“Trying to break the curse,” I mumbled. As much as I wanted to feel calmer, instead I felt even more wary of the seconds passing by. But with the pleading eyes of Violet, Trey, and Mischa weighing on me, it was all I could do to mutter hopelessly into my phone, “Jennie, can you hear me?”

Not surprisingly, even when I strained my hearing and tried to steady my heart rate despite the sound of vehicles screeching to a halt, I still didn’t hear any sign of her. The distraction of the voices coming from the front of the house outside only added to my anxiety. Mrs. Simmons had seen Trey with us. If she’d recognized him from the courtroom and had already called the cops, then we could expect them to show up with guns raised, ready to apprehend him. Police in our town would also recognize Mischa as the girl who’d gone missing over the holidays and then reappeared with no memory of where she’d been. With Mr. Simmons dead in a grisly mess outside, and Willow’s three most problematic teenagers holed up in a bedroom with its wealthiest, there was no telling what would happen when authorities made their way upstairs.

My mind kept whirling with thoughts of that nature, making it even harder to listen for Jennie. History, history. Tell history, the voices urged.

“Keep trying,” Trey urged.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to reach Jennie with my mind instead of my voice. Please, please. If you’re there, if you can hear me…

My heart sank. I couldn’t sense her presence at all.

It was pointless to keep trying. I was going to have to accept that we’d failed, and that the spirits had done something terrible and irreversible to my sister.

Just as they would do to me within the next nine days.

I opened my eyes as I admitted, “I just can’t…”

But when I saw the expressions on the others’ faces, I fell quiet. They were looking at something behind me. I turned to see what they were marveling at, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The wooden chest at the foot of Violet’s bed had opened, its lid tilted backward on its brass hinges. And from within it, two stuffed animals had floated up into the air. They hovered over the chest, at least two feet above our heads where we sat on the floor.

“What… the hell… is happening?” Trey asked.

One of the stuffed animals was a beige dog with floppy ears and a brown nose. It was levitating on its back, just as Olivia, Candace, and Mischa had when we’d played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board at Olivia’s party. The second plush animal was a white teddy bear, and it floated below the dog, positioned in the air as if it were standing.

Now, I felt the tingling under my hair more strongly. This was undoubtedly Jennie, reaching out in what must have been the only way she could.