I open my mouth to say something, but no noise comes out. I want to tell her everything—exactly what I feel—but I hesitate. Confused. Terrified. If I say it aloud, then everything changes. I’ll no longer be what I am. I’ll be weak. Vulnerable. She’ll have the power to break me, just like everyone else in my life has. My father. My mother.

“Gemma, I…” I trail off, pulling back to look at her, but I can’t see anything except darkness. It’s everywhere, yet I know she’s still there because I can feel the faint heat of the sparks and the touch of her breath.

“You don’t love me, do you?” she sounds on the verge of tears. “Oh, my God, I’m so stupid.”

No, you’re not, I want to say, but my lips are fastened, my voice dead. I want to shout that I do love her, however for some reason I can’t go to that place where I surrender.

And with each second that slips by, I feel her drifting away…

I’ve only blacked out once that I can remember.

My father thought that the best way to teach me how to swim was to row me out into the middle of the lake and make me get into the water. After that, he left me there, saying the fear would force my swimming instincts to kick in because up until that point I had seemed to lack them. I was around ten years old, and although I had a good grasp on my emotions by then, I was still scared shitless as I struggled to stay afloat in the cold water while my father rowed away toward the shore. I gave a good fight, though; fought until the very end. I kept my eyes on the castle in the distance, hoping that if I stared at it, that somehow it’d come closer to me or I to it. Eventually it began to disappear; to slip out of my sight. I couldn’t hold myself up above the water anymore, so I started to sink. Water filled my lungs. My heart struggled to keep beating. I ended up blacking out. I thought I would die— thought that I’d never see the sky, the land, the castle again—and the scariest part of that was that there was very little fear in that thought.

I did wake up again, though; on the shore, coughing up water with the sky above me. I thought it was my father who’d saved me, that he’d seen that I wasn’t going to be able to swim and had come back to rescue me; that he cared enough about me that he didn’t want me to die. But it wasn’t. Aislin had been the one who swam out and saved me.

My father had been enraged. At me for giving up. At Aislin for helping me. He’d said we were useless. That we’d never amount to anything. That he wished I’d died instead of giving up. I should have been angry at him, but instead, I felt ashamed. I spent the next week in the lake, sinking and nearly drowning until, finally, I was able to swim.

I’ve tried not to rely on anyone ever since; tried to never be weakened by human emotion.

“Can you hear me?” someone says through the haziness in my head. “Nod your head if you can?”

I try to wobble my head around, but I can’t find the strength to do it, so instead, I lie wherever I am, my body as heavy as cement.

“Jesus, Alex,” they say and I recognize the voice—Aislin. “I thought you were stronger than this?”

I want to retort with an insult, but my lips feel weighted, sealed together. I attempt to lift my hand, yet again, I have no motion in my body.

“Oh, for the love of God.” She sounds more irritated than worried, which is typical. Aislin and I have always had one of those brother-sister relationships where we argue a shitload and get annoyed easily with one another.

Seconds later, I feel water splash across my face, which is ice cold of course. I’m jolted awake, my eyes shooting open. I instantly recognize where I am—on the floor of the bedroom where I’ve tied Gemma up. Aislin is standing above me with an empty cup in her hand. Her eyebrows are raised and her hair is singed at the ends, which means she’s recently done a spell that’s backfired, so nothing new.

“Thanks,” I say sarcastically as I sit up, wiping the water from my face with the back of my hand.

“You’re welcome,” she replies in an upbeat tone as she sets the cup down on top of the dresser.

I get to my feet, vertigo still evident, and the room sways, throwing me off balance. I stick out my hand and brace myself against the bedpost. “Where the hell have you been?” I ask, glancing at the bed where Gemma is laying with her eyes closed. I’d worry she’s dead, but I can see her chest rising and falling with her breath. She looks at peace, sleeping, but the question is, why? What happened after I passed out that has made her go under?

And why did I dream what I did… it didn’t even feel like a dream. It felt more real than this moment right now.

Aislin touches her hair as she frowns. “I ran into a bit of a problem at the Wicca Shop.”

I blink my eyes a few times then let go of the bedpost when I get my bearings. “Why am I not surprised? Trouble seems to center around you.”

She aims me a disgruntled look and then looks at Gemma. “Like you’re doing any better. What the hell happened after I left?”

I sit down on the foot of the bed beside Gemma’s feet, feeling the electricity, which is surprisingly quiet; it’s barely there, fading. It makes me nervous. “She’s possessed.” I lean over and point to the mark on her arm. “And from what I picked up, our lovely father put this on her,” I tell her, my voice dripping with bitterness.

She shakes her head, her eyes enlarged. “But how is that even possible?”

I shrug and then explain to her in detail what little I know, hoping she’ll have a magical solution to fix this. I can tell though, by the time that I’m finished explaining stuff to her that she’s as lost as I am on what we should do,.

“I can’t believe she attacked you.” She sinks down on a chair in the corner near the door that leads to the back.

“Why?” I ask, leaning in so that my hip is against Gemma’s leg, if for no other reason than because I desperately need to touch her. I get a nip of sparks, but softer than usual. “She’s possessed by evil. It’d be weird if she didn’t attack me.”

“I know, but…” she mulls over something deeply. “It’s just crazy. I mean the mark… it’s only supposed to show up on those that are evil.”

“She said she had evil blood in her,” I explain. “But I’m guessing that’s the words of our father, not her.”

She pulls a hesitant face. “How can you be sure, though? I mean, we hardly know anything about her family… her mother was so secretive about her father. For all we know, he could be Malefiscus.”

“Watch it,” I warn. “Don’t you dare go there.”

She slumps back in the chair and puts her arms on the armrests. “I have to because you’re sure as hell not going to. You never think clearly when it comes to her.”

I want to yell at her and deny what she’s saying, but the truth is, I don’t have a clear head when it comes to Gemma. Between my lust, befuddled emotions, and the sparks all connected to her, my head’s foggy every time she’s near me. It fucking sucks, yet at the same time, I like the feeling of no control…. I’m extremely conflicted.

“So do you think you can figure out a spell to take the mark off her arm?” I ask, changing the subject as Gemma lets out a loud exhale, trying to roll on her side in her sleep. The binds around her legs and one of her arms restrain her from moving too much, though, and she ends up on her back again.

“Well, I might have,” Aislin says, impatiently tapping her foot on the floor, “if your ex-girlfriend hadn’t stolen my spell book. I mean, what the hell was that about? She’s not even a witch.” She mutters something under her breath, shaking her head in annoyance. “You know, I’ve always hated Stasha.”

“You and everyone else,” I tell her. “Including me.”

“Then why did you date her?”