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clothes,” he said. “You don’t need magic to be beautiful, you know.”
    “How come you’re the only one who could tell I was using magic today?”
    He shrugged. “It’s just part of who I am. I can just tell.”
    “So does that mean you see through my glamour?” I asked, looking down at my outfit. All that work to impress him and he might not even be able to see it.
    “If I choose to,” he said. “I can tell you’re using one, but if I want to see the truth, I can. Or if I want to see the magic, I can see that too.”
    “So it’s basically like that potion I took to get rid of the memory spell they cast on me? The Elixir of Kendria?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, only I don’t need the potion like regular humans do.”
    “But you make it, right? And give it to people?” I thought of the night I’d heard Tori asking him for it.
    “I used to share it with Morgyn before she died,” he said. He took a long drink of wine. “Sometimes Mary Anne buys it from me. I don’t know. Various people in town that know, I guess. Mostly they hear about it from friends.”
    “Makes you sound like a drug dealer,” I said.
    He laughed. “I think the magic is more like a drug,” he said. “What I sell is immunity. Freedom.”
    My mouth went slightly dry, so I grabbed another strawberry. Freedom. Would I ever have that again? I wondered if I would ever really be able to make all my own choices ever again, or if this stupid town was going to swallow me whole.
    “You never answered my question about last night,” he said, his voice softening.
    I swallowed and wiped strawberry juice from my lips. “I was summoned to a meeting of the Order,” I said. I had no idea how Jackson would take the news of the new ritual they’d done, but I didn’t want to lie to him.
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “What happened?”
    I started from the beginning and told him about how they were upset that I’d gone into the hospital to save him. Then, I told him about the ritual and that the Order finally told me the truth about being the future Prima.
    Jackson made a noise. “The truth?” he said. “They’ll never tell you the whole truth. Not until they have you completely locked into their plan. You forced them to tell you something more than they wanted to tell you, though, and that’s something.”
    “Everyone treated me so different at school today,” I said. “At first, I thought it was just because of the new clothes, but then I started to think maybe it was something more.”
    “The ritual they performed on you was kind of like a baptism,” he said. He’d barely touched the sandwich in his hand. I wondered if I’d made him lose his appetite.
    “I was never baptized as a child,” I said.
    “Instead of immersing you in water, they poured their demon slaves into you,” he said. “They gave you a small piece of their power as a sacrifice.”
    Goosebumps crawled across my flesh. “Did I do a bad thing by letting them…” My voice trailed off and I dropped my head low.
    Jackson put his finger under my chin and lifted my head. “You had no choice,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”
    My eyes stung, but I held back my tears.
    “It’s good that you have more power,” he said. “I have a feeling you’re going to need it in the months ahead.”
    We sat in silence, the fun atmosphere of the surprise picnic completely dissolved now that I had brought up the ritual. I drank the rest of my wine and let the warmth of it fill me up. My eyes studied his face as he lay there on the flannel blanket. He was so perfectly sculpted. A perfect human. But how had he gotten this form? Could he turn back into a demon anytime he wanted?
    His eyes flickered to my face, then dipped down to my necklace. Instinctively, my hand reached up to touch the sapphire pendant. I wasn’t used to drinking, and it made me feel a little numb. And maybe a little brave.
    “Tell me about the demon that keeps saving my life,” I said.
    My question