The Long Beach Airport was nothing like any other airport I'd ever seen before in my life. It was very small, just a two-story building with nothing on its second floor but bathrooms and old black-and-white photos of Long Beach in the 1920's framed on the walls. There didn't seem to be any police presence at all, and since we were boarding a private jet instead of a commercial aircraft, Mr. Simmons breezed right past the security checkpoint on his way to a set of doors that led to an outdoor area. Although it was only seven o'clock at night, the sun had already set and there was a sharp chill in the air.

"Michael Simmons?" a man in a pilot's uniform greeted us outside. "Party of seven?"

"That's us," Mr. Simmons said, offering no explanation for the rather strange-looking collection of teenagers with whom he was traveling that evening.

"Great," the pilot said. "My co-pilot is running through our routine mechanical checks before we take off. Although..." His eyes drifted upward toward the heavy, gloomy clouds in the sky. "Several flights coming in from the East Coast have been delayed due to the inclement weather. So we'll be at the mercy of Air Traffic Control for a departure time."

Mr. Simmons cast a concerned glance at me and Trey. "Is it alright if we pass the time aboard the plane?" The longer we lingered around the airport where families were awaiting flights bound for vacation destinations, the greater the likelihood that someone was going to recognize us.

The pilot took a good look at me and Trey, and without smiling replied, "Sure. That'll be no problem." He most likely recognized us from the nightly news, but was probably being paid handsomely enough for this flight to Wisconsin not to ask questions.

Mr. Simmons led us toward a bench in an outdoor waiting area where travelers walked groggy dogs who'd just arrived on flights, and where smokers puffed on cigarettes. He motioned for us to sit while we waited. It was drizzling, a rare event in Southern California, and Mischa grimaced at the reflection of runway lights in the puddles that were forming on the tarmac. "So, let me get this straight," she said to no one in particular. "We're all going to board a tiny plane and fly halfway across the country during a rainstorm-when evil spirits that are capable of manifesting physical powers are most likely going to stop us from arriving safely?"

I didn't have a good feeling about our chances of making it safely to Wisconsin either, but didn't see much point in trying to evade Mr. Simmons now that we were already at the airport. Instead of allowing my apprehension about turbulence freak me out, I focused on how much I longed to be reunited with my parents in what might only be a matter of hours. I attempted to slip my fingers in between Trey's to hold hands, but he stood up and announced, "I have to go to the bathroom."

He disappeared into the airport, followed shortly after by Laura, who informed all of us that she was still missing a black candle that would be needed to seal the jar once the curse had been captured. She entrusted the glass bottle that she'd bought in the hotel gift shop to Henry for safekeeping. Once she entered into the airport, Henry withdrew the trinket from the plastic gift shop bag, unwrapped it from the layers of tissue paper that surrounded it, and held it up for me and Mischa to take a look. "What do you guys think?" he asked us. "Is this little perfume bottle going to be able to imprison pure evil?"

Mischa sighed disgustedly at him. In a voice too quiet to be heard by Mr. Simmons, she said bitterly, "I think we're all going to die. That's what I think. None of you know what you're doing and you have no idea how powerful they are."

Neither of us asked who Mischa meant by they. They were the spirits that she'd tried to resist, who had killed her father in retaliation.

"I have to go to the bathroom, too," I lied, just wanting to distance myself from Mischa for a few minutes. Her certainty that we were doomed was contagious. A sense of dread was rising in my chest and it was far too late for me to change my mind about my commitment to this plan. The darkness, the coldness, and the dampness of the evening were fraying my nerves.

"Violet, please accompany her," Mr. Simmons said.

I didn't want Violet anywhere near me, but I didn't argue as she shadowed me inside. If any of us were going to be recognized by travelers at the airport, it was most likely to be me. As if she were reading my mind, Violet said, "Your parents are really worried about you."

Inside the airport's bright single terminal, I scanned the crowd for a glimpse of either Trey or Laura. Not spotting either of them near the burger bar or taco joint closest to where I'd entered, I wandered further into the concourse with Violet at my side. "Good," I replied. "I'm in the company of a witch, two murderers, and a man who's probably a psychopath. They should be worried about me."

Ahead, I saw a gift shop, and assumed I'd find at least Laura in there searching for a black candle. "My dad's not a psychopath," Violet said after a moment, during which she was probably trying to determine if I was referring to Henry or Mr. Simmons. "He wants to fix this, McKenna. He wants to help."

"Sure," I said, knowing better than to engage in a discussion with Violet. She'd effortlessly lied to us back in the fall when Trey, Mischa, and I had confronted her on the high school track about what she'd done to Olivia. Perhaps she was remorseful about her actions, but I wasn't obligated to forgive her for anything. She was a slippery, conniving deceiver-not to be trusted under any circumstances.

Just as I spotted Laura paying for something at the register in the gift shop, I noticed Trey a few feet from its entrance. He was sliding something into a slot on the wall that served as the tiny airport's postal center. As whatever he was mailing slipped down the slot and out of view, he realized that I could see him-and for a split second he looked surprised. I couldn't think of a single person on earth to whom Trey might be sending a letter. "Hey," I said, reaching him. "What was that?"

"Just a postcard," he said casually. "To a guy who went to Northern Reserve but already turned eighteen and left. Just in case I need a place to lay low in a few days in the very near future."

"Oh." He probably wasn't going to go into greater detail while Violet stood there, listening. There was no telling what would become of either of us after we broke the curse. It wouldn't undo our last six months of criminal activity, but it was still premature for either of us to consider what would come next. Whatever became of us after the curse was broken, it was easy to assume that we'd still be on the lam from the cops, and therefore best for Violet not to know our plans. Whether Mr. Simmons had been lying to us about Violet's illness or not, I couldn't be sure, but she did look unwell. Her eyes looked a bit swollen and she was even more pale than usual, giving her usually porcelain skin a greyish pallor.

The private jet that Mr. Simmons had chartered was even smaller on the inside than I'd been expecting, but it was far more luxurious than I'd dared to imagine. Its eight passenger seats-arranged back-to-back-were covered in supple beige leather. Polished wood paneling lined the walls with recessed lighting.

"This must be what it's like to be a rock star," Henry mused in an ineffective attempt to boost our spirits.

Once we took our seats and settled in, a brunette flight attendant lowered small movie screens at both ends of the plane so that all of us could watch the in-flight movie regardless of which direction our seat faced. Taciturnly, Trey and I agreed to sit back-to-back rather than in seats separated by an aisle.

Laura seemed to be in a state of agitation where she sat with her back to Henry's. She dug through her drawstring bag as if searching for something and slid several rings onto her fingers. She summoned the flight attendant and asked, "I know this is an odd request, but is there by chance a salt shaker on board this plane?"

The flight attendant blinked twice at the strange inquiry before replying, "I'm sure there is."

"Could I see it for a second?" Laura asked.

The flight attendant disappeared into the private partition at the back of the plane where the lavatory and kitchen area were located, and reluctantly handed Laura a white salt shaker. She watched in curiosity with one eyebrow lifted as Laura unbuckled her seat belt and got down on her knees in the aisle.

"Seriously, Laura?" Henry asked, watching her actions as she carefully unscrewed the lid of the salt shaker and methodically poured white crystals onto the dove grey carpeting in the aisle.

Laura glowered at him. "Look, we need all the protection we can get, OK?" She was pouring the salt carefully into lines that formed a pentagram (to the great consternation of the flight attendant). Under her breath, she murmured, "In brightest day and darkest night, I call on you with all my might. I call upon the phoenix flight to aid me until morning's light."

Violet smiled sweetly at the totally weirded-out flight attendant. "She's just superstitious," Violet assured her. "Afraid of flying."

"Right," the flight attendant said, unconvinced. "Most people just drink. I could bring you a gin and tonic, if you'd like," she offered Laura.

"Any chance there's more salt somewhere?" Laura asked the flight attendant, completely oblivious to how strange her ritual seemed.

The flight attendant shook her head. "Only little paper packets for the dinner service."

"Those will work," Laura said. The flight attendant nodded weakly and disappeared once more into the private kitchen area at the back of the plane to fetch the packets. Laura noticed Henry's bewildered expression and explained, "Look, the thicker the pentagram, the more protection it offers. We're about to be twenty thousand feet in the air. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to tumble out of the sky in a blazing fireball."

Ignoring us completely, Mr. Simmons took phone calls from his investment firm clients as if it was easy as pie to pretend he wasn't passing time on a private jet with a bunch of teenagers (one of whom was casting Wiccan spells in salt), departing shortly to break an evil curse. The skittish flight attendant apologized to the rest of us repeatedly for the delay. We sat on the tarmac waiting for a runway for so long that all of us except Mr. Simmons visited the private jet's bathroom at least once, considerately stepping over Laura's salt pentagram so as not to disturb it. A recently released comedy about a man who inherits a circus played for us on the screens, but I was way too freaked out about the entire situation that we were in to pay any attention to it. When the flight attendant asked if we'd like bottled water, or our dinner to be served prior to take-off, I declined both.

My stomach was in knots and I could hardly formulate a single coherent thought. What Mischa had said about none of us knowing what we were doing was undeniably true. Trey and I had volunteered to participate in something foolishly dangerous, something that could easily get us killed. Making matters even more risky was the fact that we were already technically missing. If we ended up dead, our parents would never learn the truth about what happened to us. At some point in the last few days I had crossed the barrier that separated childhood from adulthood. Mr. Simmons was older and more powerful than us, but as I looked over my shoulder at him and watched him flip through Fast Company while talking on his cell phone, I realized he was our equal now. We had to consider him an equal or else we'd be entering into this (quite possibly) doomed endeavor in Weeping Willow as his pawns.

The flight was just as turbulent as I feared it would be. We hit a patch of particularly bad weather over northern Arizona. I had just started nodding off while watching the second movie-which was a new release but an overly dramatic thriller-when the plane felt like it abruptly went into free fall for about two seconds. Even the flight attendant, who was buckled into a small seat at the back of the plane, clutched her arm rests in terror. "Oh my God!" Violet exclaimed, waking up from a deep sleep.

The next two hours were restless and awful, with the plane tossing about in the wind as if it were a bit of crumpled newspaper caught on a current. I would have turned to hold Trey's hand, but for a solid hour I was too terrified to even shift positions in my seat. When I finally did work up the courage to look over my shoulder at him, he was bent forward in the tornado safety position that we learned at school, with his head between his knees and his hands folded on the back of his neck. Henry made eye contact with me and held my gaze for an uncomfortably long moment, possibly trying to apologize with his eyes for everything from Mr. Simmons' rudeness to the storm raging outside the fuselage of our plane.

All of us were pale and exhausted by the time we landed, two hours late, in Wisconsin. Even as the plane vibrated while its wheels lowered for our descent into Green Bay, I braced myself for a crash-landing, unable to believe that we'd made it this far without a tragedy. It seemed fitting that the evil spirits that had tormented Violet before Mischa would wait to kill us until the very moment when we believed we were safe; that was totally their style. We'd watched the sun rise somewhere over Nebraska, although the daylight streaming in through the windows of the plane felt fake since none of us had slept. Now it was mid-morning, almost ten o'clock. Adding to the day's strangeness was that it was a Monday, a day when all of us would have been following our usual routine under normal circumstances.

After the plane rolled to a stop on the runway, the relieved flight attendant made the sign of the cross and kissed her fingers. An airport employee wheeled a mobile staircase to the private jet for us to de-board outside on the tarmac. Stepping through the oval-shaped door of the plane and onto the not-entirely-stable air-stairs, the familiar pine scent of fresh Wisconsin air took my breath away. So much had happened since Trey and had departed our home state a week earlier that I'd doubted-especially during the rocky last few hours-that I'd ever make it back to this place alive.

"Are you OK, McKenna?" Henry asked from behind me.

I stared out at the comforting sight of evergreens on the horizon. "I'm not sure yet," I admitted. Trey lingered at the bottom of the air-stairs with his aquamarine eyes fixed on me, not wanting to indulge Henry in even a moment of my attention.

When we reached the parking lot in Green Bay, Mr. Simmons informed us that we'd be splitting up. "Henry and Laura will take Henry's truck and meet us at St. Monica's, and everyone else will come with me and Violet," he said with his car keys in his hand. He tapped a button on his keys and the locks on a silver Mercedes in front of us made a familiar beep beep sound. Traveling in separate vehicles seemed to me like an invitation for evil to hamper our arrival as a group at St. Monica's...or a rather simple way for Mr. Simmons to ditch Henry and Laura if that had been his plan all along.

"That's a bad idea," I stated, remembering that we had to consider Mr. Simmons our equal instead of our superior. "Trey and I will ride with Henry. Laura can ride with you."

"No way. If you're riding with Henry, I'm riding with Henry," Mischa complained, breaking her seven-hour vow of silence.

Mr. Simmons paused after opening the driver side door of the Mercedes to frown at me. It was disturbing how similar in appearance he was to Trey, especially when he was displeased. I wondered if Trey would look just like him in his mid-forties, with strands of silver at his temples and permanently cold eyes. "Both of you will ride with me, as will Mischa. I'm sure you can understand that I can't risk the four of you getting cold feet and disappearing after we've come so far."

Tugging on Trey's hand, I took a wide step closer to Henry and Laura. "We'll ride with them," I insisted.

Just when I thought that he was going to be cool about it, he slipped his hand behind his back, pulled a small black 9mm handgun from the waistband of his trousers, and waved it at me and Trey. "Get in the car, Miss Brady," he said firmly.

"Jesus!" Laura exclaimed. She whipped her head around wildly to see if any other travelers weaving through the parking lot had noticed that Mr. Simmons was aiming a gun at us.

"Hey, Mr. Simmons," Henry said in his most congenial voice. "We're all on the same page. There's no need to threaten anyone."

Trey, Mischa, and I stood perfectly still, afraid to move. It hadn't occurred to me before that Mr. Simmons was armed and would use a weapon to control us of necessary. But of course, now it all made sense. There were a lot of benefits to traveling by private jet. Avoiding airport security and sidestepping the fact that Trey and I didn't have legal identification required to fly commercial was one of them.

Traveling with a concealed handgun was now, evidently, another.

Smiling weakly to test his will, I challenged him, "What-are you just going to shoot three kids in the parking lot of a busy airport?"

"You and your boyfriend are criminals on the run. Police are saying you should be considered armed and dangerous," Violet's father told me.

Trey chimed in, "You can't kill us if you need us to help break the spell."

Mr. Simmons grinned menacingly. "Oh, I won't kill you. I'll shoot all three of you in the kneecaps and you'll be so desperate for the pain to stop you won't be able to play the game fast enough."

Even Violet looked surprised that her father had pulled a gun on us. My eyes darted around the parking lot for someone who I could flag down for help, but even I knew that was a bad idea. A witness to this scene would only result in one outcome: Trey and I being hauled off to the closest prison, Judge Roberts in Suamico being summoned to punish me, and the curse on Mischa accompanying her back to Long Beach. "You guys, just ride with us," Violet pleaded.

Mischa stepped forward first, probably because the threat of a shattered kneecap was scariest to her. With an angry sigh, she climbed into the back seat of the Mercedes (which had probably been sold to Mr. Simmons by Mr. Portnoy). At this point, I was beginning to wonder if Mr. Simmons truly planned to bring Henry and Laura along to St. Monica's, or if that part of his ruse to get us back to Weeping Willow had all been a fabrication, and now he intended to take us elsewhere. This was evidently on Henry's mind, too, because he said in a much less friendly voice, "We're going to tail you to back to Weeping Willow, man. And you'd better drive slowly, because if you try to lose us, I'm calling the cops."

Mr. Simmons motioned toward the back seat of his car again with his gun, and this time Trey stepped forward and slid into the middle of the back seat. Violet sat in the front and slammed her passenger side door shut. I maintained eye contact with Mr. Simmons for another long moment in what became a staring contest of sorts before I finally gave in and got into the back seat. Through the back wind shield, I watched Henry and Laura trot through parked cars on their way toward Henry's truck. "We're on our way," Mr. Simmons said to someone he had called on his cell phone. "We'll be there in twenty minutes." The Mercedes backed out of its spot slowly, and Mr. Simmons navigated through the lanes of the parking lot to Henry's truck, where he idled until Henry started his engine.

As we pulled onto the highway in silence, Trey caught my eye and almost imperceptibly nodded in the direction of Mr. Simmons. He was suggesting to me that we could probably kill Mr. Simmons if we wanted (or needed) to. I was sitting directly behind him and watched his facial expressions in the rearview mirror. The whistle that Trey and I had bought in Laguna Beach was in the pocket of my jeans. With its cord, we could strangle Mr. Simmons if he tried to pull any tricks on the drive to St. Monica's. I mentally ran through the steps in my head of how I'd go about it, how I'd tighten the cord, how I'd watch his eyes bulge in the rearview mirror, how his face would turn scarlet and he'd let go of the steering wheel to try to pry the cord away from his neck. How the Mercedes would probably skid off the highway and slam into a tree. Its fiberglass hood would crumple upon impact, and then Trey and I would be fugitives for real, with the murder of a prominent financial advisor at Tall Trees Capital on our hands.

Luckily, fifteen minutes later, Mr. Simmons pulled off the highway at Exit 176 just as he was supposed to. This part of the drive home was as familiar as the back of my hand. We passed the lawn & feed shop on the outskirts of town, the overgrown field where Trey's grandparents once lived, and the ice skating rink that had closed when I was in elementary school. Rather than driving down moderately busy Front Road, which would have eventually taken us right past the corner of my street, Mr. Simmons turned left on Sullivan Street. Homesickness yanked at my heart as we drove past Hennessy's Pharmacy and Federico's Pizza. My mother was probably fewer than five miles away from the Mercedes in which we drove, and still there was a chance I'd never see her again.

Mischa sat in an uncomfortable twist so that she could keep an eye on Henry's truck as he followed behind us. I was genuinely surprised when Mr. Simmons turned right on Maple Street and we pulled into the parking lot at St. Monica's. He'd brought us straight here-no funny business. This place made me feel safe because just past the church and administration offices, the cemetery where Jennie was buried sprawled over the hills. But as soon as Father Fahey stepped through the side door of the rectory to greet us, a creepy sensation of foreboding came over me. Trey and I had been here once before, right after Candace had died, when we first became convinced that Violet had ensnared us in something very dangerous. Father Fahey had told us that to break the curse that we'd have to destroy the physical object in Violet's possession in which the evil had manifested, but he hadn't told us which object.

He also hadn't told us that the situation we'd described to him involving Violet Simmons wasn't a surprise to him at all, since he was the one who'd assisted Grandmother Simmons in casting the initial spell. As we climbed out of Mr. Simmons' Mercedes, Father Fahey slid his hands into his pants pockets and frowned at me and Trey. Henry's truck pulled into the rectory parking lot and parked two empty spaces over from the Mercedes. I could hear my heart beating inside my own ears, I was so nervous.

"Come in, come in," Father Fahey told all of us, holding the screen door of the rectory open. "Margaret's gone out to pick up coffee. It's best that we get started before she returns."

Mischa stole an anxious peek at the windows of St. Monica's school on the other side of the parking lot, where she'd be attending classes at that very moment if she wasn't supposed to be in Long Beach training for the Olympic trials. I could see the outlines of students' bodies in classrooms through the glare on the windowpanes.

"This is the church?" Laura asked Henry. "I was expecting something a little more gothic."

"We're in suburban Wisconsin," Henry reminded her. In one hand he held the plastic gift shop bag from the Marriott in Long Beach which contained the glass bottle that Laura intended to use to capture the evil that had attached itself to the curse cast by Trey's mother. Laura carried her bag from the Hudson News gifts shop at the airport, which contained a black candle, a cigarette lighter, and a king-sized packet of M&M's that she'd started eating aboard the plane.

"Inside. Please," Father Fahey said, motioning for all of us to enter. Mr. Simmons waited at the bottom of the cement stairs leading up to the rectory door for all of us to ascend and enter, intending to follow us in to ensure that no one had any last-second impulses to make a run for it.

Just as Violet was about to step inside the rectory building, we all turned our heads at the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot. "Oh, great," Trey muttered.

"In the building! Now!" Mr. Simmons ordered when he noticed who was driving the car. But none of us moved a muscle. Because the car that just pulled into the lot was a grey Honda Civic... and behind its wheel was Mrs. Emory, Trey's mother.