“Are you recommending that we kill Mischa?” I shouted. I was on the razor’s edge between life and death, and now I found myself in the same awful predicament that Mischa had been in since January: kill or end up dead. The whole point of everything I’d done since the fall was to try to prevent more people from dying, and now my only chance at saving myself was to murder Mischa.

“I’m recommending that you render her body incapable of supporting life.” Father Fahey nodded at the mason jar on the table. “I’m afraid Mischa may not ever be able to return to her body, anyway.”

CHAPTER 15

I CANNOT BELIEVE A PRIEST is telling us to murder someone!”

Trey couldn’t contain his outrage on our drive back to Violet’s house. I was just as upset as he was by Father Fahey’s advice, but I was too distraught to express it. In fact, I was so distracted by fear of my imminent death that I could barely form complete thoughts. Whether Mischa’s body was inhabited by five forms of pure evil or not, there was no possible way I could bring myself to hurt her. I was willing to do a lot to save Mischa’s life, but not to end it forever.

I’d known Mischa since we were in Mrs. Martindale’s preschool class together. She’d been headstrong and outspoken even at the age of five, insisting on turning cartwheels when the rest of us put down mats for naptime. I couldn’t imagine life without her. How could I move forward in life with any hope of ever being happy if the memory of dooming her in order to save myself was in my heart? “You have to talk to your sister and ask her if there’s another way,” Violet told me in a shaky voice. She was so keyed up that I was glad there weren’t more cars on the road at that hour; she was driving erratically.

I was texting a reply to Henry, whose messages I’d been ignoring all evening. Kirsten, the clerk at the occult bookstore in Chicago we’d met back in January, had texted him out of the blue and said that her sister had taken her to London for her birthday as a surprise. That explained why she’d been so out of touch for the last few days. When she arrived home that evening from the airport, the soybean plant she had potted as part of a protection spell she’d cast for my benefit was dying, and she assumed that something was very wrong. I hadn’t previously known and didn’t especially like that Kirsten had cast a protection spell on me, but it was a relief to know that she hadn’t been in touch because she was traveling and not because she was sick of us.

Apparently, Henry had driven over to my house after dinner to check on me, and completely freaked out that my house had burned down. Now that I was finally texting him back, I felt awful for not having replied sooner. He’d assumed the worst, and the fire department wouldn’t release any information. I couldn’t bring myself to dump any more bad news on him, so I didn’t mention that we’d struck out with Father Fahey.