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I shook my head. “No, I … I can do this. Sorry.” I stared at the door intently. “Just give me a minute.”

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, hoping it would calm my nerves. After a few slow breaths, it worked. My body relaxed, but it wasn’t only this room that made me nervous. This hospital suppressed our powers. I still had them, of course, but there was the shield that protected the staff from the creatures behind these walls from using magic, including me. This was the first time in a year I felt normal. It was both refreshing and terrifying.

When I entered the room, I spotted Cami lounging on a couch with her legs tucked under her. I watched her flip through the pages of a smutty romance book. That was progress. Cami loved reading before the possession.

“Hey, Cami. What’s the newest dirty book you’re reading?” I asked as I sat down next to her. “Oooh, he’s hot.” The shirtless guy on the cover held a woman’s ass straddling him on a chair. When I looked over at the book’s text, I noticed the letters were upside down. The sleeve from the book had been placed the wrong way. She wasn’t reading it at all. Cami kept her eyes glued to the book and even flipped a page, scanning the words from top to bottom.

What the fuck?

“Mercy,” Doctor Harrison said as he entered the rec room. He was the therapist that had been treating my mom. Leah had assigned him to Cami’s case as he was a witch who would sometimes perform an exorcism or a spell to help people who were once normal but suddenly went insane, whether it was from actual mental illness or if it were caused by an evil entity.

Leah had explained that they referred to him as a Witch Doctor. He could not only connect with someone’s spirit if they were still alive but could communicate with spirits who had passed on after this life and wanted to speak with the living. The only spirits he couldn’t connect with were vampires.

He had asked me several times in the past if I wanted to reach out to my mother after she died, but I refused. My mom must have hated me for what I did to her. The shame was too much to bear from what I had done, and I couldn’t face the repercussions of a pissed-off ghost.

I stood to my feet, shook his hand, and looked at Cami again. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

Cami ignored me, still staring at the upside-down book as if she were deeply engrossed in the story.

“She’s been like that since she arrived,” Doctor Harrison explained as we entered the hall.

“She hasn’t spoken to you?”

He shook his head. “Not a word.”

This was disturbing. Cami at least spoke to me occasionally. It was always brief, but she still used her voice. Maybe she was scared and didn’t trust anyone here. What if she was shutting down?

Doctor Harrison escorted me into his office and gestured for me to sit. He grabbed a folder and a recording device.

“When she first came here,” he started, “I felt her energy, even inside these walls.”

I held up my hand. “Wait, are you allowed to share this with me?”

It was a silly question. This wasn’t a typical facility, and her mom wasn’t in her right mind to make decisions for her. However, there was still the issue of doctor-patient confidentiality.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued. “Icanshare Cami’s medical diagnosis with you. Laurie signed a consent form to allow us to speak with you on Cami’s behalf.”

I was happy to learn this. The more I knew, the more I could help her.IfI could help her. I nodded for him to continue.

“The energy was not that of a normal human being who has experienced an evil possession. This was something I hadn’t seen before.

He pressed play on the audio device in front of him. I heard Doctor Harrison ask Cami a few questions about how she was feeling, then Cami screamed. She cried out so loudly that Doctor Harrison fumbled with the device to turn it down. “Sorry,” he said.

The scream faded, and she began mumbling gibberish. The words made no sense, as if she were speaking in tongues.

“What is she saying?” I asked, leaning forward to listen better.

He shook his head. “Nothing I’ve ever heard.” He turned off the recording device and opened the binder in front of him. “I performed a spell to reach her mind. I needed to see whatshe’sseeing.” He placed the notebook back down. “Mercy, Cami is gone.”

I must not have heard the doctor correctly. “I don’t understand.”

“When I performed the spell, I saw through her eyes, but not what she’s seeing in this world. I saw much deeper than that,” he explained. My stomach dropped so far down that it felt as if it hit the floor. I could only imagine the worst—the nightmares that kept her up at night.

“Tell me,” I said.

He cupped his hands together and leaned back in his chair. “Cami’s seeing Hell, or as we witches call it, the Underworld.”

Those words stunned me into silence. I couldn’t breathe for a second until the doctor said my name, pulling me back to him.

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