Since Mr. Simmons was about to kill me in a way that would fulfill the spirits’ prediction for me even though they’d been banished, I became even more terrified about what had happened to Jennie when we’d been torn apart. Maybe we’d managed to get the spirits out of Mischa’s body, but it seemed as if my prediction was about to come true, anyway. Falling off a rooftop and plunging over fifty feet to the pavement below would definitely qualify as an air-related death.

If I died the way in which they’d predicted, even if they were somewhere inside of either my body or conscious, struggling with Jennie, I had every reason to believe that the curse would continue. Maybe my death would even release the spirits back into this world. Nature likes cycles, Jennie had said. My death would complete one, and per the curse, a new one would begin. My death—and everything I’d done for the last few months—would have been for nothing.

I dared to look over the low railing and down the shingled peak to the circular cement driveway and fountain below. A black Range Rover had been parked haphazardly near the fountain, a few feet away from Violet’s Mini Cooper. I raised one leg to step over the railing, highly aware that if I slid, there would be nothing to grab on to. About twenty feet down, there were two smaller peaks in the roof, built over decorative windows on the third floor. But if I lost my footing, there wouldn’t be any way to angle my trajectory toward either of them. Nothing would prevent me from falling over the edge.

“That’s it.” Mr. Simmons encouraged me, taking another slow step forward. “Keep going.”

Terrified that he’d spring at me and cause me to tumble backward, I lifted my other leg over the railing too. Through the sheer tights I was wearing, I could feel that the shingles on the roof were as rough as sandpaper, but treacherously slippery because of the silkiness of my stockings. Already sensing that my balance was waning, I took a tiny, prudent step down the peak.

Encouraged that I was now in direct danger, Mr. Simmons crossed the widow’s walk to stand on the other side of the railing from me. If he wanted, he could reach over and shove me. Sensing that he might do exactly that at any moment, I extended my arms outward at the shoulders to try to keep my balance, and I inched down a little farther.

“I was doing you a favor by insisting that the judge send you away,” he told me in a voice so calm that I understood he wasn’t the least bit anxious about killing me. The tiniest drop of cold rain fell onto my forehead, and then another hit my cheek. The thick clouds in the sky beyond Mr. Simmons’s head had darkened with the arrival of rain. “It was for your own good, since you were smart enough to piece together this whole puzzle even before I could.”