“That’s it! It’s perfect!” Violet whispered with a smile. “We can take pictures and back all of this up, and he’ll have no choice but to help us. People in town would freak out if they knew the pastor of their church was doing all this freelance witchcraft!”

Trey frowned. “Yeah, except that half of the population of our town is in here, so they must already know.” He handed the notebook back to me. “Besides, this basically looks like a list of people who asked him to say a special mass for them. People do that, you know? My grandmother tells me all the time that she has her priest say mass in the hope of saving my soul.”

“Secrets,” I heard Jennie’s voice say over the earbuds.

Frustrated to have been wrong, Violet frowned at both of us. “Well, Father Fahey’s boss wouldn’t find it amusing that he’s casting all these spells. I can’t imagine the Vatican would think too highly of that. Even if it looks on paper like he’s taking requests for special mass offerings, he’s charging a lot of money for it. What’s he doing with the money?”

“You’re right,” I told Violet. “We should take pictures of all of these entries as backup, because if he refuses to help us with the exorcism, we can do something with them. But Jennie seems to think he’ll help us because he won’t want everyone in town to know how often he’s doing this. He knows the secrets of everyone in Willow.”

Violet set about taking a picture of each page in the notebook with her phone, and Trey slipped his fingers through mine and squeezed my hand. “Does Jennie really think we can convince him to help us?”

“What do you think, Jennie?” I asked aloud.

She reminded me that it was difficult for her to predict the future when someone’s free will was involved.

“He’s got that room in the basement of the rectory,” I reminded Trey. “I mean, he’s definitely performed an exorcism before.” But even as I listened to myself speaking, I knew that we were getting ourselves deeper into a mess that was larger than all of us. If Father Fahey had given Violet’s grandmother directions on how to cast the original spell, then maybe he’d also advised Trey’s mother on how to cast her spell, the one that had caused all the trouble. It could be very dangerous for us to cross him, but I had nothing to lose anymore.

When Violet was done, I tucked the notepad into the interior pocket of my coat, and we headed back outside into the cold night. Violet and Trey turned right to follow the path to the rectory, which was behind the church. But sensing that there was still part of the puzzle we needed to see, I blurted, “You guys, wait. Jennie said something about writing on a brick.”

Trey waved in the direction of the enormous church. “There are a lot of bricks here, McKenna.”