“Oh. Right,” he said, as if realizing for the first time that I really needed to get on my plane.

“Can you come with me? To Wisconsin?” I asked. I couldn’t leave him, but I couldn’t not go back to Willow.

He looked regretfully down at the boarding pass in his hands. “I don’t know if they’ll let me switch this for another flight. I think I might need a credit card to pay a change fee.”

The line of passengers boarding my flight was dwindling. I didn’t know what to do.

“Can you give me your phone?” Trey asked. “I just need a way to get online and pay the change fee without having the actual credit card like, physically in my hand. I can get myself on the next flight to Green Bay and give you your phone back tonight.”

I was about to hand it over when I thought about Jennie and how long it had taken me to find her. If Trey took my phone and then didn’t make his way to Wisconsin, I wondered if I’d be able to hear her again. “What if… what if I text Violet and ask her to book a flight for you?”

Something surprising—outrage, maybe—registered on his face, and I realized I’d made a huge mistake by even offering this suggestion. “No,” he said emphatically. “No Violet. If I’m going to follow you to Wisconsin, she can’t know I’m there.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “No Violet. Bad idea.” The last passenger for my flight was having his boarding pass scanned. I’d arrived—unexpectedly—at a moment I’d been dreading. I loved him, but did I trust Trey? Enough to give him my phone, my access to Jennie? Potentially my only weapon against the spirits tormenting Mischa? I could understand, based on Trey’s last interaction with Violet in the woods in Michigan, why he would be reluctant to involve her. But his reaction was surprisingly volatile.

I wondered if somehow she had something to do with why he wasn’t at Northern.

Trying hard to look like my heart wasn’t breaking, I handed Trey my phone. He was, after all, someone I’d known my whole life. He’d known Jennie too. If there was anyone in the world I should have been able to trust with my line of communication with her, it was him. “I really need this back, and I can’t explain why right now.”

Trey nodded. “I’ll just use it to change my flight online from here. I swear. I mean, I can’t go anywhere. I’ll never make it through security a second time. You’ll have it back tonight.”

I leaned forward and give him a peck on the lips before dashing over to the flight attendants’ desk. I shoved my boarding pass at the flight attendant, who scanned it, and I took one last look at Trey over my shoulder.

“What’s your PIN?” he called out to me.

“One zero zero nine,” I called in reply. As I walked down the passenger boarding bridge, I wondered if Trey would recognize the numbers. October ninth, ten-nine. The date of the fire that burned down our house on the corner.