Eli pressed his hands together and the ball of light vanished, plunging us back into darkness. In the space of less than a breath my familiar friend, fear, was whispering in my ear.

I had to get out and back home! This was all wrong, I could feel it in my bones.

Something touched my hand and I jumped. Eli’s hand wrapped around my fingers and gently pulled me forward. Then out of the room into the deep shadows of the house. But at least I could see.

He smiled up at me and dropped my hand. I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to understand how anything he’d just shown me could be true. I wanted to know he wasn’t deceiving me. But all I could do was stare at him as he smiled at me.

“Cool, huh?” he said.

I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. “Cool.”

“That’s you, the light. So why are you afraid?”

I LAY ON MY BED AS DARKNESS STOLE THE LIGHT OUTside my window. I had been there for hours, although it felt like minutes.

I’d managed to get back home without being detected, and as I put distance between myself and the house where Eli was hidden, the buzz of the experience faded. By the time I sneaked back into my room, the experience itself was a distant memory, replaced by a logic that demanded I figure out what was really happening.

I remembered little Stephen saying Eli could do magic. And now I’d witnessed something like magic with my own eyes, something that shouldn’t be possible. What other power did he have? What if that power was exactly what Rose and the rest of Haven Valley feared? Weren’t they justified in that fear?

But I couldn’t deny the way the light had called to me. The beauty it held, the joy and love it had given me. Deception? Truth? What had my father learned that he could no longer tell me? Who was Eli?

Round and round I chased in the same mental circles, from uncertainty to desire, from fear to peace and back into fear. My mind wanted to rationalize it all, but I couldn’t, and my heart was torn between acceptance and rejection.

Bobbie had spent a good hour with me, sitting on the end of my bed, before finally leaving me alone. We’d fallen in and out of the same rounds of conversation, much like the rounds that were happening in my mind.

Bobbie: “You should be more afraid of him now than ever.”

Me: “He said I was the light of the world.”

Bobbie: “He’s a dangerous child who will send you to hell. You can’t trust him.”

Me: “I want to believe him.”

Bobbie: “That would be foolish. Use your wisdom. Think this through.”

Me: “Can I be threatened?”