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I WOKE UP IN A CHAIR .

I blinked in the darkness, and it took a moment for my sluggish brain to realize that the hood was still over my head. My hands were bound behind my back, and my ankles were tied to the chair legs. The gag was also still in my mouth; my lips were dry and cracked around the saliva-soaked fabric.

I had no idea how long I’d been out. I only knew what my body told me, which was that I had an awful headache, and that my limbs and torso were bruised and aching from the events of the night.

I groaned as I moved, spikes of pain driving into my temples as I tilted my head backward and rested it on the high slats of the chair.

“He’s coming to.”

“Take off the blindfold.”

Suddenly I could see light as the hood was ripped from my head; the area was bathed in the soft glow of candles. They were lit everywhere, casting flickering shadows.

Everything around me was fuzzy and blurred, but I was able to determine that I was somewhere with a vaulted ceiling. The space was rectangular, built from brick and about the size of a dining room. There was a small table in the center, and a runner led from the door to the foot of the chair I was positioned in, close to the opposite wall. A large barrel sat off to the side, and shelves were built into the walls on the longer sides. Wait, not shelves. Wine racks. I was beneath our house in the wine cellar.

“Remove the gag.”

I flinched as a person stepped forward and tugged the gross rag from my mouth.

“Mom?” I rasped, looking around.

She stepped out of the shadows into the ring of candlelight. When she met my gaze, her expression was soft and affectionate, not the stern and judgmental one I was accustomed to.

“Mom,” I said, brow furrowed. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but please don’t do it.” I struggled against the restraints as I pleaded with her, the chair rocking dangerously as I tried to yank free. “It’s not too late to help me get out of here. I think these other people want to hurt me.” My voice cracked at the end.

“Oh no, baby,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t want to hurt you. I promise.”

She padded carefully forward, approaching me until she was only a few feet away. “Your father and I only want to help you.”

A cold sweat broke over my body.

My dad moved into the light. “Your mother is right, son. We only want what’s best for you.”

“Please don’t!”

Panic clogged in my throat. I twisted my wrists against the binding, the rope cutting into my skin, and a whimper spilled through my clenched teeth.

“Don’t hurt yourself now,” my dad said. “You’ll be released soon.”

“When?”

“When the spell is completed.” My mom laced her fingers together. “We’re just waiting on one more ingredient.”

The spell. I hadn’t given Al the chance to tell me exactly what the spell was, other than that it was dangerous.

“We weren’t planning on doing this tonight, but”—she shrugged—“you’ve given us little choice. I mean, dating a werewolf. Proclaiming you’re a clairvoyant.” She shook her head in amused disbelief.

“What will it do?” I asked, my voice a low, trembling croak.

“It will remove the curse,” my mom said proudly. “We’ve been researching for months and months. The larger covens refused to help us, but we finally found the correct spell through an exiled witch.” She clucked her tongue and placed her hands on her hips. “A few of the ingredients have been very difficult to obtain. But no matter—we have what we need, and we’ll perform it to cleanse the curse from you, and everything will go back to normal.”

My head spun. My stomach revolted, and I was going to be sick all over the expensive tile. “Months?”

“Well before you and this seer mess happened,” my dad said.

“I prefer ‘clairvoyant,’?” I said, rote, but my dad continued speaking over me.

“You’ve given us no choice but to try and expunge your affliction first, and then we’ll rescue Aiden from that faery’s love curse.”

My mom gazed lovingly at my dad and looped her arm with his. “And we can go back to being a normal, happy family.”

Normal? Happy? Stripping me of my ability? And then “rescuing” Aiden? As if he were a captive? “What the fuck?”

“Language, Cam.”

“My clairvoyance isn’t a curse! You can’t just cut it out of me.” The conversation with Edith and Alma about where my ability originated rang in my ears. “That would be like removing my spirit! My soul!”

My mom frowned. “It’s what needs to be done.”

The coldness of her tone matched the stark and frigid atmosphere of the room, and real fear seeped into my bones. “How are you going to cast this spell, anyway? You’re not witches; you can’t perform magic. You—”

My dad sighed. “Cam, we’ve been members of an organization for a long time now that works to combat the dangers of witches and werewolves and every kind of paranormal faction, and their influence on our children. We were only peripheral members, but when Aiden became ensnared and then you followed, we decided to become more involved. We have worked tirelessly to find this cure and its ingredients, and learn how to implement it.”

Organization? Meetings? When? How? What? “Your farmer’s market runs were anti-paranormal club meetings?”

“Oh, no, dear. We love farmer’s markets. The meetings were after.”

I reeled. “It’s not a cure . Al found out about the spell, and they said it’s highly illegal.”

My mom scoffed. “I don’t care what those witches told you. They refused to assist us. They refused to provide us with the ingredients we needed through their ethically sourced avenues. We had to procure them on our own.”

My heart sank. “Werewolf’s blood.”

“It was one of the last elements we needed. It was a stroke of luck that you dropped that werewolf romance book, which confirmed the lore. And you and Mateo told us about the coffee shop your group of friends frequents. All we had to do was wait. We didn’t expect the sprite to be there with a werewolf, as I know the Lopez family and the Sprite Alliance are in a tiff, but with the protection charms Al’s family did provide”—my mom looped her thumb around the silver chain on her neck and lifted the pendant—“our group was able to acquire the blood.”

“You nearly killed her!”

My mom shrugged. “Small price to pay to reunite our family.”

The door to the cellar opened, and a person scurried in, a package in his hands. “I have it!” he said, bustling about the space. “I have the rowanberries.”

“Excellent.” My mom took the package from him and flipped open the lid. “Were they ethically sourced?” she asked with a giggle.

The man laughed. “Of course not.”

“No matter. This should do nicely,” she said, holding up the cluster of red berries. “Are we all ready to begin?”

Movement beyond the circle of light where my mom and dad stood indicated there were more people in the wine cellar—obviously members of their group. About a dozen figures shuffled forward and watched in rapt awe as my mother began preparations.

“Lock the door, and hang the protection charm on the handle,” my dad said, addressing the man who had just come in. “That way we won’t be interrupted.”

“Wait,” I said, still struggling in my seat. “Stop, please. Think . I have the ability to see the future. I could glimpse right now for each of you. I could tell you what’s coming next, maybe even sports scores and lottery numbers. Isn’t that a gift worth keeping? Especially if I ally with you? Just with humans?”

I was not above bribery. I wasn’t above anything at this point.

I didn’t want to lose my friends or the community I had discovered. I didn’t want to lose Aiden again now that I had found him. I couldn’t lose the people who had accepted me, especially not when confronted with the reality of my parents’ beliefs.

My mom sighed. “Remember how I said you could never know if your new friends liked you for you or for what you could do for them? Once we remove the curse, then you’ll know for certain. And that question won’t plague you for the rest of your life.”

“Shouldn’t I have a choice?” I demanded. I hadn’t been completely on board with being a clairvoyant from the beginning because I hadn’t been certain if it was worth the amount of grief I’d gone through since the first glimpse. But I had made my choice. I chose to be me. To be clairvoyant. That was who I was. That was the community I was part of, the one that had accepted me. “I don’t want this.”

“You can choose to be a willing participant,” my dad said as my mom started laying out the ingredients for the spell on the table. “Or you can be forced.”

“The parchment says it’s easier if you cooperate.” My mom unrolled a scroll and positioned candles at the edges, then ran her finger over the writing. She hummed as she dumped ingredients into a mixing bowl from the kitchen—a measuring cup of red liquid that was probably Juana’s blood, the rowanberries, a handful of a pungent herb, and two vials of mystery liquids, one purple and one green. She combined them with a wire whisk, the metallic swish the only sound in the room.

“Please,” I said, straining against the bonds holding me to the chair. “Please. Let me go. I’m scared. I don’t want to do this.” I racked my brain for any other angle I could use. “I’ll run away. You’ll never have to see me again. You can forget I ever existed.”

My mom spun from where she’d been bent over the bowl, her features twisted. “We don’t want you to leave.”

“No, you have it all wrong, Cam. We love you,” my dad said from where he was observing on the sidelines.

My mom went back to the parchment. “We just want you to be normal.”

Fresh tears sprang into my eyes. Her words hurt more than the rope biting into my skin, more than any slap or punch could ever have. I hunched down in the seat, trying to shield myself from her and from my dad, from their wrong ideas and convictions, from the stabbing pain etching itself into my skin and my soul.

I wasn’t escaping. Nothing I said would change their minds. And I was not strong enough to break free. An errant thought entered my mind, of how it would be easier not to have to worry about glimpses, or which faction to ally with, or if I’d see another almost-murder when I touched someone’s skin. But it was gone as soon as I thought about my friends.

I liked who I was, who I was becoming. I liked trying to be a good friend. Despite its trials, I liked being a clairvoyant, and I wanted to learn more, to do more, to master this skill and help people.

“Okay, all set. We need to draw this symbol on his skin with this mixture. Then we’ll pour the rest around him in a ring on the floor and chant these words.” My mom approached me, then frowned when she looked down at the liquid in the bowl, her nose scrunching in distaste. “I’m not touching this with my hands.”

The group scrambled to find something, and after a few minutes, one of them handed my mom a mushroom-shaped cork.

“Oh! This will do.” She dipped the small end into the mixture, her fingernails biting into the bulb at the top. The potion smelled like copper and dirt and vinegar. My dad pinched the fabric of my T-shirt and yanked it down, exposing my collarbones and the hollow of my throat.

I tried to wiggle away, but my dad grabbed me by the hair and wrenched my head back.

“Thank you, dear,” my mom said, and then she painted the symbol on my skin, the champagne cork her paintbrush.

The mixture was frigid when splashed on my chest, and I shivered.

“Don’t do this,” I said one last time. “Please. Stop.”

They ignored me. With a finishing dot in the center of my throat, she stepped back and admired her work. “There,” she said, satisfied.

My dad assisted in pouring the remaining liquid in a ring around my chair. When the circle was completed, the concoction flashed an alarming red, as if activated.

My mom set the bowl down and clapped her hands. “It’s working already. Come.” She gestured to the others. “It’s time to hold hands and start the chant.”

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. Breathing through my nose, I attempted to calm myself, but it didn’t work. My chest heaved, my limbs trembled, and despite the ropes not budging an inch, I still strained against them. My tears hadn’t stopped, and they rolled into my ears.

The chant began.

The words were unfamiliar, but as the group’s voices swelled together in unison, the mixture on my body burned .

I yelped, my back arching, as the potion seeped into my skin and the sensation turned molten, traveling down into my core. It hurt .

A scream tore from my throat as the worst pain I’d ever felt crashed over me.

I thrashed in my bonds, desperate to get away, to find relief. Every nerve and synapse was alight with agony. It was as if I was being torn apart, as if a crucial essence of self was being excised from me in slow strips, a never-ending torture. The spell was taking the source of my psychic ability. My spirit, my soul.

My joints creaked; my muscles spasmed. Blood ran from my nose, sliding in thick rivulets over my lips and from my ears.

The chanting increased, became louder, stronger.

Sparks went off behind my eyes, and I pleaded for them to stop, for a reprieve, but they didn’t listen, they didn’t pause, not when blood gurgled in my throat, not when my bones seemed to snap, not when I cried out with grief and loss and anguish. Seconds bled into minutes, and I knew I would not be able to hold out for much longer, that I would give in and pass out.

With my teeth gritted and eyes squeezed shut, the back of my head dug into the slats of the chair as my spine bowed with pain.

I didn’t know how I heard it over the sound of the voices and the grunts and screams from my own throat, but I did—a gentle rapping on the glass above me.

I forced my eyes open with a gasp. At the ground-level window several feet overhead stood a raven.