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I smiled at him and squeezed his hand to let him know it wasn’t personal. But then I turned toward all of them. “So, hey, how did we figure out how to take out Dupre at the sorority house?”

“We didn’t take him out. We put the Akashic cell on him and then he just disappeared.”

“Then how did we put the Akashic cell on him?”

They all just stared at me.

“The answer you’re all looking for is ‘together’. We did it together.”

“How did we save Liam from the Familiar and Randy from the Liderc?”

Travis folded his arms in front of his chest. “We’re not not working together, Norah.”

“Speak for yourself, Shaw.”

All eyes turned to Randy. I knew as soon as he walked in that he was itching for a fight. This could be a good thing. This was what I saw at the restaurant. The father got angry, let it out, and then everything was better again.

Travis looked bored. “What’s that, Randy? Is there something you’d like to say?”

Randy’s hands turned to fists. Gabe’s eyes turned to me, then went right back to the pair of them. “We could’ve been done with all this. We had the chance to grab Jax, but you interfered. We could’ve been done. Our lives could’ve been normal by now, but we’re living in fucking Order headquarters.”

Travis’s jaw tensed. “That’s not Jax.”

“Oh, wake the fuck up. It was Jax. He was the same overconfident prick he always was.”

“I don’t think he was that bad,” Gabe said, grimacing. “He was our friend.”

“And that’s why I can call him a prick,” Randy said. “I’d expect all of you to call me a fucking asshole if I was being one.”

“Fine,” Travis said. “You’re a fucking asshole.”

“I’m not the asshole who’s responsible for all this!”

Each of then breathed in deep, facing off from one another. Liam looked conflicted, as if he should be standing next to Randy, but let’s face it. None of us wanted to be standing next to Randy when he was like this.

“This is good,” I said. “We need to get all this out so that we can talk it through and get over it.”

Randy turned his glare on me. My stomach clenched. “You don’t get it, Norah. None of this is going to change anything.” Though his voice was much calmer, his eyes were still dark.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, feeling uncertain for the first time.

“Because faced with the same thing in the future, Travis would do the same thing. He’s not going to let us do anything to Jax.”

“Haven’t we done enough to Jax?” Travis asked.

I spun toward him, trying to read his face. The truth was evident on his face. I moved forward and grabbed his forearm. “Randy’s right, Travis. That wasn’t Jax.”

“It was,” he said, his muscles underneath my touch bunching.

“You know what he did,” I told him, speaking softly. “You know he called upon a demon to give him back his powers. There’s no other way he would be that powerful without it.”

“Travis seems to forget that Jax was the one leading Dupre on a string. That he was the reason you were taken, Norah. That a bunch of witches got drained, and some even died. He was the reason why Liam had a God damn familiar on him and we thought we were going to lose him.”

“That’s not Jax.”

“Exactly!” Randy said.

Travis moved within a split second. He shoved Randy against the wall, the smell of cinnamon spicing up the room. My heart fell through to my stomach as I watched them both. I went to move forward, but Liam squeezed my hand. “That wasn’t him!” Travis seethed. “That wasn’t him, but he’s in there. My friend is still in there.”