On Monday morning, I was heading out to my car when Bee’s white Acura came roaring up to the curb. She sat behind the wheel, her curly blond hair a cloud around her bright, smiling face, music blaring on the radio.

I smiled back, but something about her grin bothered me. It seemed... fake. Still, I made my way out to the car. “You offering me a ride?”

“A ride and coffee!” Triumphantly, she held a Starbucks cup out the window, and I took it, still feeling uneasy. I barely slid into the passenger seat before she was pulling back into the street, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

“So did everything go okay with your parents?” I asked, holding the coffee tight to keep it from sloshing through the little hole in the lid as Bee took a corner a little too fast. I almost had to yell to be heard over the music.

“It was fine!” Bee said, and I wished she would take off her sunglasses so I could see her face. “I mean, weird. At first it was like they didn’t even recognize me, or it was like they had just woken up or something.” She gave a little shrug. “But then it was fine. Like you said, they think I’ve been at cheerleading camp this whole time.”

We were almost to the school now—it wasn’t very far from my house—and I put my coffee in the cup holder before reaching out to touch her arm gently. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Are you?” she asked, glancing over at me. I could see her brows rising over the tops of her aviators. “I’m not the one who could have super-dangerous challenges thrown at me at any moment. Although”—the corners of her mouth turned down—“I guess I will be if something happens to you.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I said with a confidence I definitely did not feel. “I’ll get through this, you can go back to being normal, and everything will be like it was before. Well, mostly.”

Bee pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine, turning to face me. She slid her glasses onto the top of her head and studied my face. “Nothing is ever going to be normal again, is it?” Then she frowned. “But it hasn’t been normal for you in a long time.”

Look, I definitely wasn’t thrilled my best friend had been all magicked up, and was now my backup in case I got horribly killed during some supernatural trials. But I had to admit that Bee actually knowing what was going on, being able to talk to her about it and have her understand, felt good. One fewer person to lie to was always a nice thing as far as I was concerned.