I took Jennie’s silence as a yes.

I held my finger up for my friends, suggesting they should wait, and I stepped into the sunroom.

Once outside on the patio in the surprisingly cold afternoon, I asked, “If I let Mischa predict my death, would it be my real, natural death in the future? Or would the spirits come up with some kind of violent story that would happen before the next new moon?”

“Don’t know,” Jennie admitted. “If they want you, then you’ll die before the new moon.”

I stole a glance over my shoulder into the house through the glass panels of the sunroom. Panic and adrenaline were coursing through my veins as if I was about bungee jump off a bridge. No one was forcing me to do this, I knew. The next new moon was on April twenty-second—in just shy of two weeks. I wasn’t exactly giving myself an abundance of additional time to figure out how to get the curse off Mischa, but was possibly making all the difference in saving Amanda.

“Is there any other way to save Amanda’s life?”

“No,” Jennie told me. “She’s first in line.”

Right. A life for a life, an even trade.

It was all a big gamble.

“Could you show Mischa a fake death for me? Something that would seem real to the spirits so that they’d back off Amanda—but that obviously won’t actually happen?”

Jennie was silent for a long beat. “Not sure. The curse was originally put on Violet’s grandmother, and Violet inherited it. So she had a stronger connection to the spirits than Mischa does. They were able to make it clear whose soul they wanted, and provide visions of the death predictions to Violet for her to describe.

“But Mischa’s connection isn’t as strong, so they’re going to give her more like… flashes.” Jennie told me. It seemed like she was struggling to describe exactly how the spirits would communicate the death predictions to Mischa, but I got the picture. “It might not be as easy to trick them this way.”

“But you can try?” I asked. I would have only volunteered myself for this if Jennie was willing to try, and I believed with all my heart that she would find a way to deliver whatever she promised. She’d managed to spare me from Violet’s death prediction back in September, and she’d delivered a prediction for Violet back in January that had saved the lives of a lot of people.

Jennie replied, “Trying isn’t good enough. I’ll convince them.”

I was about to thank her when I heard her continue, “I hope you’re not doing this for me.”

“For you?” I asked, confused.

“Yes. Out of some sense of guilt that I’m here, and you’re there,” she explained. “This was always the way it was supposed to be. It’s my responsibility to protect you, and I’m happy to be here, doing this.”

It took a few seconds for me to swallow the urge to cry. It wouldn’t do me much good to walk back into Violet’s kitchen with tears in my eyes, but Jennie had just answered one of the biggest questions I’d been wanting to ask her. She wasn’t jealous that I was alive and she… wasn’t. “Thank you,” I managed to say, wanting to elaborate but knowing there wasn’t time.