As desperate as we were to discover a way to escape, we surmised pretty quickly that there was simply no way out of Esther’s house. Whether it was actual exhaustion from being on the run for so many days, residual effects of the magic poisoned tea, or another spell being cast on us by Esther from one of the house’s lower floors, Trey yawned deeply a few times before he announced, “If we’re stuck here, I might as well get a few hours of sleep, right?”

Under different circumstances, the two of us being alone in a bedroom with a bathroom all to ourselves might have inspired different behavior, but it was seriously weirding me out to think that Esther and Laura were somehow keeping tabs on our activities. Also, as much as I didn’t want to admit it because there was no one in the world with whom I’d rather be imprisoned than Trey, things between us felt different than when I’d last seen him in January. Trey had always harbored a bright rebellious streak, even when we were very little. But now there was a darkness burning in his eyes that scared me. Despite the fact that he had hated attending Weeping Willow High School, at least before he’d gotten entangled in the curse that Violet had cast at Olivia’s birthday party, he’d had his freedom. His time at Northern had changed him, and I couldn’t help but suspect that in one way or another, he blamed me.

Admitting defeat and dreading what would happen when the sun rose, I curled up next to Trey and tried to fall asleep. All I could think about was how I would have been at home asleep in my bedroom at Dad’s house in Florida if the day hadn’t gone so tragically awry. Maybe I never would have seen Trey again, but perhaps that might have been the best thing for both of us, especially now considering that we’d fallen into the hands of a woman who seemed more than willing to risk our lives in order to tap into the power of Violet’s curse. I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into self-loathing and regret for having been so stupid as to have fallen for Laura’s text message at the airport. Trusting Trey had seemed like such a risky idea, and yet I’d learned the hard way—once again—that he was simply better at sniffing out danger than I was.

The sound of the door opening woke me up. I hadn’t even realized that I’d fallen asleep and yet sudden fear pumped through my veins as I rolled over to see who’d entered the room. It was Laura, and she lifted one finger to her lips to pantomime “shhh” without making a sound.

I lowered my eyebrows at her to make it clear that I did not appreciate anything she’d done so far that day, including sneaking into the room where we were being held prisoners, if that was indeed what she was doing. As she tiptoed across the room toward the bed, I realized two things: it was still dark outside the window of our room, so I couldn’t have been asleep too long, and the doorknob was visible on the door again.

“McKenna, we don’t have much time, so you have to listen very carefully to everything I’m about to tell you,” Laura said in a hushed voice.

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to trust you. You even showed us a picture of your apartment when we asked you for proof that we were supposed to go with you, and you tricked us.”

Laura begged me with her eyes to listen. “I didn’t know, McKenna! I didn’t know she was going to do this until we were already here. But listen, she’s right. The way she described how we could end the curse will work, but you’re going to have to find a way to get your friend who has the curse on her into the same place as the guy who originally cast it.”

“I’m telling you right now, that’s impossible,” I said in a sharp tone, wishing she’d just leave the room. It was difficult to determine if she was really there to help us or if this was part of the bigger picture she and Esther had concocted to mess with us. “Mischa’s not going to leave California. Do you get that? She’s training for the Olympic trials. She’s not going to give that up to drive across the country with us.”

Laura held up her hand to prevent me from saying anything. “Don’t say that, and don’t say the name of the person who authored the curse or where he lives. I don’t want to know, because if I know, she’ll get it out of my head, and I don’t want to be responsible for that.” She looked over her shoulder in fear. “Look, we don’t have much time. I cast a spell downstairs just to be able to come up here, but if Esther catches me, I don’t even know what she’ll do. You just have to do everything I say, okay?”

Next to me, Trey gasped and blinked a few times. “What’s going on?” he asked before sitting up. “What’s she doing in here?”

“I’m only going to do what you say if he agrees,” I told Laura, hoping to correct the course of my poor decisions earlier in the day.

“I’m going to cast a glamour on myself and Trey,” she said quickly, pulling a black candle out of the right pocket on the long cardigan that she wore. “It’s not going to be a powerful one because I’m afraid of messing it up, so it’s important that Trey avoids mirrors on his way out of the house.”

“Hold up,” Trey said, now fully awake. “No one’s casting shit on me.”

Laura didn’t slow down at all. She ignited the wick of the candle with a lighter, and transferred the candle to her right hand. From the left pocket of her cardigan she withdrew a small black NARS pressed foundation compact and opened it with her fingers. “It’s the only way out of the house. Believe me.” She set the compact down on the bed and pulled a set of keys on a keychain and a wad of cash out of her cardigan pocket and handed all of it to Trey.

Trey looked at me in total bafflement. “What am I supposed to do with all of this?”

“Those are keys to my car and apartment,” Laura told him, not giving us an opportunity to object. “I just texted Henry my address in Ravenswood. Trey, you have to go downstairs, take your phone out of your coat pocket and keep it with you. Your coat’s in the kitchen hanging up near the door to the garage. Spend the rest of the night in the library on the daybed—we passed it when we entered the house on our way to the kitchen. Esther has me and McKenna booked on an Amtrak train to Los Angeles that departs from Union Station at ten A.M.”

“Wait a second,” Trey interrupted her. “Isn’t your boss, like, going to freak if I’m downstairs in the library and you’re in here with McKenna when she comes up here to fetch us in the morning?”

Laura held the compact up to shine a globe of reflected light on Trey’s face. “No, because to her, you’ll look like me, and I will look like you.”

Trey rolled his eyes, amused. “Oh, come on.”

But I found nothing amusing about Laura’s proposition. I was immediately concerned. “No way. Too risky. What if you mess up the spell?”

“This is your only shot at getting out of here together, okay?” Laura said. “Trey, there’s a note and a jar in your coat pocket. Take those into the library with you tonight and bring them with you tomorrow. It’s really important that you not forget them.”

“Laura!” I said emphatically. “Just stop! You cannot trade places with Trey. It won’t work!”

Laura paused for a moment and said with urgency in her voice, “You have to listen to me. It has to work. When you leave here tomorrow morning, drive straight to my apartment. You can take showers and eat, whatever, but don’t stay there long. Not more than an hour. Get on the road and head to California.”

I looked at Trey, meaning what I had said when Laura first began her rant. If he had refused to go along with Laura’s plan, I would have fully supported him. But I could see that he was considering it. More than anything else, I didn’t want Trey to end up permanently looking like Laura, which probably should not have been one of my greater concerns considering that we were basically being held hostage by a woman who wouldn’t have had any regrets about killing us, and that police in several states were most likely trying to hunt us down. I was envisioning a weird Freaky Friday situation, and it would have been abysmal if I found myself unable to tell the difference between the real Trey and Laura disguised as Trey.

“Alright,” Trey said reluctantly. “Go for it.”

I squeezed his forearm, kind of wishing he’d refuse. “Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “I don’t want to die in this room, or be turned into a cement deer, or anything.”

Eager to get the spell cast already, Laura held up her compact mirror again and told Trey to look at her and not at the mirror. She warned me that I might not be able to see the change since I was already familiar with both of their faces, and then she instructed Trey to concentrate on the details of her face. Then she uttered a few phrases of gibberish over the candle’s flame and moved the candle around in a circular motion around Trey’s face.

“That’s it,” she said, closing the compact shut. “Go down to the library and try to sleep, and remember, no mirrors! There’s one in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Look down at the ground while you pass it.”

Trey gave me a quick kiss goodbye and said, “I’ll see you in a few hours.” He closed the door on his way out of the room, and once again I watched the doorknob vanish before my very eyes.