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“Right,” he said. “I didn’t want anything to do with it, but today’s a different story than it was before. We’ve got a lot more things going on. With Liam having the familiar and Dupre lurking around somewhere, I need you to be up on your defensive skills. But also,” he sighed as if it killed him to admit this. “I need to work with you. I need the feel of having you be part of the coven instead of…the other person.”

I swallowed, staring at Travis as we walked around the side of the house. His gaze already focused out at the water. It had taken a lot for him to say that. It wasn’t anywhere near an apology, but all the little things that had been going on lately made me sure we were moving in the right direction. “I agree,” I told him. “When we get into a situation like we were the other day, we need to see how we can react and how we all work with one another.”

Travis looked up. “And Liam is scaring me a little. We’re not sure what the familiar is doing to him. We know the familiar allowed the psychic to mark the Liderc’s targets, so it could really be capable of anything. We know she wasn’t aware of that part, so what if Liam is doing something he’s not aware of…”

My stomach twisted. I hoped to God that wasn’t happening.

I stopped when we were in the wide-open clearing, about in the same place we had been when it was just Liam, Randy, Gabe, and myself out here. I took a seat on the grass and stared up at him. The sun made my eyes squint, so I used my hand to ward off as much as I could. “Let’s see what you got.”

Travis did what I’d seen the others do. He took his stance, right foot forward with this hand taut as he waited to pull his magic from him. I concentrated on his hand, waiting for a color to show up like I’d seen with the rest of the guys. Nothing really accumulated there like it had with the others. Instead, a swirling wind came up from around Travis, catching at his sleeves and flapping the extra material in the wind. The more Travis concentrated, the more the wind picked up. Pieces of my hair even came around and stuck to my lips.

Wait a minute. Liam made fire. Randy moved the earth. Gabe used the water from the ocean. “You’re wind,” I told him.

“What?” he snapped, frowning down at his hand. The magic flickered and went out. He’d obviously felt as if it should’ve been going better than it had, and I’d just ruined his concentration.

“Wind, Travis,” I said, standing up and moving toward him. “Try again.”

He pulled at his magic again. I waited until the wind picked up once more and then I stepped into his vortex. When he finally looked at me and noticed the wind swirling around us, his eyebrows rose.

“You were watching from the window before,” I told him. “You saw how Liam made fire, Gabe moved the water, and Randy—”

“—made a big fucking hole in the ground?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, chuckling. That pretty much summed it up. “I’ve heard of witches being able to control the elements, but isn’t it weird that you each gravitated toward one?”

“I’ve never been able to do that before,” Travis said. “Though, it’s not as if I’ve ever tried.”

“Did you try that time?”

“No, I was just trying to call my magic out, maybe make a hole in the ground like Randy had to see how much power I could get.”

“Instead of that, wind came to you. Every time you concentrated harder, the wind swirled faster. Is this an Akasha coven thing?”

Travis gave a curt shake of his head. “I’ve never heard of it before. It makes sense though. Randy also buried the Liderc alive at his parents’ house. He moved the earth again to do that. Maybe we can control separate elements.”

Yeah, that had been badass. I’d wondered how we were going to get rid of that thing and when the psychic mentioned sending him back to hell, I hadn’t realized we were going to physically send him there by breaking open the ground and shoving him so far deep inside that he would never be able to get out again.

“If we can do that,” Travis said. “What’s yours?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never felt anything like that. Maybe I’m different because I come from a voodoo background. I don’t know.”

For the next half hour, Travis used his newfound magic to fling things through the air at me while I practiced my defensive skills by deflecting them away and sending them spiraling in the other direction. When I felt the magic start to tug at me, as if the edges were splitting and fraying, I held my hand up at the rock he’d sent at me about a hundred times. I tossed it to the ground in front of him. “I need a break.”

He dropped his hands to his side, blinking, as if he’d just come out of a trance. “Wow. I guess so. We’ve been doing that for a while. Are you okay?”

“Time flies when you’re flinging things at me, I guess.”

“Actually,” he said, pausing. An enormous smile graced his face, and it was hard not to get swept up in it. “It really does.”

I rolled my eyes. Then, we just stood there staring at one another for an awkward few moments before I started toward the house. I looked over my shoulder to find him running to catch up. When he got next to me, I said, “If we can’t find a way to get the familiar off Liam, we’re going to have to find a way to get him to live with it. You see how his whole demeanor has changed, haven’t you?”

Travis nodded. “He’s not telling us the whole story. When I think about it, it’s just like him to do that. He doesn’t want to be the center of attention, therefore, he’s not going to tell us what’s really going on with this thing on him. He doesn’t like to rock the boat, you know?”

“I’ve tried talking to him,” I said, feeling completely helpless. “He told me he couldn’t be a safe space for me anymore. That stung like a bitch.”

“We should all keep trying,” Travis said, emphasizing the ‘we’. “Maybe we could sit him down and try to talk to him when Gabe gets back tonight.”

“He’d hate that,” I said, picturing an intervention in my mind. That would make him crazy. “Maybe we could each try to talk to him separately to see if we can get anywhere with him.”