It called to her. She could end this. It wanted her. Wasn’t that what everyone said? It wanted to inhabit her. It wanted to be her. How simple would it be to give it what it wanted? It would all be over. It wouldn’t hurt. Numbness. No one else would suffer. How simple, how simple…

“Vera!” A voice shouted. “Vera! No! Step back!”

Was she moving? She wasn’t moving. She was standing still. She was watching. But its face was getting closer. Those eyes, those fathomless eyes, what secrets lay inside that abyss? She could know. If she let herself, she could know everything. Just a simple invitation.

“Vera! Listen to me! Stop! Wake up!” a voice continued to shout. Where was she? Why did everything feel so far away? Was she floating?

A hand clutched her shoulder. The grip was firm, pulling, yanking. “Vera, hear my voice. Come back. Stop. Please. Come back to us.”

Us.

What us?

Was there an us?

“Vera, please, for me. Do this for me. Don’t leave me. I can’t lose you too. We need you. All of us.”

She blinked.

Max. It was Maxwell Oliver.

He was beside her. He was holding her. He was holding her back.

Her gaze flicked about.

She was still in her house. She was still in her kitchen. Her eyes were awake.

She was no longer sleeping.

She peered down at the cursed hat in her hand, full of glittering glass. Her breath gusted in heavy bursts. Wind smacked her face, shoving her back. She was tired. So tired. It was draining her life, her will, her…everything.

Vera scrunched her eyes, gripping the brim of the hat with all her might, and with a clarity of mind she didn’t know she possessed, she began reciting all four stages of the binding service she’d heard echo from the basement over the course of her seventeen years. She breezed through the first two stages quickly, as far as her aunt had gotten after the hurricane. This was why the words only protected them, their family, and their house, when the demon was unleashed. The town—the world—remained at the mercy of the monster, because by the time they said the final two phases, it was already gone.

Fingers brushed against hers, gripping the hat, but Vera kept her eyes closed. She couldn’t look. She couldn’t risk that hypnotic stare pulling her in again.

Somewhere in the distance, a gurgle rose up, bloody and liquified, booming and powerful.

Vera kept chanting. She moved on to stage three. “I exercise my power to expel all evil spirits. I command them to leave. I renounce all forces and bind them to these objects….”

Her aunt’s voice surged in time with hers. Then Father Chuck’s. They recited the words with the force of their beings, drowning out the humming chants outside, their fingers cramping, their breath unified.

A power lifted Vera’s chest, rolling her onto her toes. It was their power. Her power.

A ragged roar of agony shook the room. Gales blasted Vera’s face, whipping her hair, pushing against her. She didn’t let go of the objects. Instead, she squinted tighter, her blood boiling hotter. Sweat saturated her shirt, her hair.