It had been weeks since I'd experienced interference from the evil spirits that were responsible for the curse Violet had cast on my friends, which also seemed to proactively safeguard it from anyone trying to break it. But there was no doubt in my mind when my eyes fixed on the balding head of my former U.S. History teacher, Mr. Dean, as he boarded the train—our train, our only feasible chance of getting to Mischa—that the spirits must have worked overtime to arrange for this inconvenience.

"Crap, crap, crap," I ranted.

Trey circled around me to face me, his face fraught with worry. "Okay, what do we do now?"

We had already inserted Laura's credit card into the Amtrak automatic ticketing machine to have the tickets reserved in her name printed. If we skipped this train and waited for the next one (and I had no idea if and when there would ever be a next one), that would involve having to talk to a ticketing agent face to face about reissuing our tickets. That would attract attention, and attention was exactly what we needed to avoid.

"Don't know," I said. "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."

Around us, other travelers boarded the train with their rolling suitcases and duffel bags, eager to begin their adventures. Just like in the movies, further down the platform, the conductor yelled, "All aboard!" to indicate that the train was departing in less than a minute.

The risks of reentering the train station in pursuit of a different train bound for another destination were clear: at any given point, the glamour on me protecting my identity could wear off, and poor Trey was already in serious danger of being recognized. But to spend three days aboard a train with one of the biggest disciplinarian teachers from our high school—who was certain to recognize Trey if they passed each other—was practically suicide! Mr. Dean was basically famous for issuing detentions at Weeping Willow High School.

"Look," Trey said while staring down at his shoes. "Maybe you should go to California on your own to deal with Mischa. I'm just a liability at this point."

He was right, but at the same time, wrong. I'd be safer from being caught by police without him by my side, but that was only half of my problem. It was probably going to be easier to outfox police over the course of the next three days than elude the evil spirits who protected the curse, at least if recent history was any indication. And for that reason, without a doubt, I wanted Trey with me. Every time they'd ever tried to thwart us in the past, it had been Trey who'd gotten me through it, from busting us out of the columbarium in the graveyard we'd visited over the winter in pursuit of more information about Violet's sisters whose deaths had preceded her birth, to helping me and Henry escape from a hotel room in Michigan after the spirits used my pendulum to alert local cops to where we were hiding.

"I need you with me," I said, sounding a little more desperate and borderline pathetic than I intended. I placed my hands on his shoulders to make it clear that I wasn't joking around.

"You don't," Trey said, shaking his head, refusing to look at me. "You're strong enough to do this on your own. We both know that." He dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "We'll pick a place up North and I'll go there now, and you can meet me whenever you can."

Pick a place up North?  It sounded like he actually wanted to ditch me. Like it was his roundabout way of saying goodbye. "Trey," I pleaded. "Come on. We cannot split up, not now. How will I know if I'll ever see you again?" Once again, I regretted not using the past few weeks at my dad's house in Florida to become more skillful at manipulating magic. If Laura could cast a reasonably convincing glamour spell on Trey to temporarily alter his appearance, then surely I should have been able to do just as well, if only I'd bothered to learn how.

He was being impossible, still avoiding eye contact with me, when suddenly behind him I saw two uniformed cops stroll out of the train station, approaching us on the platform. "Hey," I said with a new sense of urgency in my voice. "We have to get on this train. Now. There are cops walking over here."

It didn't seem like the police were headed straight for us, but surely if they passed Trey and even caught a glimpse of his profile, they would recognize him. Now his pale blue eyes—the same shade as Violet's—looked into my eyes, or rather, eyes that probably looked to him like Olivia's. "Are you serious? You wouldn't lie about that, would you?"

The police were only about twenty feet behind Trey at that point, so I grabbed his hand and we both boarded the train in the car behind the one which Mr. Dean had gotten onto. Immediately we were faced with the choice of heading up a narrow staircase to the upper level, or down to steps to remain on the lower level where coach seats were located. I figured that Esther had booked us coach seats; she didn't seem like the type to splurge on luxuries for anyone but herself. I led the way onto the lower level. Trey slid into the first pair of seats, which was empty, to peer out the window at the police as they walked directly below on the platform. "See?" I asked. "Why would you think I'd lie and trick you into coming with me?"

Surprising both of us, the train was rather empty. This was good in terms of us pretty much having our selection of seats; there were only about ten other people on the train car we'd boarded, and all of them were middle-aged. The train was also very different from every kind of commuter train I'd ever been on before in my life; a blue carpeted aisle ran down its center flanked by two seats on either side that were upholstered in a blue fake-velvety type of fabric. Luggage racks spanned the full length of the train car over the seats, which reminded me once more of the suitcase I'd abandoned at O'Hare. We were traveling halfway across the country without even a change of underwear with us, which was more than a little gross.

We chose a pair of seats toward the back of the car, and Trey sat next to the window so that he'd be more inconspicuous when ticket takers passed through. I hadn't thought to check the pamphlet detailing the train's route to Los Angeles for information about whether or not there were any showers on the train, or even vending machines from which we could buy Cheetos and Twix to live on until we arrived at our destination. It was too late to dash back into Union Station to purchase a few sandwiches at Starbucks on Laura's credit card for the journey; the wheels of the train had begun turning and we had already disembarked the peak-roofed platform.

"I thought there would be more people," Trey commented, taking a peek over the top of the seat in front of him at our company in the train car.

I pulled out the pamphlet detailing the Texas Eagle's journey and said, "I bet a lot more people get on at other stations. This train makes, like, a jillion stops between here and Los Angeles." The upside to that fact occurred to me like a ray of sunshine spilling out from between dark storm clouds. "Hey, maybe Mr. Dean isn't even going all the way to Los Angeles. Maybe he's getting off the train somewhere else in Illinois."

Trey seemed intrigued. "Could I see that?" I handed him the pamphlet and he studied the train's route. "This train stops in Normal. That's where Illinois State University is located. Maybe he's just going there to do, like, some dumb college outreach stuff."

My chest swelled with hope. "God, that would be awesome. He doesn't seem like the type to vacation in California, anyway."

The bad news, I realized for myself once Trey handed the pamphlet back to me, was that we seemed to be on train car #4. Mr. Dean had originally boarded the train on car #3, closer to the front of the train. And behind, train car #5 was the dining car. If Mr. Dean had found a seat on car #3, he'd be passing through in a matter of hours for one of Amtrak's dinner specials of Salisbury steak or chicken cordon bleu. But there was no point in mentioning that to Trey. Train car #6 appeared to be all suite-style cabins for families, which answered my previous question about showers. Only people who had booked cabins like those had access to showering facilities. Everyone else, I guess, was expected to just go unwashed until they got to wherever they were going.

Now that we were finally situated on soft chairs aboard a warm train car, and on our way toward whatever fate had in store for us next, sleepiness gripped me. I yawned deeply and covered my mouth with my hand, assuming that my breath was essentially a lethal weapon after not brushing my teeth for twenty-four hours. Trey slid our tickets under the metal clips on the seats in front of us for the ticket taker, and we reclined our seats as far back as they'd go so that we could get some much-needed rest. Trey rolled over on his right side to face the wall in an attempt to obscure his face a little bit, and I did the same so that I could drape one arm around him. I was too tired to think about how I'd deal with being famished and penniless when I woke up, or about what in the world I was ever going to do once we got to Los Angeles and I found myself face to face with Mischa.

Just as I drifted off to sleep, I was vaguely aware of my cell phone buzzing in my bag on my lap with an incoming text message.