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hands. She whipped her hands down. I dove. The ball shot over my shoulder, hit the wall, and exploded into a shower of sparks that singed my cheek.
    I got to my feet, backing toward the door. Tori raised her hands and swung them down, and an invisible force knocked me over again. The room shook, every piece of furniture rocking and chattering. Even Tori looked surprised.
    “Y-you’re a witch,” I said.
    “Am I?” She bore down on me, her eyes as wild as her hair. “Nice for someone to tell me. My mother insisted it was all in my head. She shipped me off to Lyle House, had me diagnosed as bipolar, and gave me a cartload of meds. And I gulped them because I didn’t want to disappoint her.”
    She slammed down her hands. Lightning bolts flew from her fingertips, heading straight for me.
    Tori’s eyes went wide with shock, her lips parting in a silent
no
!
    I tried to scramble out of the way, but I wasn’t fast enough. As those crackling bolts came at me, a figure materialized—a girl in a nightgown. Liz. She shoved the dresser, and it shot from the wall and into the bolt’s path. Wood splintered. The mirror glass shattered, raining shards down on me as I crouched, head down.
    When I lifted my head, the room was silent and Liz was gone. The dresser lay on its side with a smoldering hole through it, and all I could think was:
That could have been me.
    Tori sat huddled on the floor, her knees pulled up, her face buried against them as she rocked. “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. I get so mad, so
mad.
And it just happens.”
    Like Liz, making things fly when she got angry. Like Rae, burning her mom in a fight. Like Derek, throwing a kid and breaking his back. What would happen if I got mad enough?
    Uncontrollable powers. That wasn’t normal for supernaturals. It couldn’t be.
    I took a slow step toward Tori. “Tori, I—”
    The door whacked open, and Tori’s mom barreled in. She stopped short when she saw the destruction.
    “Victoria Enright!” The name came out in a snarl worthy of a werewolf. “What have you done?”
    “I-it wasn’t her,” I said. “It was me. We argued and I—I…”
    I stared at the hole blasted through the dresser and I couldn’t finish the sentence.
    “I know very well who’s responsible for this, Miss Chloe.” Tori’s mom turned that snarl on me. “Though I don’t doubt you played your role. You’re quite the little instigator, aren’t you?”
    “Diane, that’s enough,” Dr. Davidoff snapped from the doorway. “Help your daughter clean up her mess. Chloe, come with me.”
     
    Instigator? Me? Two weeks ago, I would have laughed at the thought. But now…Tori said this all started with me, with the guys wanting to save the helpless little girl. I hated that idea. Yet she had a point.
    Derek had wanted Simon to leave Lyle House and find their dad. Simon wouldn’t leave Derek, who refused to go because he was afraid he’d hurt someone else. When Derek figured out I was a necromancer, he found his weapon to beat down Simon’s defenses. One damsel in distress, to go.
    I was the poor girl who didn’t know anything about being a necromancer, who kept making mistakes, getting closer and closer to being shipped off to a mental hospital.
See her, Simon? She’s in danger. She needs your help. Take her, find Dad, and he’ll fix everything.
    I’d been furious with Derek, and I’d called him on it. But I hadn’t refused to go along with the plan. We needed Simon’s dad—all of us did. Even Derek, who’d eventually joined us when our escape had been uncovered and he had no choice.
    If I’d known what was going to happen, would I have stopped searching for answers back at Lyle House? Would I have accepted the diagnosis, taken my meds, shut up, and gotten released?
    No. Harsh truth was better than comfortable lies. It had to be.
     
    Dr. Davidoff took me back to my room, and I told myself I was fine with that. I needed to be alone so I could try again to contact Liz,