Trey uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands in his pockets. The reflection of the Coke logo from the illuminated vending machine flashed across the aquamarine blue of his eyes—the very same shade as Violet's.

"There's a garden at my grandmother's house. I mean, my house, the one where we live now. Ever since I was a little girl I can remember her tending to it in the morning whenever I was visiting her. The estate is enormous, so naturally she had a landscaping service, too, but there's one patch of the yard in the back, just outside the kitchen window, that was hers. It never occurred to me to wonder what she grew back there. I guess I always just thought that keeping a garden was a pretty typical thing for an old lady to do. But that's where I was wrong. This garden wasn't exactly typical, and her reason for planting it wasn't typical, either."

"My grandmother was an herbalist. She believed that consuming certain kinds of herbs, in particular amounts, particular mixtures, had health benefits. And..." Violet trailed off, daring to look over at me, "That some of them could be used for other purposes."

"Like witchcraft," I blurted out.

"No, no, no," Violet was quick to insist. "More like... influence decisions. To see things more clearly. Like, she used to keep small sachets of dried parsley around the house to ensure luck with money. Just the stuff of old wives' tales. Anyhow, when my parents got married, my mother had just graduated from law school and wanted to have kids young so that she could resume her law career before she got older. But she had a miscarriage. She's told me all of this herself; she was so miserable about losing her baby that she wanted to die, too. Then she had another miscarriage. She practically had a nervous breakdown and had to take a leave of absence from her law firm. My father wanted her to take a break from trying to get pregnant and just focus on her own physical health for a while, but it had become almost an obsession for her. She insisted that they go to every fertility specialist in Chicago. They even visited an expert in Boston. Every doctor she saw told her the same thing: there didn't appear to be any physical reason why she couldn't carry a baby to term."

"They went back to Weeping Willow to stay with my grandmother over a long weekend, and my grandmother told my mom that she was going to prepare some special herbs for her to take home that would help ease her nerves. But my mom got it into her head that my grandmother was some kind of witch, and that she had put some kind of a hex on her to keep her from having a child."

I was becoming supremely spooked out listening to Violet tell this story... especially because I'd been in that house. I'd baked cupcakes with Violet in that kitchen, the one that allegedly overlooked the garden. The ice blue eyes of Violet's grandmother had stared down upon me from the oil painting of the Simmons family that hung in the mansion's grand parlor.

"Now of course that was total crazy talk. My grandmother was just as eager to become a grandma as my mom was to have a baby. But my mom wasn't entirely in her right mind at that point both from grief and fear that she'd never become a mother. She made my father promise that they wouldn't visit her anymore, and my father reluctantly agreed. Meanwhile, my mother had a third miscarriage. Her doctor warned her that she really needed to give her body a rest because it was becoming dangerous for her to even try to carry another baby. All of this preoccupation with babies had put some serious stress on my parents' relationship. My dad told me that he wanted to go back to school to get his MBA and increase his earning potential, but honestly, I think he started teaching at the University of Chicago just to get away from my mother a few nights a week."

Trey shrugged. We were getting close to the part of the story that he and I already knew. "I already know about your dad and my mom. That's old news."

Henry's head snapped in my direction. "What is he talking about?"

I felt a small twinge of regret that we hadn't filled him in on the small detail of Trey's relationship to Violet. It had crossed my mind, but considering that Violet's first kill in Weeping Willow had been Henry's beloved sister, I didn't think the news would be too well received. "Just... let her keep telling it her way," I said.

"I know you know," Violet sighed, and then broke into a cough. "Right before school started, my dad sat me down and told me about you. He figured people in town would probably talk now that we were living in Willow, and he wanted me to hear it from him first. He made me promise not to say a word to my mom."

"How could she not know?" Trey asked in a sarcastic voice.

This rubbed Violet the wrong way. She had a violent coughing fit, and then stiffened. "My mom doesn't know anyone in town, okay? She works in Green Bay and doesn't exactly have time to sit around and gossip with everyone else's mothers over coffee. Anyway, that's not what I was going to say. "

"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" Henry asked, growing impatient.

"My father," Violet continued, "Taught finance classes at the University of Chicago while he was a graduate student working on his MBA. One of his students—"

"Was my mother," Trey finished her sentence.

"Oh," Henry replied, and then his expression changed as understanding dawned on him. "Oh. Wait. Wow. You guys are..."

Violet nodded, and slowed down her story, selecting her words more carefully. "People make mistakes. When my dad told me about you, he said he didn't know where his marriage was going back then. He hardly recognized the person my mom had turned into. He still loved her, but didn't enjoy being around her anymore. She'd started spending all her free time at this weird ashram in the city with a yogi because she'd gotten this crazy notion that her chakras were out of alignment, and once she fixed that, she'd be able to have a child."

Bachitar, I thought, and immediately hoped that neither Trey nor Henry would utter the man's name. It wouldn't help any of us for Violet to know we'd already investigated her mother's personal history directly to the Preet Wellness Center and stashed had Mischa there for her own safety.

"Ha," Trey scoffed, justified in being offended that Violet was blowing off the affair her father had enjoyed with his mother as an insignificant mistake. "It sounds like your dad has had plenty of time to perfect a completely ridiculous excuse for cheating on his wife."

Violet's face scrunched in reaction to Trey's harsh words. "Hey, do you want me to tell you the rest, or not? I can't say that I'm sorry your mother didn't get her fairytale romance with my dad, Trey, because if she'd gotten what she wanted, I wouldn't be here."

Trey smirked and looked up at the ceiling, and Henry and I traded concerned glances. This was getting ugly, but there was probably no avoiding the hideous truth about what Mr. Simmons had done if it had anything to do with the curse Violet had put on Mischa.  

"Whatever," Trey challenged. "If you hadn't been born, how many other innocent people would be alive today?"

 I sensed this situation had the potential to rapidly slip out of control. I had to get us back onto the topic of the origin of the curse and how we might reverse it before Trey did something irrational, or Violet refused to continue cooperating. "Keep talking, Violet," I commanded, really wanting to avoid a full-on fight between her and Trey. "You still haven't convinced me that us making you stand in the snow until you freeze to death wouldn't be the fastest solution to our problem."

For a split-second, I got the tiniest bit of satisfaction out of the fear in Violet's eyes. I immediately thought back to the night we'd all played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board in the Richmonds' basement, and remembered the glee with which Violet had told stories for Olivia, Candace, and Mischa. It was a simple pleasure, having power over someone else, and the realization was chilling.

"Okay. Trey's mother was really young at the time. Not much older than we are, now. My dad didn't think she was really ready to be a mom, and throw away her college studies, and he didn't think he could bear to abandon my mom in her emotional state. He knew he'd made a huge mess of things, so he went to my grandmother and begged for help."

"Huge mess," Trey repeated. I could tell by the edge in his voice that he'd heard just about enough of Violet's romanticized version of the disaster that had unraveled into his unhappy childhood. The sound of Violet's wet sniffling filled the little corridor where we sat until Trey piped up. "So, you think, if it hadn't been for my mom getting pregnant with me, your grandmother would never have started all of this."

Violet knew better than to confirm his assumption even though it was abundantly clear that she did believe, in some roundabout, totally unfair way, that all of this was Trey's fault. "I didn't say that. That's just how it all happened."

"Right. But if I hadn't come along, your mother might have been happy to have adopted a kid. Or maybe your parents would have gotten divorced eventually, and none of this ever would have happened," Trey said.

"I don't know. It's pointless to wonder what might have happened because of what did happen," Violet said, sounding miserable and quite a bit apologetic.  

"He gave my mother money to have an abortion. Did he tell you that?"

Violet pressed her lips together for a moment, stunned. I saw her chest rise and fall as she breathed slowly. "No, he didn't tell me that. It doesn't surprise me, though. Look, I'm not trying to make my dad out to be some kind of hero." She hesitated for a moment before adding, "Obviously, he isn't one."

She fell silent for a long moment, staring into space, before I grew impatient and said, "Violet, come on."

"Sorry," she said. "This is the part they showed me—the lights. My dad told me about all of this up until this point, and he said that he'd made arrangements with my grandmother so that she'd financially provide for Trey."

"Ha," Trey snorted. "That is a total lie. I've never seen a dime."

"Trey, seriously," Henry said in a cautionary tone. "Let her finish."

Violet looked around at all of our faces as if seeking approval before she continued. "They showed me my father going to my grandmother for help. Only he wasn't really asking for it, he was demanding it. He was out of his mind, freaking out, desperate. My mom had already found out that he was cheating on her." With this, she turned to Trey and said, "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but your mom wasn't the only one. It would have just been too much for my mom to find out that not only had he cheated on her, but that another woman had ended up with what my mom wanted more than anything in the world... a baby. My dad wanted my grandmother to cast some kind of a spell or charm to help my mom conceive."

"I thought you just said your grandmother wasn't into witchcraft," I interrupted.

"She wasn't," Violet said. "But in what the lights showed me, she was willing to do anything to help my dad, even though she warned him that when you try to trick nature into doing something for you, it always takes something in return."

"A life for a life," Henry said.

Violet nodded. "She did research. She sent away for spell books. She told my father to plant a tree on her property for every baby's soul that had been lost at that point. As he was planting them, he was supposed to chant something, although I have no idea what it was. And it had to be him to plant the trees, he couldn't just make the landscaping crew do it. Then he was supposed to bring my mother a gift, something white, every single day until I was born. Which he did. I know, because my mom told me even when I was a little girl that he brought her home white roses every day when she was pregnant with me. She thought," Violet's voice wavered, "it was romantic."

I slowly became aware of the grimace my face had formed and shivered. There's no such thing as witchcraft, I reminded myself, but everything Violet was telling us sounded plausible. I couldn't help but remember the first time I'd ever walked down the long private drive on the Simmons' property with Violet, and how it had felt like we were entering another world. There were trees lining that paved road, trees that provided a canopy of seclusion as anyone entered or departed the property.

"What my grandmother didn't realize at the time was that she was trading my mother's life for mine. As soon as she passed away, that's when they came for me. I think she'd been protecting me from them, but once she was gone, there was nothing stopping them."

The light inside the snack machine illuminating all of the dusty bags of pretzels and Combos flickered for a second with an audible buzz, and we all flinched, including Violet. "My grandmother figured it out, eventually. When she died, she left the house to me, but on the condition that I be given a confidential letter that only I could read. Because my Uncle Edward was disputing my inheritance, I only got to read the letter right before school started, but basically it said everything I'm telling you now. She wanted to make sure I knew what I was up against in case she never had an opportunity while she was alive to tell me. She said she tried and tried to find a way to reverse what she'd done, but couldn't find anything that wouldn't mean immediate death for my mom. And she knew if she let that happen, my dad would never forgive her."

Having listened closely, I realized that Violet had never actually detailed what she thought the lights were. It had been our assumption that the spirits aiding her all this time were those of her dead sisters. "What do you think," I began cautiously, "they are? The lights?"

Violet pointed her outstretched feet toward Trey and then nodded at him. "He knows. They know about him, too. They want my mom with them. I think they consider this whole thing—my life, basically—to be like her betrayal of them."

Trey scoffed and looked at the ground.

"I can't believe you guys didn't tell me that these two are brother and sister," Henry said, shaking his head.

"What difference would it have made, Henry? Trey doesn't have any secret powers to bring an end to this," I said in Trey's defense. "He's as helpless as we are."

"It would have wanted to know. That's all," Henry said sternly.

"So I don't have a choice. I either do what they want, or they'll take my mom's life. It's just..." she faded, and when she continued, her voice was twisted by a sob. "It's not fair. My mom didn't ask for this. If anyone should have to pay the price for this, it's my dad, but I can't figure out a way to turn it on him."

 "So," I said, looking to Henry for the strength to do what we all knew we had to do. "Based on everything you've said, I would consider it logical to assume that if you died, the curse would be broken, if it's truly a life for a life. Or maybe if we chop down those trees, those spirits will lose their foothold in our world. Or if what those spirits really want is your mom, then if she died, it's logical to assume then this would all be over."

Violet face, damp with perspiration, seemed to turn even paler. She shook her head.

"McKenna," Henry said gently. I knew what he intended to say, that he didn't think we should actually kill anyone. As terrified as I was that our moment for justice had finally arrived, I knew in my heart that I couldn't kill anyone either, not even if it meant saving Mischa's life. Never mind that being convicted of a murder would instantly banish any possibility of me and Trey ever having a future together... I just knew I couldn't intentionally take someone else's life away. Not with my bare hands, not by making the death look like an awful accident, not even by doing something cruel and tragic, like making good on my threat to lock Violet out of the park vending machine lobby and making her freeze to death out in the snow overnight. And killing Violet would end the curse, but not necessarily spare the lives of any other girls whose deaths Violet had already predicted, which had been our big concern since the fall. We'd just lost Stephani and Hailey, but I didn't trust that Violet would ever be honest with us about how many more would follow.

"I know," I assured Henry. "Jennie told us we just had to play the game to reverse the curse. I think that's what we have to do."

"You can't," Violetshook her head and climbed up on her knees. "Please, don't. It won't do anything. They're not going to show you my death."

"We may not need them to show us your death," I said, wishing I had some way of summoning Jennie's spirit to help me through the game. I know everything, and I'm always with you, she'd told me when we'd found her on Christmas Eve. "All I know is that we're supposed to play the game. If only we had a mirror, or that pendulum."

"We could make a pendulum," Trey suggested. "All we need is some kind of string and a heavy object."

He was right; and I still had the tiniest bit of charred sage and a matchbook in the pocket of my coat from the hotel. We all did a quick assessment of our assets; none of us, including Violet, was wearing a necklace.

"I know," Trey said suddenly, and knelt down beside Violet. He untied her wrists and tossed me the drawstring from his hood that had bound her since we'd taken off in her dad's Audi. "You can tie this in a loop and put something heavy on it to create a pendulum."

The weight of the car keys in the pocket of the jeans I was wearing suddenly caught my attention and I withdrew them. A keychain had served me well back at Dearborn, so there was no reason to think it wouldn't be sufficient a second time around. The metal loop on which the keys hung was perfect – I slid the cord right through it and had as basic a pendulum as one could possibly create.

"What are you guys doing?" Violet asked.

"McKenna can use that to ask the spirit world questions," Henry stated matter-of-factly.

Even in her feverish, weakened state, Violet managed to roll her eyes. "You can't be serious."

I tied the cord in a knot at one end and slid my index finger through the loop I created. The keys were certainly much heavier than the pendulum Henry had bought for me in Chicago, making my management of the newly created tool far more awkward.  "We're totally serious," I assured her. "Trey, do the honors." I tossed him the book of matches and the tiny bit of sage.

"Lie down the ground with your hands at your side," he told Violet as he climbed back up to his feet.

Her eyes looked up at him in utter disbelief.

"You heard me," he said without any consideration for her illness. "We can't have you running off and trying to escape when we're so close to ending this thing."

Violet looked to me and Henry for sympathy, and finding none, shifted over onto the mat in front of the two vending machines and reclined back. Her hair spilled out across the mat, her fingers stretched alongside her thighs, and she closed her eyes, her fever blazing. Once she was fully lying down, Trey struck a match and lit the crumbly end of the sage on fire. The smoke curled out from between his fingertips, and the now familiar savory smell of sage filled the narrow lobby.

"Pendulum," I said, feeling a little self-conscious going through these motions with Violet listening, "What does yes look like?"

The keys slowly began moving in a clockwise motion, emulating the indication of yes as displayed by my very own pendulum, the one that Laura had taught me how to use.

"And what does no look like?" I asked. The keys began moving in a counterclockwise motion. "It's working," I happily announced to Trey and Henry.

"We should play this game of yours right now," Henry said. "It's almost three in the morning. Who knows what's going to happen when the sun comes up and cars start driving past this park as people head to their jobs."

Violet bolted up right again into a sitting position. "Please. Please don't play this game and put my mom's life in jeopardy. Seriously. Kill me instead if you think that will end the curse."

Even though my heart was breaking a little bit for Violet—I certainly would have been willing to do anything to spare my own mother pain or death—I didn't have any intention of killing her. "Pendulum. If we play Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble with Violet, will we be putting her mother's life in jeopardy?"

The keys dangling from my finger on the cord began moving in an unmistakable counterclockwise rotation. "See that, Violet? Look. It's saying no. Your mom will be fine."

Her mouth twisted into a hideous, cry-smothering frown and she shook her head. "That stupid thing doesn't mean anything. You're just swinging it with your fingers."

"Fine, don't believe me," I said. "Pendulum, is Jennie here with us?" The pendulum slowed to a stop, and when it finally stopped revolving, it began moving very slowly in a clockwise motion. "Can we talk with her, please?" the pendulum continued rotating. "Jennie, if we play Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble, will you guide us through it?" It continued.

"This is it," Henry said, sounding a little enthusiastic.

My heart began beating more quickly. "Okay. You guys are going to have to hold her arms and legs so that she doesn't make a run for it."

As Henry crawled over toward Violet's feet, she suddenly kicked up, probably figuring it was her last chance to escape. She bolted upright and rolled onto her side, getting half-way up on her feet before Trey threw his arms around her waist and pushed her, hard, back down to the ground. "You're not going anywhere," he yelled, straddling her torso and holding her shoulders down as she struggled, trying to hit him. His voice absorbed into the cinderblock walls of the lobby, drowning out the dull hiss of the radiator. "Don't you feel even the least bit responsible for what you've done? You have to do what's right now, Violet. It's only fair."

She fell slack and lay back again on the mat and squeezed her eyes shut. Henry locked his hands around her slim ankles and Trey knelt down alongside her.

"Pendulum," I asked, growing anxious, "Can we play the game now?"

Startling me, it began moving in a counterclockwise motion.

"No?" I asked, incredulous. I looked wildly from Trey to over his shoulders at Henry. "Why wouldn't she want us to play the game now?"

Trey's eyes searched mine, and then from behind him, Henry blurted out, "Cheryl."

He was right. When we'd first asked the pendulum at the bookstore near the Preet Wellness Center about how to reverse the curse, we'd asked it as many details as we could think of about the circumstances under which we'd play the game in Michigan. It had told us—with certainty—that Cheryl would play the game with us.

"Pendulum, are we supposed to wait for Cheryl?" I asked, desperate for us to assure us that we didn't really need her after all.

The weight of the keys began tugging toward my right, and ever so slowly, the keys began moving in a clockwise direction. Yes. We were supposed to wait. Only how long it would take for her to drive up from Weeping Willow and retrace our path all the way to Michigan, I had no idea. We didn't even know if she'd started the drive. I didn't think Cheryl would flake on a promise, but there was no way of knowing if her parents had talked her into going to sleep for the night at home, or if she'd encountered some kind of unforeseen problems on her drive north. She'd be passing over the Mackinac Bridge just as we had, and if Violet's spirits knew she was coming our way in the middle of a snow storm, she probably was completely unprepared for the kinds of hurdles they'd throw her way.

It was already late, and we'd gotten so little sleep the night before. My eyes were already burning. My limbs and back ached from the ridiculous leap I'd taken out of the motel window into the snow pile. I wasn't sure if I'd be alert enough to deal with any curveballs thrown by Violet's spirits if we had to wait until noon the next day for Cheryl's arrival; there was even a chance that the snow that was covering the Audi would begin to melt by then, and we'd be discovered by local police.

The whole thing was just so futile. A lump began to form in my throat. We'd come so very far, and taken such great risks, and now all of our efforts were being undone by a polyester drawstring and a set of car keys.

"We should just play it now anyway," Henry said from down near Violet's feet. "What's the harm?"

Just then, we all heard the crunch of tires crunching on tightly packed snow, and saw headlights illuminate the white Audi. Violet tried to sit up, and Trey pushed her back down. I gasped, assuming the worst: that Mr. Simmons had some kind of tracking device in the car, and that the police had pinpointed our location even despite the falling snow. I braced myself for the worst as a rumbling, sputtering car engine approached. There would be nowhere for us to run. Trey, Henry, and I would never last long on so little sleep if we tried to make a break for it on foot.

But then, just as I was about to suggest to them that we ditch Violet and run for our lives, I looked through the lobby windows to see that the car that had just pulled up and parked next to Mr. Simmons' Audi was an old Honda Accord. My heart palpitated irregularly. It was Cheryl. She shut off the engine of her car and looked around in confusion behind the wheel of her car until her eyes fell upon the windows of the lobby, where we were holding Violet captive.

"Stay with Violet," I barked out at Trey and Henry as I climbed to my feet and dashed outside into the falling snow. It was bitterly cold, colder than it had seemed when I'd last ventured outside to fetch Henry. I hurried toward Cheryl's car and when she saw me, she unbuckled her seat belt and stepped outside. But she lingered close to her vehicle as if she needed convincing to stay.

"Oh my God. Thank you so much for coming," I said, throwing my arms around my old friend's neck and hugging her as tightly as I could without strangling her.

"Yeah, of course," she said. "My parents have no idea I'm here. They think I went to bed right after we got home from the high school. The entire town is freaking out about the bus accident, McKenna. There are news vans on, like, practically every corner. Two kids dead. Ten injured. School is cancelled for this whole week. I drove past St. Monica's and the sign outside just said, pray for us. I had to pull over because I thought I was going to start crying. No one's even made an announcement about Tracy Hartford's wake, really, because at this point, it's old news."

Cheryl's admission stung; it would have really pissed Tracy off to know that her own death hadn't been the hottest gossip in town for long. And Tracy had been friends with Violet. I would have thought Violet cared about her memory.

"Look," I said, putting my hands on her shoulders and looking her directly in the eyes. "I have to show you something and I need you to promise—I mean, cross your heart and hope to die—that you won't chicken out."

Cheryl raised an eyebrow at me. "I can't promise that, McKenna. I mean, what are you guys doing out here in the middle of the night? If you have a dead body in there or some kind of Satanic—"

"It's not a dead body," I promised with conviction. "I wouldn't ask you to get involved in something that crazy. Just... follow me."

Without saying another word, I turned on my heel and began marching toward the park station again through the thick snow, checking just once over my shoulder to make sure that Cheryl was following me. When I reached the door to the vending machine lobby, I held it open, offering Trey and Henry a weak smile as they both remained in position, holding Violet down. Cheryl stepped nervously into the doorway and peered into the dark lobby, seeing only the shadows of Trey and Henry's bodies outlined in light by the vending machines as they loomed over Violet.

"Oh... my... God, McKenna," Cheryl whispered without taking a step inside. "If that's who I think it is, you guys are in... so much trouble."

"It's okay!" I tried to sound enthusiastic. Cheryl's reaction made my confidence in what we had to do waver; she reminded me that kidnapping someone was inexcusable. Monstrous. "We just need to play a game with her, and then we'll let her go. It's really fine."

"Run, Cheryl!" Violet yelled hoarsely. "Don't believe them! They're all insane and they're going to kill me!"

Cheryl shook her head in horror and took a step backwards into the snowy night. "It's not fine. How did you even get her here? She was in the hospital this morning in Michigan. I mean... where are her parents?"

"Cheryl?" Henry called out. "Cheryl, we need your help. We just need to play a game, just one little game, and then we'll let Violet go home. You can even drive her home, if you want."

"This is it, Cheryl," I said in a solemn voice. I simply had to convince Cheryl to play the game with us. She'd driven all the way up from Weeping Willow in the middle of the night; she couldn't bail on us at that point. If Cheryl refused to play the game, we were in awful trouble, because there was nothing we could do to prevent her from driving straight to the nearest police station. "I know that deep down, you believe me. Olivia's dead. Candace is dead. Now Tracy, Stephani, Hailey... These aren't coincidences. Violet cursed all of them, and if we don't play this game—now, tonight—I don't know how many more people are going to die."

I could see the conflict in Cheryl's eyes. She did believe me about the curse Violet had put on us. Her concern was that we didn't know what we were doing, and we were potentially endangering her by pulling her into our deadly landslide of ghosts and evil. It was a reasonable fear. "Cheryl, it'll be alright. I promise. If anything dangerous happens, we'll stop."

"Don't believe her, Cheryl," Violet called out from where Trey had her pinned to the floor mat. "If you play this game, I'm going to die, and you're all going to go to jail for murder! And you'll be a murderer! You'll go straight to hell!"

Cheryl's eyes lingered on Violet for a moment and then she finally turned to me and said, "Alright. What do I have to do?"

Once we were all situated in the lobby, our wet boots forming puddles of melted snow where we knelt around Violet, it took all of our strength in a coordinated effort to wrestle Violet's winter coat from off of her. If we were going to play the game, it was logical to assume we'd all have to be touching her in order for it to work, as had been the case when we'd all first played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. We tossed her winter coat aside, and I asked the pendulum if Jennie would be able to show me Violet's death so that we could play the game properly. It assured me that she would.

"Cheryl, do you have a mirror in your purse?" I asked.

Cheryl dug through her handbag and produced a slim black Nars compact. Fumbling, she popped it open to reveal a mirror covered in a thin veil of porcelain-colored powder. "Will this do?"

"It's perfect," I told her. "Could you just hold it, just like that?"

I knelt behind Violet's head, my knees just barely touching her hair. Trey knelt along her left side, holding down her left arm, and Henry remained at her feet, preventing her from kicking him by tightly holding her ankles. Violet reached up and tried to swipe the compact out of Cheryl's hand.

"You can't do this to me! You can't!" Violet shrieked.

Cheryl calmly transferred the compact to her own left hand, and grabbed Violet's right wrist to hold it still.

"Pendulum," I asked, my voice trembling, as I looked at my own reflection in the mirror and held the drawstring in my right hand. I firmly placed my left hand on top of Violet's head, tightly gripping her skull. "Can you show me Violet's future death?"

The pendulum began moving in a clockwise circular pattern and swung faster as the diameter of the circle in which it spun widened. I kept my eyes focused on the mirror, ignoring Cheryl's comment of, "Oh, my God," but all I saw were my own expectant brown eyes.

"What's happening?" Trey asked after a moment.

"She can't see anything," Violet snapped, twisting her head around beneath my hand. "They won't let her see! I told you! I told you they wouldn't let you do this to me!"

And just then, I realized that I wasn't looking at my own reflection in the mirror. I was looking at Jennie. She blinked when I didn't, and I leaned in more closely for a better look. The mirror clouded over, and a scene slowly took shape. It appeared to be a doctor's office. It was the middle of the afternoon, with sunlight streaming in through horizontal blinds, casting stripes of sunlight on the far wall, bouncing off of yellowed medical school diplomas framed behind glass. A male doctor with a white beard was seated at the desk, and he folded his hands on the desktop, fighting the urge to open the file before him. He was speaking with a woman who was seated across from him on the other side of the desk, a woman with short gray hair who was listening attentively. I began talking, terrified that I'd not describe the story being shown to me well enough if I waited too long and forgot details.

"It was the middle of the afternoon in a doctor's office. A doctor with a white beard, Dr. Ullman," I said, squinting to read the doctor's name off of one of the diplomas on the wall, "was informing Violet about some test results that had come back."

The mirror switched angles to show me Violet's reaction. I was startled by her appearance; it was definitely her, although she appeared to be much, much older. Perhaps as old as seventy, with fine wrinkles in her heavily powdered skin. She was still pretty, her eyes still that unmistakable shade of intense aquamarine. Heavy pearl earrings stretched out her earlobes, and she was tastefully dressed in what appeared to be a stylish cashmere sweater. She always had favored sweaters. She seemed to be listening to the doctor attentively, and I was able to distinguish the word cancer as his mouth formed it.

"She'd been feeling ill for weeks, exhausted. Weak. No matter how much sleep she got, she felt unrested. The doctor confirmed her worst fears, that she had inoperable cancer. It had begun in her colon and had rapidly spread to her lymph nodes, significantly decreasing her chances for survival."

"Shut up, McKenna," Violet said bitterly. "Just stop talking."

But the mirror was showing me more. It was the future, and I didn't doubt for a second that it was showing me the exact way in which Violet would die. She gathered a group of young men and women in the parlor of that mansion on the edge of Weeping Willow, and they all sat on a sofa under the watchful gaze of the old painting of Violet's grandmother and father as a young boy. Violet was breaking the news to these young people, who I suspected were her children and their spouses. The parlor had been drastically redecorated; the windows appeared to have been enlarged.

"Violet was told she had less than a year to live. Because her husband had already passed away, she decided right there and then in the doctor's office that she wouldn't seek treatment. If her time had come, she wanted to face it courageously, and not spend the last months of her life ill from chemotherapy. She gathered her sons and their wives, her daughter and her husband, and all of her grandchildren at the family estate in Weeping Willow—"

"McKenna, stop!" Violet shouted.

"—and told them that it was her wish to enjoy her last few months spending as much time with her grandchildren as possible, and to die at home rather than in a sterile, impersonal hospital. Her children begged and pleaded with her to undergo chemotherapy if there was a chance it might prolong her time with them at all, but she was adamant. She assured them that she had enjoyed a long and wonderful life, and wanted them to remember her as strong and capable, and not have their memory of her ruined by watching her wither away."

Violet had stopped writhing and now seemed to be paying attention to my story, perhaps a little curious about the end she'd inevitably face.

"She spent the last few months of her life growing thinner and frailer, passing each morning in the garden that had once been planted by her grandmother. Violet longed to visit her own mother's grave in Lake Forest, where she was buried alongside all of the sisters that had passed away before and after her arrival into this world, but she knew that it would be foolish to spend even a fraction of what remaining time she had on a long, stuffy car trip. She comforted herself with the knowledge that she'd see her beloved mother again soon, on the other side."

"When Violet's health worsened significantly, her daughter moved back into the mansion to care for her day and night, reading to her when her vision failed, and holding the tea cup to her lips so that she could drink when her hands had become too weak to lift it. Violet cherished those final few weeks in her daughter's company, and wished that she had been as attentive to her own mother when she'd had the chance."

The scene being revealed to me in the mirror was so vivid that it was like watching a movie, and I wondered if Violet's lights had shown her my friends' deaths in such immaculate detail. "Violet awakened in the middle of the night, and sensed that her visiting nurse was in the room, snoring gently in the nearby rocking chair. She knew that her time had come, and for a second considered calling out to the nurse to wake her daughter so that she could tell her how much she loved her one last time. But then she thought better of an emotional final farewell, and decided it would be best to drift off to eternal sleep without causing her daughter to shed unnecessary tears. In the morning, the nurse found Violet's lifeless body, and her eldest son made funeral arrangements."

The mirror showed me futuristic cars pulling up outside the familiar façade of Gundarsson's, which humored me slightly. It was nice to see the steadfast funeral home of my hometown persevering far into the future; a reassurance that a way of life in Weeping Willow would outlast all of the madness we were lost within.

"Her wake was held at Gundarssons, and..." I trailed off, barely believing what the mirror was showing me before I continued, "hundreds of people attended, wanting to pay their respects to one of the town's most generous and admired residents. Geez, even annoying Michael Walton attended, flying all the way back to Wisconsin from New York. As per Violet's request, all of the flower arrangements that flanked her glossy casket were white roses, and her body lay in its coffin—"

I took a deep breath, praying to heaven with all my might that what I was about to do would work, and spare Mischa from the same fate met by Olivia and Candace, if she was indeed still alive.

"Light as a feather, cold as marble."

I felt Violet's body jerk beneath my hand, and looked up to see Henry, Trey, and Cheryl all similarly startled. "Light as a feather, cold as marble," I repeated.

They joined in my chant, "Light as a feather, cold as marble. Light as a feather, cold as marble."

The radiator hissed behind me, and outside the snow silently fell, impervious to the magic we were conducting in the small brick building.

Beneath the palm of my hand and through Violet's thick dark hair, I felt the temperature of her head dropping. It became cold, and quickly. Inhumanly cold, like a block of ice, so cold that the bones of my hand ached as the cold seeped through my own skin. I heard Henry gasp, and observed in the dim light of the vending machine the skin on Violet's bare forearms turning a pale shade of periwinkle blue, marbling over like stone. Her chest had ceased rising and falling, and a fuzzy white film of frost had accumulated on her lower lip. By all appearances, she was dead, frozen solid. Cold as marble.

"She's freezing!" Cheryl whispered hysterically. The expression on her face was one of disgust, and the compact in Cheryl's left hand began to shake.

"Don't let go of her," I pleaded. "Light as a feather, cold as marble."

"Holy shit," Trey mumbled.

"Light as a feather, cold as marble," Henry managed to chant.

In the mirror, I saw Violet's family gathered at the St. Monica's cemetery, a sight all too familiar to me from my many visits to Jennie's grave. They all wore black, and a young priest I didn't recognize led them in prayer as Violet's coffin was lowered into the ground. It was a magnificent spring day, with not a cloud in the sky, and birds chirped high above in the tree branches. As the family began to disperse, wrapping arms around each other and blotting away tears with handkerchiefs, I caught one final glimpse in the compact so dreadful and unexpected that it made me cry out.

It was a headstone a few feet away from the grave into which Violet's coffin had been placed. On it was engraved the name TREY EMORY.