"I don't know about you guys, but I could use some Christmas music and a damn piece of pie," Mischa finally said. I burst out laughing, surprising even myself. Mischa rarely cursed, but we'd just driven around rural Wisconsin with a ghost for fifteen minutes. The strangeness and tension of the last hour of our lives melted away. It was, after all, Christmas Eve. We'd accomplished what we'd set out to do, and we were all overdue for a holiday indulgence. We had been as victorious as possible, given the circumstances.

"Word," Trey concurred in a rare instance of solidarity with Mischa.

"That was crazy," Mischa said, this time a little more softly than her original declaration of relief.

Trey reached for my hand and squeezed it. "Are you okay?" he asked me.

"I'm fine," I assured him. He pecked me on the cheek. "I'm better than fine." I was. Despite the fact that we had, obviously, some very unpleasant tasks in our immediate future in dealing with Violet, it was a huge relief to know that Jennie was with me, as she had said, always. I felt both terrified that Mischa still had a death sentence and guiltily happy that I'd been able to speak with Jennie. I wished I could have shared the experience with my mom, who would have cherished the idea of Jennie's spirit flourishing around us. But the mere thought of telling my mom that the three of us had sneaked out of our respective homes on Christmas Eve to go ghost hunting upstate was madness.

When we gathered the courage to turn around and face the car again, thankfully the bloody stains had disappeared, just as we had expected.  Mischa resumed her place behind the driving wheel, and I traded places with Trey, buckling myself into the back. As soon as Mischa started the car's engine, she switched on the satellite radio and the rich, comforting voice of Bing Crosby surrounded us. Silver bells, silver bells. It's Christmastime in the city... It suddenly seemed like Christmas again, just like that, which was dangerous, at least for us. We could enjoy the holiday sentiment briefly, but couldn't be lulled into a sense of safety and inactivity for long. Just as the ghost had told us, our work was far from done.

We were silent on the drive back to Willow, knowing that once we got to Bobby's, the only restaurant in our small town that was open twenty-four hours a day, we'd have to start discussing next steps. Not surprisingly, the parking lot at Bobby's was nearly empty. A truck driver sat at the counter eating a patty melt, and an elderly couple sat at a table in the corner drinking coffee. The restaurant had been decorated excessively for the holiday, with tinsel lining the edge of the counter and colorful Christmas lights blinking in every window. A surge of love for my small town filled me. It was followed quickly by homesickness, because I knew that not only was my time at home limited, but also that much of what I loved about Willow was in serious danger. As we entered the restaurant and shook off the cold, I thought as I watched Mischa take off her hat that if her prediction from Violet were to come true like the others had, I wouldn't be able to bear to come back to this place.

"Table for three?" the middle-age waitress who greeted us asked, already holding three menus in her hands. The waitress wore a red felt Santa hat, which was kind of sad given that she was stuck working on Christmas Eve.

We nodded and followed her to the back, each of us grateful not only that the restaurant was relatively empty, but also that Christmas music was playing. Music would muffle the odd conversation we were about to have from any eavesdroppers. Since Trey and I had become relative celebrities in town a month earlier, it was probably best that there were not many witnesses to our outing with Mischa that night. Our pictures had been on the front page of the Willow Gazette more than once, and every parent in town considered us to be volatile, corrupting influences on their innocent children. In a town where there were rarely even burglaries, for two teenagers to engage the cops from Weeping Willow and Ortonville in a cross-county car chase was pretty... major. Presumably unaware of the significance of the booth to which she led us, the waitress seated us where Trey and I had sat with Cheryl, Erica, and Kelly the night we'd gone to Winnebago Days together. That had been the night before Candace's flight to Hawaii, the trip on which she had drowned, just as Violet had predicted she would.

"So," I said after we all ordered coffee and slices of pie, "What now?"

"First of all," Mischa said, stirring sugar-free sweetener into her coffee, "I'm not sure we can believe anything that ghost told us. I don't know what she meant by sarsaparilla. I don't even know what that is, and if I don't know what it is, then Olivia definitely didn't know what it is."

"Fair enough," Trey agreed. "Do we believe anything she told us at all?"

"I believe everything she told us about Violet needing to be sent to the other side. All of that stuff that Jennie said about Violet offering up souls to them, whoever they are, kind of makes sense," I mused aloud. "Maybe Violet has some kind of deal with them, where she delivers souls to them in exchange for..."

"For what?" Mischa asked. "For her own life?"

The three of us fell silent for a second, Trey and I both staring at Mischa in surprise. It was such a simple theory, but it made so much sense.

"God," Trey said, taking a huge swig of his own coffee. "Has Violet ever mentioned being involved in any accidents to you guys? Or having any weird diseases? It would be perfectly logical if she was trading in her friends' lives to prolong her own. Why didn't we think of this a long time ago?"

I wrinkled my nose, trying to remember if Violet had ever suggested any such thing to me. Mischa shook her head. We had barely known the girl for three weeks before Olivia's birthday party. Neither of us knew very much about her life, especially in the years before her arrival in Willow, at all. One kid in the junior class with me and Mischa, Craig Hirsch, had survived leukemia when in fourth grade, and everyone knew about that, but only because we'd all noticed of his absence during treatment. It wasn't the kind of thing anyone ever talked about. Just like when my house had burned down. Tragedies became a part of the town's history, but Violet hadn't been among us for any of that. Her personal history was completely discrete from ours.

"Okay, maybe that's one of our next steps. See if we can find anything out about her medical history that suggests she was close to dying at one point," Trey said.

"How are we going to do that?" Mischa asked. She quieted down as the waitress approached carrying our three slices of pie on a tray.

"Here we are," the waitress said, setting the tray down on the edge of our table. "Two pieces of blueberry, one German apple."

She set the slice of German apple pie down in front of me, and the two slices of blueberry pie in front of Trey and Mischa. Trey spread his napkin over his lap, and Mischa cut into her slice with the side of her fork, starting with the buttery crust first. Neither Trey nor I said anything, but both of us couldn't help but notice that despite Mischa's awareness that the curse hadn't actually been lifted from her, she was still eating. After Violet had predicted in September that she'd choke to death and the predictions for Olivia and Candace came true, Mischa had stopped eating entirely until we had destroyed the locket, shrinking her already tiny frame down to a skeletal state. Once the waitress nodded at us and returned to her station behind the counter, refilling the truck driver's cup of coffee, Mischa continued. "This isn't like, C.S.I. How are we going to find out about her medical history?"

Trey thought for a moment. "Do you think the high school keeps paper files on students' medical records?"

"They do," I piped up. "I've been in Nurse Lindvall's office before when she's unlocked her file cabinet. Once I was there when a freshman came in and wanted a shot for a migraine. She keeps all kinds of records about allergies and prescriptions on file. She keeps the key to the file cabinet in the top drawer of her desk. Not very sneaky." It was hard to believe it had only been six weeks since I'd been a normal high school at our boring little public high school. The time when I could visit Nurse Lindvall's office for ibuprofen between classes seemed like ancient history.

Trey shrugged suggestively, and Mischa smiled coyly before taking another sip of coffee. "So, are you suggesting that we break into Weeping Willow High School to raid Nurse Lindvall's files?"

"No. Of course not. It would be much easier to find out who Violet's personal pediatrician was back in Lake Forest, and hire a hacker from Craig's List to break into her secure medical records online," Trey joked.

"I'm serious," Mischa snapped at him. "This is my life, Trey. My life."

"I know, I know," Trey said apologetically. I had grown accustomed to his snarkiness and found it adorable, but he had always rubbed easily irritable Mischa the wrong way. "I don't have a plan. The high school is closed for the holiday break, right?"

"Until January third."

"That sucks. I'm sure they keep all their basketball trophies and art supplies locked up nice and safe." Trey had a general disdain for the high school. The only classes he had ever claimed to like were auto body shop and Physics. He probably could have been Valedictorian of his class if his attitude hadn't been so bad, and if he hadn't been expelled along with me.

I thought slowly, carefully, and regretfully before I opened my mouth. I hated the idea of pulling anyone else into any of the levels of trouble we were in... with our local town officials, the public high school, the state of Wisconsin, and what was starting to seem like every dead spirit in the afterlife. But I didn't see how else we were going to get into the high school over break, and it was pointless to just burn down the Simmons' house without understanding exactly what kind of deal Violet had made with the spirits that had laid claim to Mischa's life.  While a car chase had gotten us kicked out of school, arson on private property was likely to land us in jail. We needed to really, thoroughly understand what we were doing before we considered that. "I can get us into the high school," I offered.

Mischa raised an eyebrow at me.

"Cheryl Guthries has a key. She opens up the East entrance by the band room early for color guard practice," I said, despising myself more with every word that left my mouth. Cheryl had been one of my closest friends since elementary school, and I had been nothing but a complete jerk to her since the start of junior year when I'd fallen into favor with Olivia and the popular girls. Throughout all of the months I'd still been enrolled at Willow High School that fall, Cheryl had tirelessly tried to win me back as a friend. I really didn't want to ask anything of Cheryl that would jeopardize her. She'd written me regular letters at the Dearborn School for Girls, brightening my spirits considerably with her little illustrations and stickers.

"Cheryl Guthries?" Mischa asked in disbelief. "That girl in the band who looks kind of like a rabbit? Like a fat rabbit?"

"Like that girl in color guard who is the president of French National Honor Society and the associate editor of the yearbook? That Cheryl Guthries," Trey corrected Mischa. He was always quick to defend my less popular friends, and honestly, I hated when Mischa acted like a superficial snob. Of course, being a superficial snob had helped her become one of the most popular girls at Willow High School before she transferred to St. Patrick's, but the nasty things she said about other girls made me wonder what she used to say about me before I lost weight and got contact lenses.

She dramatically rolled her eyes. "Okay. Yes. That Cheryl Guthries."

"Like it or not, Mischa, your fate might be in the hands of a nerdy girl," I teased. "Cheryl is really nice." Making the whole situation even more disgusting, I knew that Cheryl would give me the keys if I asked, even if she knew how cruelly Mischa referred to her. If she knew that it was a serious situation, she would never refuse to help me.

"You'd really ask her for the keys?" Mischa asked me, sounding much more humble than she had a second ago.

"What choice do I have? Trey's right. If we go over there trying to break in through windows, we'll be arrested. Then, you're on your own," I reminded her.

"What else?" Trey asked. "Did either of you understand the part about what we're supposed to do to send Violetover to the other side without killing her?"

"Well," Mischa theorized, "if she was sending us over to the other side when we were playing the game, then I think it's obvious that we have to play a similar game, but with her as the subject."

"Light as a feather, cold as marble," Trey and I both said in unison.

"How in the world are we ever going to get her to sit still long enough to put her into a trance?" Mischa wondered aloud.

I ate two more bites of my pie in silence and then pushed it away. I had an awful suspicion that I was going to have a police record by New Year's Day.  It was then that we began to notice cars pulling into the parking lot at Bobby's. Midnight mass at St. Monica's had let out, and parishioners were stopping by the diner for late night holiday snacks.

"Check, please," Trey said, summoning our waitress with two fingers in the air.

Violet Simmons and her parents were parishioners at St. Monica's. Whether midnight mass on Christmas was part of their family tradition or not, we weren't about to find out that night. The waitress set our check down on our table face-down and wished us a merry Christmas, and only then did I remember that I didn't have any cash on me.

"Uh, Mischa? Sorry, I don't have any money," I apologized. "I can pay you back the next time I see you. I have money at home, I just forgot."

At Dearborn, students weren't allowed to carry money around. We weren't permitted many personal luxuries at all. Makeup wasn't allowed. Perfume wasn't allowed. It was kind of weird how oddly unaccustomed I'd become to carrying things like money and a cell phone around with me in just six weeks.

I could tell from Trey's grimace and shrug that he was in the same boat.

"You guys suck," Mischa told us, leaving a handful of crumpled dollars on the table to cover our tab. "Pick us up in the middle of the night, Mischa. Let a ghost ooze guts all over your car, Mischa. Buy us some pie, too. But what do I care? I'll probably be dead soon."

In the parking lot, we pulled our hats as low as we could over our heads, and kept our faces down in the hopes of not being recognized. I resumed my place in the back seat, this time climbing in on the right side and sitting where the ghost had sat when we'd picked her up on the side of Route 32.

Christmas carols once again filled the car as Mischa started its engine. "Don't ask me how I'm going to get this car into the garage and sneak back into my house at this hour," she said.

"I thought you told your parents you were at Matt's," I reminded her.

"I did, but it's one o'clock in the morning. I'm surprised they haven't been calling me every five minutes. Maybe I'll just tell them we all went to midnight mass. Do you think they'd buy that?"

"Wait," Trey cautioned her as she released her parking brake. A car had just pulled into the lot and was driving slowly, looking for a spot. "That's Coach Simon's car."

Coach Simon, the boys' basketball coach at Weeping Willow High School, had been one of the unfortunate teachers involved in our attack on Violet back in November. Trey had accidentally elbowed him in the nose while trying to break free from his grip as I had chased Violet out onto the track in my attempt to tear the locket away from her neck. Of all of the residents of Willow, Coach Simon and his wife were probably among those who would be least pleased to see me and Trey driving around late at night.

Mischa waited for Coach Simon's car to slowly roll past the back of hers. By the time she pulled out of the parking lot, the car had already grown toasty from the heater. My mind drifted toward my bed, and the challenge I still had to face in climbing back in through my bedroom window in order to reach it.  My breath steamed up the back seat window, the same back seat window on the right side of the car that two hours earlier had been coated in the ghost's tar-colored blood. Only as my breath collected on the window, I realized that there was a symbol there, in the steam, just as there had been a drawing of a house in the condensation that had collected on my bedroom window above the radiator.

I was about to say, "You guys," to draw Mischa and Trey's attention to it, but fortunately, I caught myself before I made a sound.

The symbol was a "T."

My heart sank and I swallowed hard. Just what had I gotten myself into? The person I trusted more than anyone else in the world, the person with whom I had shared my deepest, most intimate fears and secrets, knew more than he was telling me. If Jennie had left it there for me to see, there was only one thing it could mean.

She was warning me about Trey.