I’m feeling a bit gloomy over the message I received from Nina. Not that I care that Grey got a little hurt. But it’s hard dealing with the fact that a simple kiss from me is what did it to him.

As I exit my bedroom, with a Charlie Brown sized frown on my face, I bump into Max. And by bump, I mean literally walk right into him with so much force that I knock my head against his chin.

“Oh gods, are you okay?” Max asks as he steadies me by the shoulder.

I nod, pressing the heel of my hand against my forehead as I tip my head back and meet his gaze. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

He offers me an adorable lopsided smile. “Neither was I, or I would’ve put a stop to it before it happened.”

I start to return his smile when his words click. “Wait. How would you have stopped it?”

His lips kick up into an amused grin. “With my powers.”

“What sort of powers?” A memory dances in my mind of seeing glowing, green eyes my first night here. Seconds later, I fell asleep. Or, well, more like passed out. “Wait … Did you, like, hypnotize me my first night here?”

Max pulls a wary face. “It’s not really hypnotizing so much as pushing a thought into someone’s mind.”

“That sounds an awful lot like hypnotizing,” I say with amused suspicion.

He chuckles. “Maybe you’re right, and I’m sorry I did it. I just panicked when you looked out the window and saw us wandering off toward the forest.”

“Where were you going anyway? To one of your”—I make air quotes—“ ‘tournaments?’ ”

He shakes his head, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. “I was actually working that night.”

“You mean, tracking an outlaw?”

His brows dart up in surprise. “How’d you know about that?”

I shrug. “Foster explained it to me after Ollie chased me into the bathroom. He said Ollie helps you track creatures.”

He surveys me with a strange look on his face. “You don’t sound very frightened about that fact.”

“Should I be?”

“I don’t know … The creatures I track can be dangerous. And sometimes that danger occasionally follows me home.” He shifts his weight, strands of hair falling into his green eyes as he tips his head forward. “Not that I’d ever let anything happen to my family, but there has been once or twice that …” He pauses to take a breath then lifts his gaze back to me. “But yeah, anyway, that’s what I do for a living and what I was doing that night when I pushed a thought to go to sleep inside your mind, which again, I’m sorry about.”

“No worries,” I say, even though I’m kind of wigged out. “But, who else was with you that night? I thought I saw two other figures.”

“One was Ollie and the other was Porter.”

“Does Porter track outlaws, too?”

Max shakes his head, his expression neutral, guarded. “No, but sometimes I ask him to help me when I’m searching for a specific creature.”

His hesitancy makes me not want to ask, yet I find myself doing it anyway, too curious to keep my trap shut.

“What sort of specific creature?”

His lips tug up into a plastic smile, then he lightly tugs on a strand of my hair. “You, beautiful, curious creature, need to get going before you’re late for your first day. Plus, Charlotte is making waffles, and if you don’t get down there soon, you’re going to miss out. And trust me; you don’t want to do that.” His smile turns real. “Charlotte makes the best waffles in all the worlds.”

I smile back, but the move feels a bit rigid due to his purposeful avoidance from answering my question.

When I first met Porter, I sensed something was different about him, an allure flowing off him that made me dizzy. And, when we did the merging enchantment, I felt a lot of weird feelings flowing off him. In particular, there was this intense hunger to devour something. I didn’t feel enough to know what that something was, but between that, the conversation with Max, and the allure I felt when I first met Porter, I’m wondering if perhaps there’s something different about the Everettson brother with the lavender eyes. The question is: what?

And why does everyone seem so hesitant to tell me?