“Then let’s go,” I said, eager at that point to get them in the car.

“Not so fast. We don’t agree to anything without something in return.” They set Mischa’s hands on her hips.

Violet turned to me in objection, but I replied, “I already told you. We won’t negotiate here. If you want to strike a deal, you have to come with us.”

Gambling on my own future, I turned and began walking toward Violet’s car, still holding on to Violet and Henry’s arms to make sure they followed me. We’d walked a good ten feet—and I’d started to truly panic that I’d blown my only shot at saving my own life—when I heard Mischa say behind us, “Fine. Have it your way.” Although it was a victory that the spirits had finally agreed to come with us, my chest tightened and my lips trembled.

This was really happening.

When we reached Violet’s car, she unlocked the doors with a quick flip of her key fob. I hoped I was the only one who noticed that her fingers were shaking. I opened the back door, and Trey sat upright in the back seat. Once he saw that Mischa was standing behind me, he slid over to the far side, and I gestured at Mischa to climb in.

“We’d prefer to sit in the front,” the spirits said, and Mischa’s face smiled sweetly at Henry just as he opened the front passenger-side door.

He hesitated, unsure of how to handle the request, until I snapped at Mischa, “You sit in the back, or you walk.”

Mischa grinned and wiggled her fingers at me as if pretending to be afraid, but she crouched and climbed into the car as told. The back seat of Violet’s car wasn’t wide enough to have an actual middle; it was an uncomfortable, unsafe squeeze for three people to sit back there. But Mischa didn’t say a word as she pressed her knees together, and Trey and I buckled our seat belts.

Violet started the engine and carefully pulled away from the curb. She knew, just as the rest of us did, that she had to focus more intently on driving safely than she ever had before in her life. Because there was simply no telling what the spirits might do to us now that—for the first time, ever—we had them where we wanted them.

CHAPTER 18

WHAT AN UNEXPECTED DELIGHT TO be back here,” the spirits said in Mischa’s voice as we stepped through the front door of the Simmons mansion. Her eyes wandered around the large foyer as if she were the owner of the mansion, returning home after a long trip. “We didn’t expect we’d ever have occasion to return to this place.”

Violet shot a furtive look at me as she hung up her winter coat on the rack near the front door. My phone—my connection to Jennie—was in my pocket, and I pulled it out after a split second of hesitation before handing over my coat when Violet reached for it.