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“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Jules snapped. She turned toward Travis, her shoulders moving up and down with every deep breath she took. “I mean, you even marked your own sister! What the hell, Travis?”

His face blanched, and he staggered back a step.

Okay. She’d gone over the line now. I walked up to her and crouched down. “He’s just doing his job, Jules. Now we’re going to do ours. Like I just explained to you—nicely—if you’re not bad, you have nothing to worry about and you can leave right away.” I leaned toward her. “And really, we’d prefer if you left right away if you’re going to act like that.” I rose to my feet and turned toward Travis. “Alright, let’s do this. I guess stopping to get supplies wasn’t necessary.” Not that I’d help her with how she was being now, anyway. The anger that coursed through her brought back some life to her body and she was completely flushed with anger. She no longer held the decaying look but was sporting a major bitch face.

I moved to my stone bench, and the others did the same. The pentagram in the middle glowed white as we sat there staring at Jules. She stayed where she was, her gaze flitting to all of us in turn. As I stared back, it was as if her physical body gave way and I could see straight through to her soul. She glowed white, a pink aura around the edges, but she was pure. Inherently, I knew that if we’d got someone like Dupre into the pentagram, it would’ve been a different story. I could imagine scenes of death and chaos, and a black soul like a bottomless pit of tragedies.

Travis stood, and the magic stripped away, leaving my hair standing on end. As I watched, the mark on her forehead faded into nothing. It just disappeared right in front of us. The Akasha had done just what they said it would do. “You’re good, Jules. You have to know I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just doing what I have to do, whether you like it or not. The Akasha doesn’t lie, and it didn’t lie in your case either. I want to know, though, you’re sure you don’t remember anything? Because there was something going on in your house. Something evil.”

Jules stood on shaky legs. Travis reached out to steady her, but she shied away, her hands coming over her chest. Her voice was much softer now when she spoke. “I told you I don’t remember a thing. It’s almost like I blacked out. I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck, and there you guys were all staring at me.”

I walked toward her, hoping a woman-to-woman talk might calm her down even further. “I was there, too,” I told her. “There was something in your house. I wouldn’t go back there if I were you.” I pulled out the vials from my pocket and held them out. “I stopped by my shop to pick these up. I was going to try to heal you, but it looks as if your color is already returning. Do you want any of this?” I held the vials out to her, basic herbs that any witch would know.

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Do you have any place to go besides your house? We want you to be safe until we can figure out what’s going on. Your house definitely isn’t that right now since we don’t know what did something to you, and we don’t even know what they did to you.”

“You meanifsomething got done to me?” She headed for the stairs. “I want to go home.”

Travis threw Gabe the keys. “You mind?”

Gabe plucked them out of the air. “No problem.”

Before they got too far, Travis cleared his throat and then pointed at his head. He then motioned toward me. It dawned on me what he was trying to say. Jules now knew I was part of the order. Travis was asking Gabe to wipe her memory of that fact.

Gabe nodded.

Jules stomped up the steps and Gabe followed, raising his eyebrows at us as we watched them leave. I tugged on his hand before he disappeared. “Please don’t take her home. Tell her you’ll take her any place but there.”

He gave me a small salute. “You got it, Baby.” He kissed my forehead and jogged all the way up the steps. I turned, addressing the rest of us. “Well, that could’ve gone better.”

Travis ran a hand through his hair and swore. Liam looked bored, and Randy and I shared a confused glance.

“Have you guys ever marked someone before who didn’t turn out bad?”

“Yes,” Travis said, his lips thin. “But it’s usually when we have several people and we know it’s one of them, and it turns out to be one and not the other. We don’t have another person,” he said, turning around in a circle and motioning toward the pretty much empty room besides the rest of us.

“She wasn’t the one who did something bad, which means someone did something bad to her,” Randy said.

That much was clear. But we didn’t know who, and we didn’t know what. “She didn’t seem like she believed us,” I said, trying to tread very carefully before Travis spiraled even further down.

Liam smirked. “People didn’t like it when Travis accidentally took all of his sister’s powers. They especially didn’t like it when they found out one of us was found bad, too. I mean, we’re supposed to be the good guys.”

He snorted, and Travis glared at him. His eyes narrowed, and he stared at Liam menacingly. “You think that’s funny?”

Liam met his stare with a nasty one of his own. “Do I think it’s funny that one of us, an Enforcer, who is supposed to be the purest of them all, was found to be bad? I mean, yeah. If it’s not funny, it’s ironic.”

Travis moved forward, his steps like sledgehammers as he moved forward. Randy stepped in front of Liam while I intercepted Travis. “Seriously?” I said, whispering. “Wasn’t it you who told me that the familiar is affecting him? Give him a break, would you?”

Travis’s green eyes locked on mine and then looked away.

We were all trying to coddle Liam, but I agreed, he’d gone too far with that remark. Especially in front of Travis, who’d probably never get over the fact he’d accidentally stripped his own sister. That was a low blow.

I took a big breath and released it. That could’ve escalated into something bad. Since Liam wasn’t feeling much like Liam, I was going to have to play the common-sense part in all this. “Here’s what we know so far,” I said. “We know that Jules smelled like negative magic, but she’s not bad herself. So, we can only conclude that she had a negative spell done near or around her, or perhaps to her. If it was done to her that would explain how she looked like she was practically dead when we saw her. Sunken in eyes, limp hair, so pale she was practically gray. She looked like she was strung out.” I peeked toward Randy. She looked like one of those magic users at Ren’s place. Like a magic junkie. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve asked her if she knew him. “We can look in the books for things that leave their victims like that. That’s what we did for the poor people we found dead.”

Travis nodded. “It’s a start.”

“You said you know her? What can you tell us about her? Is she the type to get mixed up in something bad?”