In the morning, I trudged down the hall toward the kitchen with every intention of yelling at my mom for not waking me up earlier. It was after ten o'clock in the morning already. I'd fallen asleep with a head full of grand intentions to call Mischa as soon as it was an acceptable hour because I was going to need her help getting to the bottom of whatever was going on with Trey. But just before I stepped into the kitchen, I heard voices and stopped to listen.

"...refusing to eat and calling the chaplain words that I'm ashamed to repeat."

The voice that I heard in the kitchen did not belong to my mother. Without even peeking through the doorway, I recognized it as that of Trey's mother, Mrs. Emory. I held my breath in the hope that they wouldn't catch me eavesdropping.

"I just don't know what's come over him. I mean, first it was the antics in the fall, which I was willing to overlook because of what had happened with the Richmond girl," Mrs. Emory said in a hushed, worried tone. She was referring to the car crash that Trey had survived, the one which Violet had predicted at Olivia's party. Olivia, who Trey had been driving home from the mall, had flown through the windshield when Trey's Corolla had collided head-on with an eighteen-wheeler truck. Trey had been mere inches away from her at the moment of impact.

"I mean, that's understandable, right? For him to have been upset about the crash?" Mrs. Emory continued.

"Of course," my mother agreed.

"But the dean of his school is recommending electro-shock therapy. Trey speaks out of turn in classes and threatens the other students. Yesterday morning before we arrived to pick him up for the break, one of the other students jokingly suggested that Trey might have to spend the holiday vacation at school, and Trey picked him up and threw him so hard against a wall that the boy had a concussion."

I shuddered where I stood in the hallway with my back pressed against the wall. So, I wasn't the only one worried about Trey. Something was wrong with him.

"Trey?" my mother asked incredulously. "I never thought of him as the kind of kid to pick a fight."

"And this boy he threw, Deborah... he's easily twice Trey's size. I don't know how Trey had the strength to even get him off the ground," Mrs. Emory said.

Just then, Maude sensed my presence in the hallway and burst through the doorway from the kitchen, tail wagging. Totally busted for eavesdropping, I stomped my feet a few times in a poor attempt to make it sound like I was walking down the hallway before entering the kitchen.

"Oh, good morning, hon. I didn't even hear you get up," my mom greeted me.

"Hi," I said in a weak greeting to Mrs. Emory. The last time I'd seen her in person was in the Shawano County courtroom the day of our sentencing. As always, she looked rail thin, drained of energy. Not surprisingly, she stood up from her chair intending to leave the moment she saw me.

"I should be getting back," Mrs. Emory said to my mother without addressing me. "I don't want to leave the boys alone for too long." She glanced in my direction as she set her coffee cup in the sink. "Thank you for the coffee."

Two hours later at the mall in Ortonville, Mischa listened to my concerns about Trey as she sucked a java chip Coffeeccino through a red striped straw. Saccharine Christmas music played in the background as last-minute shoppers carrying bags strolled past the food court. The sensory overload of holiday activity within the mall made it hard to believe how much my life had changed since the beginning of the school year.

"We haven't really spoken that much since we were arrested, you know? I barely saw him before we left for our separate schools, and we can't say too much on the phone because there's always someone around, listening," I complained. "So it's possible that he's been different this whole time and I didn't realize it. Only last night when he came over... I can't explain it. He was like a different person."

"And that's a bad thing?" Mischa teased. Her low opinion of Trey was hardly a secret. In fairness to her, everyone at Weeping Willow High School thought Trey was a bit of a loner and a weirdo.

"Come on, Mischa. He risked a lot for you," I reminded her.

Mischa rolled her eyes. "Try for you. There's no way he would have taken on Violet just to save me! He's in love with you, McKenna," she teased in a sing-song voice.

She may have been right about that, since Trey made a point of avoiding just about everyone in school. Students at Weeping Willow High School were caught up in an informal popularity contest, but Trey acted as if losing that contest were his mission in life. Before we were both yanked out of school by Judge Roberts, Trey used to wear an oversized army jacket all the time and smoke outside by the dumpsters in between classes with the burn-out dudes from auto shop class. "Maybe," I agreed. "Still. When we were driving up to White Ridge Lake, he opened that locket Violet used to wear, and there was a chunk of hair inside of it."

"Gross," Mischa groaned, slurping on her straw. "Biohazard."

"Yeah. This might sound crazy, but hear me out—what if Violet's connection to the curse was actually inside the locket, and Trey let it out?" I hypothesized aloud, knowing full-well that if I were talking to anyone other than a girl who'd been present the night we'd played the game with Violet in Olivia's basement that they'd be dialing 9-1-1 to have me carried away to the funny farm.

Mischa raised an eyebrow at me in suspicion. "You mean, like maybe now that evil is inside Trey?" she asked. "Like..."

"He's possessed," I whispered.

Mischa set her nearly empty cup down on the table. "That's a little dramatic, McKenna. What the hell can we even do about that if he is? I mean, we're like, high school students. We don't know anything about banishing demons!"

My heart sank. I couldn't admit it to Mischa because I knew her opinion of Trey wasn't very high, but I'd had a crush on him since childhood. I felt connected to him in a way that was all-consuming; like our lives were inextricably entwined. If he were in trouble, I had to help him. "I have no clue."

"And how would we even know for sure? It's not like we could buy some kind of home demonic possession test at Walgreen's and ask him to pee on a stick."

She was right. There was a chance that Trey wasn't possessed by a demon but was instead just infuriated that he'd ever gotten in so much trouble (at my request) that he was sent away to an awful boarding school. Since October, the thought of Trey had released a flurry of butterflies in my chest. But there was a possibility I had only been allowing myself to see the traits I wanted to see in him. Maybe kids and teachers at school were right and when he wasn't trying to impress me he was a depressed loner.

"Besides, maybe you guys broke the curse on me, but you got sent away and I got dumped in Catholic high school. Meanwhile, Violet's life has only gotten better," Mischa continued. "The more we try to make things right, the worse we make things for ourselves."

"What do you mean, her life's gotten better?" I asked. Cheryl Guthries was my only friend from Weeping Willow High School who wrote to me at Dearborn, and she very carefully restricted the content of her letters to what she was studying and how much she liked Dan Marshall. She was wise enough to know that updates about Violet Simmons' rise in popularity would infuriate me.

Mischa's face pinched into an angry point. "Matt said she's throwing a huge blow-out party tonight while her parents are out of town. He was invited, but I told him I'm never speaking to him again if he goes."

I groaned, imagining all of my former classmates drinking cheap beer and hopping up and down to music in the grand parlor of the Simmons' mansion. Of course, Violet would be dressed to the nines in something sexy and expensive, as always. "God, she's the worst. She really doesn't feel at all bad about what she did to us."

Mischa brightened up suddenly. "I think I know how we could test Trey!"

An hour later, Mischa's older sister Amanda made it emphatically clear how unhappy she was to be driving us to St. Monica's. "I still haven't gotten a gift for Mom, you idiots," she complained from behind the wheel of her car. "It's three days before Christmas and I really don't have time to get sucked into all this stupid devil stuff with you guys."

"You could have given me the keys and kept shopping," Mischa said in her most patronizing voice. We all knew that under no circumstances would Amanda ever let Mischa drive anywhere. "We would have picked you up later."

"Not even," Amanda muttered as we pulled into the church parking lot. She let the engine idle as Mischa and I unfastened our seatbelts and climbed out of the car.

"You don't want to come with?" Mischa asked.

"Hell no! You nerds can walk home." Amanda left us in the lot and made a left turn back out onto Poplar Street, presumably to drive right back to the mall to continue shopping.

Mischa narrowed her eyes. "God, she is such a bitch."

"Don't say swear words on church property," I cautioned her. My boyfriend's fate quite possibly depended on the Catholic Church; I couldn't afford to break any rules.

Thankfully, the church's doors were unlocked. It had occurred to me on the drive back from the mall that it might not be open on a weekday afternoon, but a nun was leading children from the adjoining Catholic school in the rehearsal of Christmas carols near the altar. Potted poinsettias lined the main aisle that divided the rows of pews.

"Let's do this quickly and get the heck out of here," Mischa whispered as we lingered in the doorway at the back of the church. She withdrew the BPA-free water bottle we'd bought at the mall for this mission and unscrewed the cap. I didn't argue with her. We weren't technically stealing from the church, I assured myself, but were rather utilizing some blessed resources to fight evil elsewhere in town. Surely, that technically would not count as a sin.

I stepped in front of Mischa in an effort to block the nun's view of her attempt to fill the water bottle with holy water. I heard her muttering curse words behind me as she fumbled with the bottle, which was simply too big to be dipped into the brass font containing holy water affixed to the wall. "This isn't going to work," Mischa grumbled. "We should have brought a funnel and a pump or something."

"Yeah, that would have been really low profile," I replied sarcastically, noticing that she'd managed to spill some holy water on the floor, which really could not have been a good thing.

A deep, loud voice startled both of us. "Good afternoon, girls."

Busted for the second time that day, I turned to see Father Fahey, the priest who had baptized me. Trey and I had sought out his help in the fall when we first began to suspect that Violet had a grim ability to predict how people would die... and then make those predictions come true. Father Fahey had patiently listened to us and had given us valuable advice, but had refused to involve himself in our mission for fear of exposing the vulnerable community at St. Monica's to the presence of evil that had returned to Weeping Willow.

"Hi, Father Fahey," I said weakly.

In a fraction of a second, he surmised what we were up to. "Can I help you girls with something?"

"No, no. We're just here to pray and stuff," Mischa lied with the well-practiced smile that she saved for parents and teachers.

I elbowed her lightly in the ribs. "Actually, we need some holy water," I told him. "It's for a project."

Father Fahey put his hands on his hips and stared me down. "This project wouldn't have anything to do with tormenting the Simmons girl, would it? Because I think we can all agree that wouldn't be very wise."

Mischa shot me a glance warning me to keep quiet. Ignoring her, I admitted, "It's Trey. He's acting really weird and we might need your help."