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Jax walked onto the sidewalk. The crowd parted for him. Some backed away as if he was a red-hot poker they didn’t want to get burned with. Others moved as if to gawk, as if they were drawn to his hate.

“You haven’t won,” Jax said.

Travis moved in front of me. Jax looked up at him, his head cocking to the side as he took him in.

“How can you live with yourself?” Jax/not Jax said. He looked like Jax and spoke like Jax, but his voice was amplified by darkness, as if hatred itself lived inside his words.

“Come back to us, Jax,” Travis said.

I touched him. I saw the tension in his muscles and the curling of his fingers. He was at war with himself. He fought against the negative inside him, and if I could give him any sort of boost, I would.

“You should talk,” Randy spat at Jax. His chest heaved. He stood there like a baby Hulk, getting ready to pounce. “Do you see what you’ve done?”

“Do you see what you’ve done?”

“J-jax?” a female voice said.

My heart fell into my stomach so fast I thought I’d almost stopped remembering how to breathe.

I’d forgotten about Jennie. I’d lost track of her in the chaos.

She moved to Travis’s side.

Jax shook his head. For a moment, emotion flickered on his face that was something other than hate, but in the next instant, his eyes glazed over into the onyx black.

Jennie screamed in frustration. She reached up, tearing at her hair. “No!”

“They did this to us,” Jax said. “Both of us.”

She threw her hands to her side and screamed, her face twisting in hatred.

Travis reached out to touch her, but I lunged forward, grabbing his arm before he could. In my head, she was a pulsing red warning sign. Touch, and you wish you hadn’t.

“Come here, Jenn,” Jax said.

She stalked toward him. Travis fought against me, but Liam and Gabe came to help, grabbing onto him. He wriggled out of our grasp, pushing Liam to the ground, and walked forward. “Jennie, don’t!”

She turned on him, her eyes ablaze. “Why would I listen to you, brother? Jax is right. Do you see what you’ve done? Have you seen all the hurt you caused? The death?”

He shook his head. “Death?”

“Of me,” she sneered. “Me. I’m not the same. I haven’t been since you took my Natural magic from me. When you took my magic, you took the real me.”

She walked back, getting dangerously close to Jax. “Stay away from him,” Travis warned.

“He was the only one who ever got me,” Jennie said.

“It’s not her,” I said, walking up to Travis. The world had stopped. Everyone stopped and stared at the spectacle going on ahead of us. It was pure light versus dark scenario. Each trying to gather one more team member for their side and Jennie was caught in the crossfire. I understood her hatred, her pain, I really did. It was festering inside her still, even after all these months. Even after she’d recouped some of her powers by practicing Wicca.

Grudges rotted inside our bodies and fed off us like maggots to our soul. Forgiveness, in theory, was easy. But often, it was the most difficult step forward to take.

“It is,” Travis said.

He pushed away from me and lunged for her again. His fingers slipped over her arm, but at the same time, Jax reached out and they both disappeared right before our eyes. One second, they were standing there like shadow deacons for hate, and the next, they were gone.

An instant rush of peacefulness descended over everyone. It was easy to feel relieved when you didn’t have hatred stomping at your doorstep. But in the next moment, it was hard to imagine feeling relieved when Jax had just taken Jennie.

Travis was on his knees, his head in his hands right where they’d stood. His back was hunched over. All around us, witches started apologizing to one another. They started making plans for how to make this right. Some of them openly gawked at me again as I moved for Travis. Randy came up too. He put his hand on Travis’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean any of that stuff I said.”