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breath before taking a step forward. I just had to remind myself I wasn’t supposed to be afraid of ghosts.
    “Where is it?” she hissed, her fear and fury slamming against me. I backtracked into Brent, crushing his toes under my heels. “You took it!”
    “Back up, back up, back up,” I whispered to Brent. He listened and we started slinking further into the depths of the third floor. I turned toward Sophia. “I didn’t take it.”
    Her hands flew to her face, her eyes widened impossibly, and a heartbreaking wail burst from her.
    “It’s gone!” she wailed. “All these years! It’s gone!”
    Her red curls straightened, standing on end like she’d put her finger in a light socket. Her scream cut off and she grew to twice her size, her pale skin flaming red. She seemed to morph before my eyes from a proper, if angry, socialite, to fury-fueled psychopath. The heat of her anger washed over me like scalding water.
    Brent’s hand tightened on my arms as we distanced ourselves from the stairs. My eyes never left Sophia. I knew she needed help, but it was hard to think of helping her when I was afraid she was going to kill me.
    “This is your fault,” Sophia screamed.
    She surged forward, her face contorted with rage. Despite my confidence in my necklace’s protection, I recoiled against Brent as she reached for me. I didn’t flinch as her nails drew near, expecting them to slide right through me. But not only did her fingers connect with me, they melted through my skin, closing around my spirit’s wrist. I gasped as pain lanced through my wrist and radiated up my arm. For a split second she paused, like she too was surprised, but then her eyes glinted with something horrible.
    “Do you know what you’ve done?” she shrieked at me, her voice crashing against my eardrums. The ghost’s deranged howls filled my ears as her glowing red eyes made my insides shudder. “You led them here.”
    I blinked in confusion at her hand on my wrist. She shouldn’t have been able to touch me. She shouldn’t have been able to hurt me. But she did, on both accounts. Terror washed through me as she yanked hard on my wrist. My spirit rattled inside my body, my ghostly head smacking against my physical skull.
    “Yara!” Brent cried, as Sophia yanked me out of his arms and onto the floor with a painful thud. I winced as the skin underneath her fingers began to freeze from the inside out with a cold so intense it burned. I tried desperately to free my arm, but she only tightened her grip, driving the cold deeper.
    Brent crouched down beside me and gaped at the purpling marks appearing on my wrist.
    “Brent, she’s hurting me,” I said between chattering teeth. Sophia’s fingers wrapped more securely around my wrist.
    “Tell me how to get rid of her,” Brent said in a hushed voice, his eyes frantic. He couldn’t see her, and he needed my help. I could handle this. I had to handle this. Vovó wasn’t here. I steeled my nerves, pushing away the pain and burning ache of her cold fingers, and tried to grasp at any of the lessons Vovó had taught me, but I came up blank. I hadn’t been trained for this.
    I gritted my teeth. “I don’t know. But she won’t let go.”
    Brent’s eyes slid closed, and when they reopened, the panicked look was gone, replaced by a quiet intensity. He stood fluidly and his brown eyes zeroed in on where he knew Sophia must be. With a flick of his wrist, he swirled his fingers in an arc, sending a blast of air tunneling down the hall.
    The wind hit her and batted her around, but she didn’t vanish or turn into smoke like Thomas had last year. Brent’s brute force and elemental manipulation might not be enough. Sophia turned toward him, her harsh eyes focusing on Brent as he conjured the storm.
    He brought his hands together and pushed one hand palm out toward us, hitting us with another strong gust of air, its strength building to a roar. Wind zoomed past me, ripping the bobby pins from my hair.