I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that when Jennie had shown me Violet’s death, it wasn’t supposed to happen for decades. And her death was peaceful. Serene. She could expect to live until a healthy old age… unless, of course, it was possible that our fates changed with each passing second, and the circumstances of Violet’s inevitable death depended on when and how they were being predicted. But even so—Jennie said that wasn’t the way.

“I don’t have time to explain how I know this, but that won’t work. Even if we play the game right now, and make Violet kill herself—”

Violet shouted in protest, “Hey! I’m right here!”

“I know. Sorry. It still wouldn’t work. Technically, we’d be the ones forcing her to die, and the curse would just jump back to one of us,” I said, pretty confident in my assumption based on the answers Jennie had already given me. Seeing that the wildness in Mischa’s eyes wasn’t dissipating, I added, “That would put us right back where we started.”

“You’re wrong,” Mischa snapped, her eyes filling with tears. A strange smile pulled itself across her face. “We don’t have to make her kill herself. She already knows how guilty she is.” She bent her neck to address Violet directly. “I don’t even know how you get out of bed and make it through the day, honestly. You’re a murderer, and you’ve killed more innocent people than we can even count. You owe me this. You owe it to all of us to save my sister’s life for what you did to Olivia and Candace!”

“I already know for sure that your plan won’t work,” Violet said in a trembling voice, “because when I inherited the curse and realized what I was going to have to do, I tried that.”

We all fell silent. I looked to Henry in surprise, and even Mischa took a moment to digest that. “Liar,” she finally said.

“It’s true,” Violet insisted. Mischa loosened her grip on Violet just enough to allow her to stand up straight enough to look at us, and I was surprised at how different she looked from the last time I’d seen her. Her complexion was paler, which could easily have been explained by the brutal winter, but she had greenish rings beneath her eyes, and looked a little jaundiced, too. I remembered Cheryl mentioning Violet’s extensive absences from school and wondered fleetingly if she’d actually been sick that winter.

“I overdosed and my parents sent me off to Arizona for six weeks of rehab. Last December—after I had to kill this girl I knew from school named Brianna. I was stuck there for Christmas and New Year’s. You can look her up, if you don’t believe me. I have a shirt from the rehab place upstairs in my drawer.”

This genuinely took me by surprise. Violet had poured her heart out to me back in January, after we’d successfully lifted the curse off of her, but she hadn’t told me that she’d ever been that desperate to free herself from it. I hadn’t thought it would be possible to ever feel sympathy for her, but I did at that moment.