I felt tears welling up as I reached for the phone and squinted at the screen, trying to reply to the text. Jess had already done so.

Am I next? she said.

That’s not all, Melissa replied. I saw Liz this morning walking Bucky. I passed her house and saw her through the window. She looks really awful. Her face was almost gray, and it looked like her hair had been falling out. You guys, this is getting really scary.

I took a deep breath and again looked over at Liz’s house, at the trail of smoke wafting up into the air.

Jess texted back, asking if she was ready to do the Ouija board now. Her answer came back immediately: No. Then she added, All of this started with the She Shed, when we were outside. Maybe the way to end it is there, also. What if there really is some swamp gas or poison that’s making everyone go ballistic? I think we should try and seal it off.

It wasn’t the Ouija board séance that Jess and I wanted, but it was a start.

CHAPTER
21

I know this was my idea, but I’m not sure we should be doing this,” Melissa said as she crossed the street and met me on the corner of Maple Leaf and Seneca Drives. She was dressed in long black yoga pants and a black Lululemon tank.

I pointedly looked down at her upper arm, covered in a gauze bandage and surgical tape. “I didn’t hear any other ideas this morning.”

We turned as we heard a gate unlocking, and Jess slowly tiptoed out of her backyard, wearing dark shorts and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt. She wore fingerless weight-lifting gloves and a back brace like the ones that wrestlers wear in the Olympics. Slung around her shoulders was a black leather messenger bag. As she got closer, I saw that she had drawn in two black lines under her eyes, on her cheekbones, like a football player.

“I’m ready,” she said as she adjusted her messenger bag. Her gaze moved down to Melissa’s arm. “I’d like to get this over with before I end up with a matching crispy mark.”

“I agree that all of this is weird, but if you really think it’s supernatural, why Liz? Why only Liz?” Melissa said as she chewed her lip. “What if we’re just delusional?”

Jess leaned over and tapped her gauze bandage, at which Melissa yelped in pain. “Is that delusional?”

Melissa straightened up and put her hands at her sides, a move I had seen only once, fortunately. It was her fighting stance, set before she delivered a termination to a subordinate or when she had stepped out of her car to confront a guy who rear-ended her and then called her a dumb bitch.

It meant you had ten seconds before you really saw what she was capable of.