’d had something similar to drums, but maybe that was where we’d gone wrong? “My friends were tapping on coffee cans, like bongos. Not real drums, but close enough, don’t you think?”

Mrs. Robinson sounded stumped. “Hmm. Yes, definitely close enough. I would have been worried if you’d said you’d just used a recording, because that wouldn’t have worked. What about your red brick dust? Did you put that down to protect your volunteer?”

Cheryl hadn’t exactly volunteered, but I didn’t want to admit that. “Yes.”

“And where’d you get your dust from?”

I told her that I’d made it; I’d sat in my driveway for two hours tapping a brick with a hammer to fill half a jar with red dust.

“Where’d you get the brick?” she asked.

Now my mouth twisted and my breath dragged as I exhaled. My thoughts returned to the spectacle of Mischa’s damaged house, with its roof gaping open like an angry mouth. “There was a tornado in town earlier this week, and some buildings were damaged. So I went over to the house of a friend, where I figured some of the bricks would be scattered, and took one of those.”

“Mm-hmm,” Mrs. Robinson said knowingly, confirming my fear. “This wouldn’t have been the house of the girl who’s possessed, would it?”

I couldn’t even say the words it was. Now, in hindsight, my ignorance seemed so obvious. Maybe I wasn’t a voodoo priestess, but using something that belonged to Mischa was clearly a mistake.

“You used a brick from the girl’s own home?” Mrs. Robinson asked. “Do you know why we use red brick dust in voodoo? Bricks build our homes. They are the physical manifestation of security. They’re used to build walls. Borders. If you used dust from your friend’s house, then you weren’t creating security around the person you were trying to protect. You were setting up—like, like—a force field around your possessed person. You lured those spirits out, but they didn’t have anywhere to go but back in!”