I have to admit, I began to wonder about the validity of her advice when she issued the order about the salt and pepper in the shoes, and I vowed to Google the authenticity of that as an actual voodoo practice later on. “I don’t work on Tuesdays. But I’ll bring it all on Wednesday.”

I didn’t know what Mrs. Robinson had in store for me, but I was lost in thought on the ride home with Rhonda. It was troubling to think that the loa, or Violet’s evil spirits, were mad at me, specifically, and surrounding me. Nothing ghostly had ever happened in my bedroom in Florida, and I’d never sensed any strange presences around me either. My heart was fluttering at the prospect of learning a better way to exchange information with Jennie. But icy terror was tickling at the tips of my fingers and toes at the possibility that Mrs. Robinson’s guidance might broaden my knowledge about the curse that was now on Mischa. As much as I was hopeful about finding a better way to protect Mischa, I genuinely dreaded the prospect of getting pulled back into the death trap that Violet had sprung on me and my friends back in September.

“Have a good day at school?” Rhonda asked.

“It was fine,” I said. “I have a ton of calculus homework.”

Behind the wheel, she shook her head. “Calculus. I didn’t even take precalculus until senior year. You’ve got a head for math. When I was your age, I just did not have the patience.”

Rather than asking her what her interests at my age were, which I knew she was hoping I would, I let the conversation die off. I was preoccupied with thoughts of whether or not Violet’s spirits had the ability to take their aggressions out on me if they thought I was tampering with Mischa’s obligations to them. It had certainly seemed like they’d been able to manipulate elements in the real world in the past to try to prevent me from making progress toward breaking the curse on Violet. They’d managed to drop an enormous icicle on Henry’s windshield back in January, shattering it. I suspected they’d caused my mom and Mrs. Portnoy to get into a fender bender over the winter too. The spirits’ power in our world seemed to require an enormous amount of energy on their part, which meant that the actions they were able to manifest were spur-of-the-moment and delivered in quick bursts. Even if they were fastidious planners, they seemed incapable of hatching elaborate plots, which was a small comfort. But now that I was dwelling on it, I’d been in Florida for two and a half months without experiencing any moments of dread or terror, which seemed suspicious.

Maybe they were waiting for me to get good and distracted before they made their move, so they’d catch me off guard. It was a lucky thing that Mrs. Robinson had stepped into my life to remind me that the danger was ever-present. Or was it? It had been weeks since I’d gone down a mental rabbit hole of paranoia like this, wondering if I was fearing the right things and if I had anything truly to fear at all.