Violet bolted upright from her chair so quickly that it toppled over behind her. “Enough.” She reached forward to swipe the cards off the table, but in a flash, four of them burst into flames, igniting the sleeve of her sweater.

I jerked backward. I could handle ghosts and loa, shattered windshields and even avalanches on ski slopes. But fire zapped my courage completely. It had made me nervous even to light candles every morning to cast the protection spell on Mischa’s family; even the smell of smoke made my pulse accelerate in terror.

“Oh my God!” Violet screamed, shaking her arm. The fire devoured the cashmere, and in less than a second it looked like her entire right arm was covered in flames. She dashed to the sink and threw on the water, but Mischa’s voice returned my attention to the table.

“McKenna?” Mischa asked.

The two of us watched as the one remaining card of the five—the other four had been turned to black ash—levitated up from the table, which had finally fallen still. The fire from the other four cards had spread to the edge of the circular table, and small tongues of flame danced around the circumference of the table as if it were the main ring of a hellish circus.

The lyrics that had haunted me all morning creeped into my mind. “I fell into a burning ring of fire…”

“Are you watching this?” Mischa asked me, her voice barely audible over the water blasting in the sink and the wind blowing through the kitchen.

“Yes,” I whispered in reply. I was too terrified to reach out and grab the card, although it was hovering in the air to suggest that I should do exactly that.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Mischa said, shaking her head. A single, fat tear rolled down her cheek. “This was a bad idea. I don’t want you to die either! I can’t lose you!”

“Shh. It’s going to be okay.” My voice was quivering. The flames crackling around the edges of the kitchen table were nearly a foot tall, and I’d have to reach over them if I wanted to pluck the card out of the air.

“Don’t touch it!” Either Jennie had been silent all this time, or I hadn’t been able to hear her over the roar of the wind. But now she was adamant. “That’s what they want!”

At the sink, Violet had turned off the water and was clutching a towel to her right arm, but her eyes were filled with tears, and she was yelling something inaudible at me and shaking her head.

Suddenly, Mischa leaned over the flames and grabbed the hovering card. Simultaneously, the smoke alarm went off. Henry appeared in the doorway a split second later. An expression of absolute confusion bloomed on his face when he clocked the envelopes blowing around the room, the pots swaying overhead, the table on fire, and Violet cowering at the sink. Without uttering a word, he tore through the room and vanished into the sunroom, returning with a fire extinguisher.