Maybe my life would have been better if I’d never fallen in love with Trey. The way I felt about him was incomparable to anything else in my life, but if I’d never experienced it in the first place, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. In a normal world, without evil curses inflicted on all of us by the sinister history of the Simmons family, this simple sensation of feeling adored and protected by Henry would very likely have been mine to enjoy.

But it wasn’t.

At that very second, Trey was probably somewhere in Willow. Trey, the guy who would do anything at all to protect me, even at the expense of his own safety and comfort. As he entered my thoughts, I opened my eyes, and the magic moment between me and Henry was abruptly severed. I pulled away, our lips parted, and I was plunged back into the harsh reality of what I’d just done to myself back at Violet’s house. “Sorry,” I apologized and hung my head. “This is just—we shouldn’t.”

Henry sighed and tilted his head back, his eyes fixed on the truck’s ceiling. “I’m sorry. I know you and Trey are… I just wish things were…” He paused, and then said, “You know what? I’m not sorry. I wish things were different, but I’m not sorry.”

The windows of the truck had started to steam up. All at once the cabin of the truck filled with awkwardness, and Henry buckled his belt and started the engine. Through my window, I looked back at the Simmons mansion over the wall that encircled their property and the tops of the evergreens that maintained their privacy. From where I sat, I could see only the steep gables of the house, and its many chimneys rising up from the shingled rooftop.

Forcing the kiss out of my mind, I focused on what Jennie had told me. Half. An aspect of the curse involved half the house. A cold feeling of doom had crept into my chest, and I didn’t want to think about the Simmons family or curses any more that day. I needed to get my hands on a phone or radio so that I could ask Jennie exactly what had happened and whether or not I could expect to die at any moment.

“What do we do now?” Henry asked, sounding exhausted.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Do your parents have a radio? Or could I use your phone? I should probably try to get back in touch with Jennie. I mean”—I didn’t want to give myself a single reason to have hope for saving myself, but—“I didn’t touch the card at the end of whatever that was. Mischa did, but I didn’t. So maybe my prediction wasn’t complete.”

Henry said, “My dad has an old radio in the garage for emergencies.”

We stopped back at my house so that I could tell my mom I was going to the Richmonds’, assuming that she’d be more likely to agree if Henry accompanied me. When Mom heard us enter through the front door, she called from the laundry room, “McKenna? Where have you been all this time?”