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In my head, I reached out to Gabe. I was trapped in a prison of my mind. This was the worst feeling. Like, no matter what I did, I wouldn’t be able to make a difference.

“Norah, Randy, wake up!”

Randy grunted, and the sound made my heart crack. He was always such a bear to get up. He slept like the dead.

He tried to roll away, but I was still there. “What the fuck?” he muttered.

Gabe punched him in the arm. “Get the fuck up, Mate. Something’s wrong.”

I felt him move behind me. Liam had sat up, his head in his hands. His body vibrated from a yawn that seemed to overtake him. “Why am I so tired?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Travis said. “But something just went down.”

He spun on his heel, finding me. He knelt. In my head, I was screaming at myself to wake up. “Norah?” he said. “Norah?” he said again, shaking my shoulders.

Fear rounded his eyes.

Hearing it in his voice, Liam spun around too. He took me by the hips and shook me. All at once, they all were saying my name, trying to wake me up. “Norah!” Randy bellowed.

It was so loud it made me cringe, but this was just the me that was in here. The me that was out there couldn’t do anything.

“What’s wrong with her?” Gabe asked.

His blond hair was sticking up on its ends. It reminded me of the first morning I woke up with him.

Another fissure was workings its way through my heart. I felt so removed from then. Not able to tell them I could hear them and see them.

“I heard her,” Travis said. “In my head while I was sleeping. I don’t know,” he shook his head. “She told me to wake up. She told me something was wrong.”

“Bad magic,” Randy said. He pulled himself out from behind me and they laid me down on my back. He came around. His shirt was off, and his gym pants hung low on his waist. I loved Randy like that. His muscles, tattoos, and piercings on full display. He was never more himself than when he was shirtless to me.

I reached out. “Please!”

My limbs never moved.

“We should take her to the hospital,” Liam said.

“But if it was magic…” Gabe said.

“We don’t know that,” Liam said. He’d already put his glasses on and turned to look in all the obvious places for the car keys.

At once, they all moved to the background. I could still see them, hear them, but something else moved forward. A dark mass with two razor red circles for eyes. It was like when Granny came to me, but Granny never gave me chills right down to my bone.

“Norah…” it sang.

My jaw clenched. I knew right away who it was.

“Do you feel that, Norah? Do you feel that debilitating fear that you’re right there, but you can’t even talk to them?”

“What do you want?” I shouted.

“You already know that. Revenge. Revenge in all the ways I was wronged. I want everyone to understand what not having magic did to me. What not having a coven did to me.

A growl ripped through me. The guys were so close. They were so close, but it was as if I wasn’t even there at all.

“Do you feel that?”

“I hate you.”