Light as a Feather, Silent as the Grave

Chapter 16

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.