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“Walter fired us, remember?”

“Technically, we quit,” I said.

Jennie gasped. “You guys aren’t Order members anymore?”

“They didn’t want us involved with Norah,” Gabe said, filling her in on the most recent events.

She looked over at me again, staring me up and down. “Well, that’s bullshit. You guys should be able to do whatever you want to do.”

Okay. Maybe I was beginning to get along with her now because I wholeheartedly agreed.

“We’ll get the Order involved,” Liam said. “We’ll tell them our plan for the equinox but maybe they can make it bigger. Maybe we can put some sort of safety spell over Salem. I don’t know. I just know that it’s going to take a lot more than us right now. This is far-reaching. This isn’t just one person going around doing stuff that we can track and follow. This is that demon taking control of several people. How would we ever be able to watch the entire town by ourselves?”

We all looked at Travis. He ran a hand through his black hair and the faint smell of cinnamon filled the room. “You’re right. There’s no way we would be able to handle this on our own.”

I rubbed his back, and Liam ran to the bedroom to get his laptop. He walked back into the room with it already open in his palm. “I’m going to try to video chat them right now. They may not answer.”

Liam tried several times, but they didn’t pick up. They either didn’t want to talk to us, or they weren’t around.

Reluctantly, Travis fished his cell phone out of his pocket and went through his contacts list, choosing Walter’s name out of the many. “I’m calling Walter. Call every witch you know and tell them to try to help as many people as they can. People won’t understand this, and even if they can put a protection spell on one person, it will help.”

Everyone got on their phones. Since I didn’t know anyone the guys didn’t know, I hung around Travis. Even Jennie got on the phone to her old friends. I could hear her talking softly into her cell phone telling others that what they were seeing on TV wasn’t terrorists at all, it was the work of a demon.

But what I was most interested in, was Travis. He walked to his room, and I followed him. He sat on the bed and I took his hand in mine, giving it a quick squeeze as soon as Walter answered. “Hello, Travis.”

“Walter,” he started. He swallowed, and I rubbed my hand down his arm, trying to give him the courage to talk. “It’s getting bad here. Salem needs something big.”

I listened as Travis filled Walter in on what was going on. The fires, the hospital. He must’ve asked Travis if we’d gotten the pull and Travis told him no, but that Liam had been very sick all morning.

As soon as he told him we hadn’t gotten the pull, I sat up straighter. With everything going on, I hadn’t noticed that we hadn’t gotten the call like we should have. Since Jax was going around doing all this stuff, we should’ve been alerted to it. I’d felt fine. Stressed, of course, but no tug in my stomach. Had the Order really taken that from us right away? And how could they have without us even noticing?

I tugged on Travis’s sleeve. “Did they take it from us?”

Travis repeated the question to Walter who told him they did. My jaw tightened as soon as I heard his response. Assholes. Take away our only warning system for what was going on. We may have been able to prevent one of the things from happening.

“Listen, Travis,” I heard Walter say. His voice sounded dejected. “I want you to know I argued for your coven. You’ve always been very good Enforcers, but the others felt the risk was too much to take. There’s another Order coming in.”

Travis sighed, his eyes closing. “I think you’re going to need to send more than one.”

I looked at Travis, shocked. He just lifted his shoulders at me. They got off the phone soon after that. “You’re not mad?” I asked right away.

“I assumed they would do something like that. We told them we weren’t going to abide by their rules and I knew they weren’t going to let Salem go unguarded.”

I supposed I should’ve thought about that as well. But, I didn’t because I thought the whole thing was stupid. We were being ostracized because of the way we wanted to love, but it wasn’t as if the Order had a union we could go to and complain. The superiors could pretty much do whatever they wanted, and there was nothing we could do about it.

“Do you believe Walter?”

“That he tried to help us? Yes. Walter has always been good to us. I don’t think he’s as stuck in the old ways as some of his coven members and other Orders that have been around for a long time. The truth is, things are changing. We aren’t just policing witches here and there that might do a little something wrong. This is so much bigger and requires different tactics that we aren’t equipped for.”

“Like when we used the spell to get the familiar off of Liam?”

“Exactly,” Travis said. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that would happen. A witch going that bad is unthinkable.”

I watched as Travis’s face morphed. It was unthinkable, and yet, it was his friend who had done it. “I know you’re taking a lot of this on yourself, Travis, but I just want you to know that I think this doesn’t have anything to do with you at all. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m going to tell you anyway. All these decisions were Jax’s. He decided to start doing the wrong thing. He decided to call the demon to him to get his powers back. I don’t care if you did strip his powers, you were doing what you had to do, so things like this don’t happen. If I went bad, and you did something to keep me from hurting others, I would be thankful. Now, I might not be in the right frame of mind to tell you that if it ever happened, just as Jax isn’t now. But, if you love Jax like I know you do, and you know what a good person he is, don’t you think the last thing he would want to do is hurt all these people? Because of that, we need to stop him. Can you imagine the guilt?”

Travis lifted his gaze to mine. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

I cupped his chin. “You need to save him from himself, Travis. And we can do that.”