I nod, hitching my finger over my shoulder toward the back door. “They just left.”

She opens the bag and sniffs it. “Okay, that’s probably one of the strangest things I’ve heard all day.”

“Maybe.” But I’m not sure that it is. I think seeing Nicholas might top it. I sit back down on the couch and tighten the elastic in my hair. “So have you figured out what went wrong with your spell?”

She shakes her head, sealing the bag back up. “It’s strange but from everything I’ve read, it should work. And I can feel the power, but when I try to use it, I get nothing but this fizzling feeling.” Aislin opens the laptop in front of her. “I think maybe we could—”

A loud bang from inside the house silences both of us.

“What the hell was that?” Her eyes are huge as she looks at the window and then at the front door.

“Maybe Alex and Laylen forgot something.” I start for the kitchen and she tensely follows after me.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Aislin whispers as we approach the kitchen, “It’s coming from in there.”

“Do you have a weapon, just in case…” I trail off as smoke rounds the corner of the kitchen, snakes around my ankles, then heads for the living room.

Aislin grabs a knife from the pocket of her hoodie. “Ready when you are.”

I don’t have a weapon, but decide to rely on my strength something I need to get used to. “I’m ready.”

We swing around the corner on high alert and step into the kitchen. The smoke is coming in from a roaring fire burning in the garbage can in the driveway and the back door is agape, swinging in the wind and letting the smoke and wind inside.

Aislin lowers the knife. “Oh, thank God. For a second I thought the house was burning down.”

I inch toward the back door. “Yeah, but who started the fire and opened the door?”

She raises the knife again as if this has just occurred to her. “You think something’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.”

The sight of the fire blazing toward the night sky is sending red flags popping up all over the place. My mind drifts to a vision I’ve never seen before yet it feels like I have and I wonder if it’s some kind of after effect from changing a vision. Fires in the street. Chaos everywhere as vampires, fey, werewolves, all paranormal creatures run the streets wildly under the control of evil.

You need to prepare yourself.

I remember something Stephan once said to me; how he was told that Alex and I might kill the star and ourselves and ruin his plan but that he was working on an alternative plan. But what does that mean?

“Do you have a fire extinguisher?” Aislin asks, checking the cupboards and drawers.

I point at the cupboard below the kitchen sink. “It’s under there.”

Moments later, Aislin is outside and putting out the fire. I watch from the back steps, holding her sword, assessing the very quiet neighborhood around me. Everything seems normal, but something still feels off.

We head back inside, locking the door behind us and Aislin sets the extinguisher down on the kitchen floor. “There. Fire problem all taken care of.”

She goes back into the living room while I put the extinguisher back in the cupboard. “Something’s not right,” I mutter, feeling the calm before the storm. “I can feel it.”

It seems like hours tick by as I wait for something else to happen. It gets later, then earlier as morning starts to arrive. I’m not sure what compels me to do it, whether its sheer bravery or stupidity, but I finally dare to but the ring on. I expect something to happen—a big explosion or maybe I disappear—but nothing happens. So I keep it on and lie down on the sofa, skimming through the Foreseer book, while Aislin works on a spell.

At about three or four o’clock in the morning Laylen and Alex finally return. I sense something is immediately off by their bloodshot eyes and their worn out expressions.

“Are you two okay?” I ask as Alex shucks off his jacket and hangs on a coatrack it in the foyer. “Have you been crying? Or are you stoned?”

Alex chuckles under his breath. “I promise we’re fine.” He doesn’t really answer my question, though, swinging and arm around my shoulder and guiding me with him as he goes into the living room. He smells like barbeque sauce and beer, which makes me wonder if they went to a bar.

Laylen lies down on the sofa, looking beat, and I catch Aislin giving him a look that begs him for the details of where they’ve been, which he ignores, shutting his eyes like he’s going to take a nap.

As I’m about to sit down, Alex tugs me in the other direction toward the stairway. “Hey, come with me for a minute. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Okay.” Something is up.

“You put that thing on?” he asks, unexpectedly alarmed as he taps the ring on my finger while we gradually make our way upstairs.

I run my finger along the gems. “I wanted to see if it would do something if I did, but it didn’t.”

He seals his lips together, probably shoving down a lecture and remains that way until we’re in my room. He shuts the door behind us and even though it’s dark, he doesn’t turn the light on. Then he stands by the door and I can’t see what he’s doing, but I can tell he’s thinking about something intense by the way the sparks nip and bite at my skin.

It starts to drive me crazy, so I flip the light on. “Okay, fess up. Where did you and Laylen go?” I lie down on my bed on my stomach and rest my chin in my hand, fixing my attention on him.

He shrugs, his relentless gaze locked on me. “I just needed to talk to him about something.”

“So are you two friends again, then? I really hope so because this jealousy, male testosterone thing between you two is getting old.”

He chuckles under his breath then lies down on the bed beside me on his back. “Yeah, I guess it was getting old, wasn’t it.” He drapes his arm over his head, gazing up at the ceiling.

“It feels like you’re keeping something from me,” I state, turning my head and resting my cheek on my hand so I can look at him better.

“No, it’s not bad. It’s good…everything will be alright.”

My heart misses a beat. Those are the words he whispers to me right before we died. “How do you know that for sure?”

“I just do.”

“Alex.” I move a pillow out of my way and scoot closer to him. In response, he puts a hand on my stomach, just under my shirt, and his fingers splay across my stomach. Something warms inside me, in a different yet equally—maybe even better—way than it normally does, but the sensation baffles me. “What did you say during the Blood Promise you made to me last night?”

His expression is unreadable as he grabs my leg and swings it over his midsection. “I’ll tell you tomorrow, okay? But right now I just want to lay here with you and do something else to get my mind off the end of the world.”

I look down at my leg over his and then my eyes glides up his body and meet his tired gaze. “What did you have in mind?”

“I just want to have normalcy for a bit.” His arm wraps around me, his hand pressing on the small of my back, and he pushes me closer to him. “Just for a second.” He pauses then utters, “I won’t let it happen.” he says it more to himself than to me as his fingers trace the length of my spine. “I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

As his hands slide up to my shoulders and our bodies align, I’m not even worried about dying. And when he kisses me, every worry I have diminishes. I once heard this song or maybe it was a saying about letting yourself die in a blissful, loving, perfect moment, so that you could die happy. I think I might feel that way right now.

I wake up to an empty bed and have a cold feeling residing deep in my bones. I feel wired, like my peaceful dream has rejuvenated me. But as the reality that I can’t feel a single drop of sparks in my body sets in, I start to panic.