“It has to. It’s our only shot.”

There’s a knock on my window. It’s Alex. He makes a motion for me to roll down my window. “Yo, Kat! Come inside.”

“Can’t,” she says. “Sorry.” With her eyes locked on mine, she says, “I need to run to the store and get some stuff for dinner. But, Lil, I’ll text you later, see if you’re still hanging out tonight.”

“Great,” I say, with all the fake enthusiasm I can muster. “I’ll see you later.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

KAT

READING AND DRIVING IS SOME dangerous shit, but so is a damn ghost, so it ain’t like I got a choice. I get my ass to the health food store as fast as I can, and I start grabbing whatever shit I see. I found a couple of other spells in the books, for protection. We have to take every precaution.

First thing I do is race home and put a chalk perimeter around my house. I grab Shep and throw him into my car, because he’s turned out to be a good guard dog, at least where Mary’s concerned. Thinking back, I realize that he always barked like crazy when Mary was around.

Then I go to Reeve’s. Thankfully, it’s pretty dark, so none of the neighbors can see me doing the outline around their place. Even the garage, just in case. I move fast, and a couple of times I think I hear a noise, and I jump, but it’s just the wind. I hope.

With Reeve, I want to do extra. I feel like I need to fortify his room, too.

Mrs. Tabatsky lets out a gasp when she sees me standing on her doorstep. “Kat!” She grabs me for a hug. “What are you doing here, honey?”

“Hi, Mrs. T. I’m here to see Reeve. Is he home?” I’m talking so fast, the words run together.

“Yes, yes. Come in,” she says, pulling me through the front door. She pats me on the butt. “Go on upstairs. I’ll bring up a snack.”

“Thanks, Mrs. T!” I scramble up the carpeted stairs, two at a time, my book bag bouncing against my shoulders. It feels so familiar. Even his house smells the same, like potpourri and casserole.

I’m heading toward the attic stairwell when a hand reaches out and closes around my wrist. It’s Tommy Tabatsky, in basketball shorts and no shirt. His body looks pretty good, too. I think all the Tabatsky boys were born with six-packs. The last time I saw him, he was making out with some random skank at the Greasy Spoon.

“What are you doing in my house, DeBrassio? You here to see me?”

I shake him off me like he’s a gnat. “Tommy, I don’t have time for this.”

I turn to leave, and Tommy says, “You know I got my own place now. You should come by sometime.” He winks at me, and I flip him off, and he laughs. “Same old Kat.”

Reeve’s door is slightly ajar, so I just barge in. He’s in bed with his laptop in his lap, no shirt. Do he and his brothers just never wear shirts? “What the hell!” he yelps. He jumps up and grabs a T-shirt.

Shutting the door behind me, I say, “Nice boxers.” I walk over to his desk and start opening his drawers.

“Quit snooping around my stuff! What are you even doing here? You dropped me off hours ago.”

I find an almost empty bottle of vodka and a bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer. “You look like hell. You need to eat something, get some sleep.”

He puts a pillow over his head. “So then leave so I can sleep.”

“I’m about to, so shut up!” As I’m running around his room, I almost trip over an empty bottle of whiskey. I pick it up and shake it at him. “What, are you an alcoholic now? Are you trying to drink yourself to death?”

“That’s none of your business.” Reeve gets up and snatches the bottle out of my hand. His eyes are flat; there’s no light in them. He looks . . . hopeless. Who knows how long Mary’s been torturing him, but it has clearly taken a toll.

“Your mom said she was gonna make us a snack. Go get it.”

“God, you’re so bossy,” Reeve grumbles. But he goes.

As soon as he’s out the door, I unzip my book bag and grab the sea salt. Reeve has two windows, so I pour a stream along the sill of each one, and then I do his doorway. Next I get the sage bundle, light it up with my Zippo, and start waving it around. I hope I’m doing this right.

I’m smudging the shit out of the space around his bed when Reeve comes back with a tray. “Please don’t burn your goth girl incense in here,” he says, setting the tray down on the bed. “It gives me a headache.”

“It’s not incense. It’s sage. I’m clearing negative energy, you ignorant ape.” And with that, I run out the door.

“Hey! My mom just made you a snack!”

*  *  *

I’m burning rubber to White Haven. I call Lil, and she picks up on the first ring.

“Kat. What’s taking you so long!”

“I found a spell that’s supposed to protect our houses. I did mine, and I stopped by and did Reeve’s. We can do yours before we leave.”

“Thank God!”

“There’s one more thing. To do the most powerful binding spell, we both need to bring something that’s precious to us to sacrifice—as, like, an offering. I think we have to do it. We don’t know how strong Mary is, and I ain’t doing this twice.”

“So, like, the pearl necklace my dad gave me for my sweet sixteen?”

“No, you dummy! Nobody cares about your pearl necklace. You don’t even care about your pearl necklace.”

“What did you bring?”

“My Oberlin acceptance letter.”

She gasps. “Kat! No!”

“Mary knows how badly I want to go there. I’ll give it up for her.”

“Well, you don’t need the letter anyway. You can still go.”

“It’s what the letter represents. I ain’t going to Oberlin.” Damn, it hurts to say the words out loud.

“But you didn’t apply anywhere else! That means you’ll be stuck here for another half year at least.”

“I’ll figure something out. We can’t f**k around, Lil. Who knows how far Mary’s going to take this! Come up with something good. Be outside in five!”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

LILLIA

I OPEN THE JEWELRY BOX on my dresser and take out Reeve’s necklace. I hold it in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t bring myself to give it back to him after we broke up.

I’ll never be able to separate Reeve from Rennie’s dying, and Mary, and all of it. There hasn’t been a time in our relationship that wasn’t weighed down with secrets and lies and pain. And the longer I hold on to him, the longer I’ll be haunted by the what-ifs and the what-could-have-beens. It’s too late for that. We don’t have a future. But if I do this, if I set him free forever, he will.

*  *  *

After Kat makes sure my house is safe, we head to Mary’s. Kat goes through the plan with me, and then we ride in silence. We’re both too scared to talk.

To comfort myself I reach into Kat’s backseat and pet Shep. He’s coming along as protection. Kat figured out that animals sense ghosts, so he’ll be our lookout. When she said that, I realized what must have happened that day at the stables with Phantom. Mary had to have been there.

She could have killed me.

I still have trouble believing that Mary, my friend Mary, would ever hurt me. But I can’t think like that. She has become something else. She’s not the girl I met on the first day of school.

We park the car, and I let Shep out of the backseat. He sniffs around in the grass and then sits down and tries to give me his paw.

“Good sign,” Kat says. She turns to face the house. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

It has to work. We have to contain her. With prom two weeks away, I can’t shake the feeling that Mary’s just lying low, waiting to make a big move. Like the homecoming dance, only way, way worse. What if more people get hurt because of us? I couldn’t live with myself.

I have to force myself to move, to put one foot in front of the other and walk toward this dilapidated old house and not away from it. As we walk up the front steps with Shep at our heels, Kat quips, “God, I need a cigarette. Quitting smoking during a freaking ghost exorcism was a dumb-ass move on my part.” Her hand shakes as she turns the knob of the front door. “Here we go.”

We step inside, and the house is dark and empty. And freezing cold, which feels impossible for May. I wish I’d brought a jacket.

“Is cold a thing mentioned in the books?” I whisper.

Kat whispers back, “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to read everything.”

Shep sniffs around, and I turn on the flashlight on my phone and hold it out so we can see. We stay huddled together, taking tiny steps. Then we hear something creak, and we both shriek. It’s just Shep tripping over a raised floorboard. I clutch her arm tighter.

“Lil, I’m gonna go upstairs and do the—”

“Shh!” I mouth, Mary could be here.

Kat nods and rummages around in her book bag. She takes out a container of sea salt. It’s already almost empty, and I have a sick feeling we won’t have enough. Next, a roll of twine. She lifts her eyes toward the staircase, and I give the thumbs-up.

And then we get to it. We go from door to door in the house, starting with the second floor, wrapping each doorknob six times with twine and then putting a line of salt before each threshold.

When we reach Mary’s bedroom, her door is open and the room is pitch-black.

If Mary is already in there, would she come out and talk to us? Would I be able to see her like always?

Suddenly I feel prickles go up my spine. Someone’s here. Watching me. I can feel it. The spell’s working. It’s called her home.

“Lil,” Kat hisses. She has her length of twine ready. I reach out, wrap my hand around the doorknob, and start to slowly pull the door closed. Shep starts growling, low and long, and I freeze. “Keep going!”

I close it fast, and Kat winds the string while I throw down the salt.

Kat looks up at me and smiles.

And then the bedroom door starts to quiver and shake, like someone on the inside is trying to rip it off the hinges. Shep lunges forward, teeth bared, fur standing up on end.

“Oh my God!”

“Come on!”

Each door we pass starts to do the same, as if there is a spirit behind each one. Or maybe Mary’s just everywhere.

Kat goes down the stairs, and I follow after her, shaking salt on each one. Kat has one of the books open in her hand, and she starts to chant. But I can barely hear what she’s saying. Shep’s barking like crazy now, deep and throaty, as if he were a pit bull. The doors upstairs sound like they’re going to break open any second.

The temperature is even colder than before, like it’s the dead of winter. Our breaths come out in little white clouds.

Kat takes out her Oberlin acceptance letter. “Give me your thing!” she screams. I fish the necklace out of my pocket and drop it into her hand.

I watch as tiny cracks begin to break along the walls. They’re like spiderwebs. Pieces of plaster chip and fall onto the floor. Mary’s in the walls, in the ceiling. The floorboards start to buckle up and snap one by one, like toothpicks.

Kat lights the corner of her letter on fire with her Zippo, and the whole thing goes up in a flash.

I swear I see someone streak past me, from the living room to the kitchen. Shep breaks free from Kat’s hand on his leash. “Shep! Shep!”

Kat lunges to grab his leash, but it slips through her hands. He only gets a few feet away from us before the floor splinters violently. A board snaps in half and slices him straight through his belly like a wooden sword. He makes a sickening cry, and the sound goes right through me.

Oh no. No. Kat falls to her knees and lets out a moan. She picks him up in her arms and sobs. “Sheppy. Sheppy, I’m so sorry.”

I go to her. Tears blind my eyes. “Kat, we have to go.”

She’s crying too hard to get up. Her sobs rack her body; they fill the whole house. They’re all I hear. I pull on her arm. “Kat, please,” I cry. “We have to go.” She lets me pull her up. We pick Shep’s body up together and then we run for the door.

Kat has my necklace dangling in her hand. I grab it, hang it on the front doorknob, and pull the door closed.

And just like that, it’s quiet.

We run as fast as we can to Kat’s car. We put Shep in the backseat, and Kat sits back there with him, her head bent close to his, tears falling onto his coat. She has blood on her shirt, blood on her arms. So do I.

I get into the driver’s seat and gun it out of the driveway. I look up, and I see Mary in the window, expressionless, sedate. Trapped.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

KAT

FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS I post up at Reeve’s house, just to make sure Mary doesn’t figure out a way to come and get him. Also, it’s easier to sleep here than at my house, where Shep would have been trying to climb into my bed with me all night. He might’ve been as old as hell, but he died like a champ, protecting me. My poor puppy.

I take out my Shep grief on Reeve and basically order him around like crazy. His room is disgusting. I make him throw out the booze, take a shower. The essentials. That first night after Mary’s bound to her house, he sleeps like a baby. An overgrown snoring baby. The stuff at school eases up on him too. He catches as break when two juniors get stoned during lunch and then go swimming in the fountain nude, and that becomes the thing everyone talks about.

Reeve’s mom has tears in her eyes when she thanks me for looking out for her Reevie. God. I almost tear up too, been super emo ever since Shep died. I had to make up some shit to Pat and my dad about him running in front of a car on the road.