The priest sighed deeply. “Your grandmother wanted your parents to successfully bring a child into the world at a time when it was not God’s plan to allow such a thing. I warned her. I don’t know if the spell I provided to her actually worked because I prayed on her behalf, or because her belief in it somehow physiologically influenced your mother, or if your mother would have delivered you even if your grandmother hadn’t sought my help.”

My skin began tingling, and without even reaching into my pocket for my earbuds to ask Jennie for direction, I knew what she wanted me to ask. “What did you warn Violet’s grandmother about?” If he’d warned her, he’d predicted something like the curse was possible.

Father Fahey looked at me with an expression so stern, it made me shrink in my seat. “That when you refuse to accept God’s design, even if your will manifests, the outcome will always be vulnerable.” He smiled with sad eyes at Violet. “Your grandmother came to see me not long after you were born, and told me about the… orders she’d been receiving. She was terrified, of course. Not only of what might happen to you if she didn’t comply, but of what might become of her soul if she did what was being asked of her. We both knew then that some… outside force had compromised the spell she’d cast.”

I didn’t dare steal a peek at Trey even though the two of us knew exactly what that outside force had been. His mother had cast her own spell on Violet’s mother, and Kirsten had told us that was what had made the passage of the five evil entities into our plane possible. It was as if evil had piggybacked onto the spell originally cast by Grandmother Simmons.

Which kind of made Trey’s mom the villain responsible for my upcoming death before the new moon.

Father Fahey turned from Violet to face Trey and me. “I truly had no idea how to stop it. I hoped with all my heart that the evil that had attached itself to Ann had rid this world of itself when she passed away last year.”

“Yeah… well, it didn’t.” A tear rolled down Violet’s cheek and she made no effort to wipe it away. “She passed it to me.”

The priest continued, “When you came to me in the fall, I guessed that it had been transferred to someone else. But I couldn’t wager a guess as to who had interfered with your grandmother’s spell. For all I know, it was someone I’ve never met.”

Although he seemed to pity our situation, it was obvious that he took no responsibility for the role he’d had in creating it. His righteousness was infuriating.

I set the mason jar down on the table without explaining what it contained to Father Fahey. “Well, now it’s been transferred again. And it’s worse than ever before, because whatever it is—whatever these five things are—they pushed our friend Mischa’s soul out of her body.”