On my left side, Violet pointed at me, looking furiously from Henry to Trey. “She’s tricking us! She and her sister are doing something to screw us over!”

She sounded so hysterical that I wasn’t sure if she was following through on my request or actually accusing me of selling everyone else out. Henry and Trey both looked at me in uncertain wonderment.

“She’s going to make them take our souls instead of hers! She doesn’t have a brother! This is all a trap!” Violet shouted and took a step backward—toward the sofa behind her and away from both me and Mischa. “I’m not going to die,” she announced. “Not after everything I’ve gone through. You’re not going to take me like this!”

Still unsure of what was actually happening, I argued, “I’m not tricking anyone, Violet. Honestly.” And just to be safe, I whirled around and snapped at Mischa, “I don’t agree. We’re not playing any games for the baby.”

Mischa stood up from the sofa on which she’d been sitting. “Then there’s nothing to—”

The spirits went silent as Mischa’s eyes fell upon something behind me, and a wide, wicked smile stretched across her gruesome face. I turned around to see that Violet had pulled the gun out from under the pillow and had it aimed at me.

“Jesus, Violet!” Henry exclaimed as he extended an arm and outstretched his fingers toward her. “Is that real?”

Instinctively, I threw my hands in the air—as anyone would if a loaded gun was pointed at their chest. “Violet, don’t,” I begged. None of this seemed like a viable plan now that the spirits had mentioned Dad and Rhonda’s baby. How could Jennie and I have been so careless as to have not taken the baby into consideration? I had barely given Dad’s announcement much thought since leaving Tampa, but now it seemed like an enormous oversight.

“It’s real,” Trey said calmly. He made eye contact with me, and I could tell that he was afraid, but he understood that this was what I had warned him about. He glanced over at the piano, which was a good fifteen feet behind where Mischa stood. He was remembering what I’d told him about the pins, and trying to determine how he might make his way over there without rousing the spirits’ suspicion.

“Put it down!” Henry urged Violet. “There’s no reason for anyone to get shot.”

“No,” Violet refused in a voice amplified by fear. She waved the gun at me. “We’re playing any game they choose, right now. Give them whatever they want.”

“Shall we play?” the spirits asked me in Mischa’s voice.

Static filled my right ear, and I was about to object, when Violet commanded, “Say yes, or I’ll shoot. I swear, I will. I’ll tell the police that you guys broke into my house and that I was acting in self-defense.”

Jennie had told me to be prepared for whoever I asked to actually make good on their threat to kill me, but now that I was actually in that situation, I was wondering if I’d live long enough to ever step outside of the Simmons house again.