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“Gabe’s grandfather—”

Gabe squeezed my fingers, and I stopped talking. He gave me a small smile and then stared down Travis and Randy. “You can be pissed at me. It was my idea not to say anything. Norah didn’t like it from the start. I have talked to my grandfather about a girl being the fifth. He said it would never happen again, that it would throw the balance of magic off. He said it happened before, back in the day, and that the coven ended up self-imploding.” He shrugged as if that was that. Much like how I wouldn’t apologize for putting myself at risk with the Reid’s, Gabe was unapologetic about this. It was what it was.

“So, this is why we aren’t telling Walter about Norah?” Travis said, his voice hard.

“That and the feelings we all have,” Gabe answered. “You can’t deny you also didn’t have those same feelings or else you would’ve been the first one to say something to them.”

“Me?” Travis asked, his voice incredulous. “You’re the one who is all up on Order business. It’s in your family.”

“Don’t fight,” I begged. We really needed to be a team at the moment.

Gabe ignored me. “If I’m the one who should’ve thought it a bad idea to lie to them, which obviously I didn’t, then we shouldn’t even be having this conversation. It’s better that the Order didn’t know about her, and it’s still better they continue not to know about her.”

“Do you think there’s truth to it?” Randy asked, staring at me. “Norah’s being here will affect us in that way.”

I swallowed. “Granny said I was exactly where I was supposed to be even though it wasn’t the best place for me.”

“And Walter himself has said the pull doesn’t pull the wrong person in.”

“Which is why I don’t understand why we can’t just tell him Norah’s the fifth,” Travis said.

Randy crooked a finger at me and I moved forward. He pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “It doesn’t matter to me what happened in the past or what happens now. Norah’s here to stay. They can’t break us up. She got the pull, and even if they tried to do that. It’s not like we would let it happen.”

“Agreed,” Travis said.

I looked up, smiling at him in the mirror.

“I’m glad you said that,” Gabe started. “Because you were the main reason why we weren’t saying anything. You weren’t on board the Norah train yet, and I was worried you would’ve turned us all in if you thought we were going to implode.”

Travis’s eyebrows furrowed. “You guys thought I would do that to you?”

I needled my finger into his shoulder. “You have been known to be a dick.”

He ignored my teasing, his mouth slightly open as he tried to catch Gabe’s eyes in the mirror. “I just thought you guys knew it’s always been about the coven for me. Majority rules. Even if I’d never hopped on board the Norah train, that wouldn’t mean I would’ve turned you guys in for it. That’s not who I am.”

“Can we stop using train as an analogy for me?”

“What should we use?” Gabe asked.

“Sweet ass?” Randy suggested.

I glared at him and shook my head.

Travis chuckled. “If I’d never hopped on Norah’s sweet ass, I still wouldn’t have turned you guys in for it.”

I burst out a laugh. “That means something completely different.”

The vehicle erupted into ridiculous laughter. At the same time my heart leaped, it came crashing down. We were missing one very specific, one very important piece. I needed Liam here, so he could blush at the ‘jumping on Norah’s sweet ass’ comment. I missed him. Holy fuck, it was like a hole to the heart.

The Jeep silenced in an instant as the heavy dose of reality hit us over the heads. “We’ll be there soon,” Travis said.

Right now wouldn’t be soon enough for me.

Chapter Twenty-One

As soon as we entered the city of Salem, my stomach clenched. I hissed, trying to breathe through the pain. Travis lost control of the car for a second and then twisted the wheel to get it back on track. I looked up. “You felt it too.”

He cringed. “It’s back to normal. Damn. I don’t know why I was ever mad I was missing out on this. I forgot how bad it sucked.”