Henry and I sat in the cab of the truck in silence for a moment after Mrs. Robinson ended our call. Who in the world could we possibly ask to serve as bait—and get them to agree to touch Mischa so that the spirits would attempt to leap from her soul—and into theirs? We’d have to do it at the memorial—Mischa would obviously definitely be in attendance, and there’s no way she’d agree to meet us anywhere else. I said so out loud to Henry.

After nodding, Henry raised an eyebrow at me. “I thought you said you lost your phone.”

“I did,” I replied, trying to sound casual and not defensive even though I felt so. “But I just found it when we stopped by my house.”

Henry removed the keys from the ignition, but neither of us moved to get out of the car. He stared forward through the windshield. “You know, Trey’s missing from his school.”

I bit my lower lip in fear that Henry was about to call me out for plotting with Trey and leaving him out of the loop.

“There was a story in the Gazette this morning. Police in town are asking people to keep an eye out for him in case he shows up around here,” Henry continued.

“I know about the article,” I admitted. “I didn’t read it. But I heard that Trey’s missing. I think he’s in trouble.” Guilt twisted my mouth as I thought about how foolish it was for me to have insisted that Trey follow me back to this town, where so many people were on the lookout for him. I hoped wherever he was at that moment, he was well hidden, and that he’d contact me before nightfall.

I could tell there was more that Henry wanted to say or ask me, but instead he simply said, “I think you’re in more trouble than he is.”

With that, Henry reached for the door handle, and I did the same.

Henry hadn’t been exaggerating about his house being a mess. Newspapers were stacked in columns throughout the living room, forming a wall around the couch. Boxes that looked like they’d been shipped from online stores were stacked like inconsistently sized bricks along one wall, nearly reaching the ceiling. A faint smell of mildew wafted through the living room, making me wish we could step back outside for fresh air.

Trying not to let my discomfort show on my face, I followed Henry into the kitchen to enter the garage through the interior door, and I pressed my lips together in shock when I saw more of the same: orderly columns of paper bags, mountains of emptied, washed aluminum cans, flattened cereal and frozen dinner boxes, stacked and tied with twine.

“What’s going on, here?” I asked Henry. The Richmonds’ house had always been spotless and beautifully decorated. Even back in January, when Henry and I had crashed here the night I’d broken out of the Sheridan School for Girls, the house had been thoroughly vacuumed and smelled like fresh potpourri. Seeing it in such a state of clutter made me feel like we’d crossed over into the twilight zone.