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“Don’t let it get to the demon,” I shouted.

Familiars were a demon’s pet, right? It would make sense that part of the demon’s powers lived inside the familiar, so if we could kill the familiar…

Randy ran forward. He dove, holding out his arms so he could capture it, but Jax held his hand out. The snake reared back, ready to make the jump into Jax’s palm even though he was yards and yards away.

Liam shot his palm out, sending a ball of fire his way. It missed and landed on the grass where a bonfire built. The crowd gasped, leering at Liam. He didn’t even notice. He kept doing it and doing it, each of the fireballs missing as the snake soared through the air.

Gabe grunted. To my left, a huge burst of blue light lit the sky. The ocean pulled up from the wharf. It moved out toward the snake in a concentrated blast, hitting him in the air. The wave of water fell onto the grass. We waited for it to recede back, and sure enough, the snake was there, slithering again toward Jax.

Randy threw a blast of green magic in front of the serpent, making him change direction. The gap in the earth opened, spreading over the entire wharf. The snake looked back and hissed.

Jax sighed. “Oh, you lot are so tedious.”

Gabe, again, brought up a wave of ocean from just under Jax and sent a tidal wave toward the snake. It hit him full force. It got caught up in the wave, tumbling end over end. The wave splashed up over witches’ knees and kept going. It ran over my sneakers, but with it came the snake.

The superiors burst through the edge of the crowd and threw up an Akashic cell.

“It won’t hold,” Travis and I yelled at the same time.

Jax laughed maniacally again. “Oh, old people. They’re so cute.”

He threw his hand out again, summoning the familiar to him, but this time, Randy jumped on it, wrestling with it until he pinned it down. Walter and his coven moved forward. As it had in the barn, the magic in the area intensified. It far escalated any of the power I felt the last time we’d faced off with the demon and its familiar in the barn. This time, there were witches upon witches there, gathering with us to lend us their magic, to lend us their help and power and hope.

The magic whipped out of Walter, who stood at the front of his coven. My heart surged in my throat. If their aim was just a little off, they’d hit Randy and if they hit Randy, there was no doubt in my mind that he’d be dead. No one could survive that amount of magic.

Randy screamed. The sound reached a fever pitch as the combined magic from the superiors burned bright, brighter, brightest, until it just fizzled out.

Jax howled. I pushed past the crowd and saw Randy’s arms folded over nothing. The serpent familiar had just disappeared. I threw myself at Randy, tackling him back into the ground when I saw that he was okay. He held me tight, his chest heaving against mine. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head, his hand grasping me over and over again as if he couldn’t get me close enough. “I can love, Norah. I can.”

It took me a second to understand what he was referring to. I shook my head when I knew he was worried about what Jennie had said when the serpent familiar was attached to her. “You of all people can love the most because you understand what it’s like to live life without it.”

Damn. That sounded like a Granny thing to say.

It was true though. Love, just like anything else, could be taken for granted. Those who had all of it and then some didn’t understand living with scarcity and emptiness. They would only learn if it got taken away, which I would never wish on anybody. Randy, though, he understood what it was like to live without it, which meant he truly understood the power of it. Just like me.

Jax roared. Randy’s eyes widened, and he scrambled to his feet, taking me with him. Screams rose up from the crowd. Jax dropped from the sky and landed at the very edge of the wharf before barreling forward. The crowd moved to the outskirts as Randy and I moved to the center. Gabe, Liam, Travis, and the superiors were already there. “You take something more from me?” he screeched.

His face pulled back into an angry snarl and for a moment, it wasn’t Jax’s outward appearance anymore. The true demon showed through into the stuff nightmares were made of. Gaping holes where the eyes should be. Sinewy, rotten muscle stretched over a skull with jagged-like teeth. Before I knew it, it was back to Jax, and I was caught thinking whether I’d just imagined it or not.

“It’s not him. It’s not him,” Travis said, chanting the words to himself.

“You did this to me!”

It’s not him. It’s not him.

Randy growled and moved forward. He threw his green magic at the earth, trying to make Jax trip, but it didn’t work. Anger surged to the surface after each failure until he was breathing out his nose like a raging bull. The demon stopped in front of him, its face pulled back into a sneer. He reached out and poked Randy, and Randy fell to the ground in agony, his hand covering the spot where they touched.

Water and fire came at Jax all at once, each of them canceling the other out. Travis still spoke to himself. Chaos ensued around us. When Jax walked by people, they either fainted or pure hatred consumed their eyes. He didn’t turn them into hateful beings, he used their hatred for him against them, consuming them with it.

He walked up to me, his head cocked to the side. “I still haven’t figured out what makes you so special.”

This woke Travis up. His hands glowed red and a fierce wind whipped up out of nowhere. Witches screamed as some got knocked off their feet. Jax leaned into it, his face still a smirk. His hatred blinded me. It poked at my exterior until it was all I could see.

Behind him, the world went fuzzy. Hair tracked across my face and I planted my feet so I could stay upright, but the hate he had for everything was like a blow to the gut. My spirit magic curdled inside me, hiding away like a tortured puppy. It didn’t want to come out with all that negativity.

“Feel the love, Norah Girl. The love.”