“I know you don’t remember me,” I say to Oliver, ignoring Jasper. “But I remember you. And if you stay here with them, something bad is going to happen.” I swallow and find my voice again. “Please.”

I know he doesn’t understand, I know none of this makes sense, but I lift my hand, slowly so he won’t flinch away, and I touch his cheekbone, his neck, hoping he will see. Some part of him will know that I’ve touched him before. That he’s looked into my eyes just like this and leaned forward to put his lips on mine. Some deep, unknowable part of him will still remember.

“Dude,” Rhett says, his voice pitched. “She’s probably hexing you right now. Stealing your soul. You won’t even remember your own name by morning.”

But I keep my gaze on Oliver, willing him to remember, and he finally does touch me—yet, it isn’t soft and gentle and kind. He grabs my hand and lowers it away from his cheek, firm and quick. Then releases me.

“Get the hell out of here, witch!” Rhett says, at the same moment my heart sinks into my stomach. He clambers over the fence and starts moving toward me, waving his hands in the air as if I’m a bird he can frighten back up into the sky. Scare back into my roost, into my hovel in the forest. Small and cold and alone. “Or we’ll tie you to that tree over there and light a match and see how flammable witches really are.”

I know now that Rhett will actually do it. That all of them are capable of awful things. They broke into my house and dragged me up into the woods—I wouldn’t be shocked if they actually tied me to a tree and started a small fire, just to see. Just to see if black smoke poured from my mouth and ears when I burned. They’re just drunk enough. And stupid enough.

“Oliver,” I whisper again, taking a step back, away from the boys—my heart cleaved into halves. A muscle that beats too fast, that has lost track of time. While my head wheels forward and back to the things that haven’t yet happened. The things that still might if Oliver goes out onto that lake.

The wind blows up through the trees, and the sky is full of snow. The storm is getting worse.

“Told you she’s dangerous,” Jasper remarks, just loud enough that I can hear. I take another step back, and another, keeping my eyes on Oliver. I want him to say something, to yell at the boys to stop, to leave me alone. I want him to come after me. But he stands mute. Everything he ever felt for me, everything he ever said, now lost. Slipped away into the darkest corners of his mind.

The Oliver I knew is gone.