“I told you about the candles. We thought we had it under control,” I admitted.

“Well, now Mischa’s parents are dead, and Amanda could die at any second. And I’ll tell you what else,” he said. His eyes had gone steely in a way I’d never seen them look before. “I’m flying home to Wisconsin today to deal with this once and for all. This has to end.”

I saw his hand reach for his phone screen as if he was about to tap to end our call, and I shouted, “Wait! Henry!”

But he was gone.

Deal with this once and for all? What could he have meant by that? I desperately hoped that he didn’t think that hurting or even killing Mischa—or even Violet—would end things.

And a second later, Dad knocked on my door. “You up in there? Coffee’s ready.”

I knew better than to play sick or plead my case for staying home. There was no way Dad would have sympathy on me because of bad weather back in Wisconsin. Not even for the tragic death of a friend’s parents. So I threw on clothes and tied the gris-gris from Mrs. Robinson around my neck. As I locked the door behind me to begin my walk to school, I realized I had completely forgotten to do all of my homework.

It was still raining. I pulled the hood of my raincoat over my head and hunched my shoulders, beginning my walk to school at a faster-than-usual clip. I wouldn’t have considered myself to be much of a daydreamer before Violet Simmons entered my life, but in the months since I’d moved to Tampa, I’d become a full-time space cadet, always lost in a deep spiral of what-ifs. It was probably for the best that I wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. That morning I was dazed by imagined scenarios about what might happen if Henry actually did try to take out Violet when he arrived in Willow.

When I reached the first intersection on my path, with a strip mall of small businesses on one corner and the freeway overpass ahead, I stopped to wait for the light. But as the light turned green for me to cross the street, I stepped off the curb, and an oncoming SUV just a few feet in front of me attempted to roll to a stop through an enormous puddle and hydroplaned.

The back end of it whirled unexpectedly toward me faster than I could make sense of what was happening. Move! my brain commanded my body. But I stood there, paralyzed with fear, until suddenly I was slammed against the pavement.

“Are you okay?”

My entire body hurt. It took a second for me to realize that I was still alive—and lying on my side, looking into the treads on the rear wheels of the SUV that had almost just hit me. My heart pounded in my ears. A kid I recognized from school was climbing off of me; he’d knocked me out of the SUV’s path a fraction of a second before it would have hit me.