I tapped Mischa’s name in my contacts list with every intention of reaching out to her, but couldn’t think of any words to type. There was a possibility that Mischa didn’t know anything about Amanda yet because she had been at the gym in Ortonville the whole time. I didn’t want to take the chance of being the one to break that news.

So I tapped the audio button and listened to her phone ring, expecting that she wasn’t going to pick up. In a voice that didn’t even sound like mine, I left a blunt voice mail telling Mischa to call me. I already knew she wouldn’t.

I wandered back into Mrs. Robinson’s room in a daze. Mrs. Robinson didn’t ask me what had happened. Even though she couldn’t see the despair on my face, she was able to deduce that whatever news I’d just been given on the phone had been bad. “Hand me that book up there on that shelf,” she told me, pointing up to the top of the credenza to the right of her TV. When I walked over, I found a row of corny bodice-ripper romance novels, and she clarified, “The Bible.”

I found a dog-eared paperback King James Bible at the end of the shelf, and handed it to her. She blindly thumbed through the pages, into which she had crammed all sorts of folded notes, bookmarks, and old photos. From a page near the middle of the book, she withdrew a small leather pouch that had been flattened during its time in the Bible to look more like an envelope. She gestured at me to take it from her.

“This is a gris-gris,” she informed me. “You take this home, put it on a cord, and wear it around your neck. Find something that belonged to your sister and place it inside—it can just be a tiny bit of something, a scrap of fabric, a little photo, whatever you’ve got—and this will protect you. Do you understand?”

The gris-gris looked pretty old and, honestly, gross, like perhaps someone else had worn it for a long time. If I hadn’t just heard that my worst fear had come true, I would have only humored Mrs. Robinson and tossed it in a dresser drawer when I got home. But instead, I held it in my palm as if it was precious.

“And you need protection. Because these loa that follow you around? They’re happy right now. They’re celebrating. If you could hear them like I do, you’d know. They’re saying we told you so.”

They sure had told me so.

“How can I hear and see them like you do?” I asked.

Mrs. Robinson laughed at me. “Well, you can’t! It’s taken me eighty long years of trying! But I’ll tell you what you can do.”

I leaned forward, desperate for any guidance she could give me.

“You take a pinch of salt and throw it in the air to the east.…”

I listened intently, even though I was skeptical about the magical power of common table salt. But I was upset enough by the news from Willow to consider anything that might offer protection.