I nodded and tapped my phone as if ending my call, but Jennie continued talking. “It’s inside of Mischa now, just like it was inside of Violet. You have to get it to come out of her in order to get rid of it.”

Inside of her. Like demonic possession? I anxiously waited until we reached our cruising altitude, high above the green patchwork of Georgia, to ask more questions. “Do you mean we have to perform, like… an exorcism?”

“I don’t know everything,” Jennie admitted. “There are five spirits. They work together, and they’re powerful. You might not be able to demand that they leave Mischa’s soul. You might have to lure them out.”

Lure them out… A nasty shiver ran through my body and left a stale taste in my mouth. A formal exorcism was scary enough. But luring sounded like something different. Luring would require bait. The only time I’d ever seen them, or what I had assumed to be them, was in Michigan when Jennie had predicted Violet’s death. They’d looked blurry, like they were figures in an oil painting that had been smeared. Or like a field of energy in the form of a person, suggesting the presence of someone without anyone actually occupying space. Kind of like a reflection in a dirty mirror. It was hard to imagine those five things being inside of Mischa, if that was actually how they always looked, and even harder to imagine what they might be capable of doing outside of her.

“And if we find a way to lure them out, then what happens to Mischa?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jennie replied.

In Chicago, I guzzled a large coffee during my layover. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” was playing on the sound system again, and I momentarily marveled at the weirdness of hearing that song twice in one day.

I really wished I had a way of getting in touch with Mrs. Robinson back in Florida. I considered calling the Oscawana Pavilion front desk and asking to be put through to her room, but I knew that could result in serious drama if Mrs. Robinson’s daughter was screening her mother’s calls.

When the flight attendant tapped on the microphone at the gate service desk to announce boarding for the flight to Green Bay, I stood and stretched. There was no first class on this flight, but I was in the first boarding group. I stepped into the short line behind a woman with a severe haircut and a phone pressed to her ear, my boarding pass in hand.

But then, from behind me, I heard my name called.

“McKenna.”

I turned around and froze before my mind registered what my eyes were seeing. Because twenty feet behind me stood Trey Emory.

CHAPTER 6

WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” I asked as my face broke into a wide smile. I stepped out of line and impulsively threw my arms around Trey’s neck. As I squeezed him and tilted my head back to kiss him, my heart swelled with joy. I was so caught up in the thrill of unexpectedly seeing him that only when he pressed his lips against mine did I realize that this was all wrong. What was Trey doing at the airport in Chicago? He was supposed to be at his boarding school. In an instant, my excitement turned to ice-cold dread.