I can't completely remember how, but we end up at a gay nightclub. We don't realise it's a gay club until we're inside and spot the huge mural at the back of the main dancefloor's wall, with graffiti which spells out 'Belfast's No.1 Gay Club', but it's the most fun I've had since I can remember. If anything, I'm annoyed at myself for being a whole nineteen--No, wait, a whole twenty-years-old without ever visiting one until now. The girls love it too. No drunk perverts trying to touch them here, there and everywhere, apparently.

The best part is that when I run up to the DJ and request she play Dropkick Murphys, merely two songs later, I'm Shipping Up To Boston is blasting across the dancefloor. I would say my response is to start dancing, but it's more of an inebriated, manic convulsing than it is dancing. Carmen and Tom join in immediately, and while Ava and Jamie take a little more convincing, by the time the vocals kick in, even Jamie is sort of joining in. It's a half-arsed attempt, don't get me wrong, but by his standards it's practically the equivalent of starting a dance battle.

I'm sitting on the ground of the smoking terrace trying to cool off when I spot Ava emerging from inside the club wearing, for some bizarre reason, a pair of sunglasses. I wave at her maniacally, and when she faces me, her eyebrows raise underneath her round glasses.

"Groovy, you're not dead. Carmen owes Tom ten pounds," she comments as she drops down beside me, and crosses her legs. I respond with a blank expression, so Ava elaborates. "He bet you'd run away from the group without telling anyone at some point tonight. I did warn Carmen you have a track record for this type of thing, but she has too much faith in you."

"You're telling me." I laugh, but it comes out more like a chortle. "Can I try your sunglasses?"

Ava pulls the glasses off her face, and places them on top of my nose. "The lights look way more groovy with those on."

The lenses have a yellow tinge to them, but outside and away from the flashing club lights, they just make me feel more drunk. Not sure if it's a bad thing or a good thing. Ava opens her bag to bring out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter, then offers me one.

"Ava Madaki, how scandalous!" I enthuse as I take up her offer before realising I made this mistake before with her mother. You'd think I'd learn.

Ava laughs as she lights her cigarette, then lights mine. "I'm not always straight-edge. Not that, whoa, having a cigarette is exactly unruly."

I take a drag of my cigarette, but within seconds, I'm making choking sounds. I'm even worse at this when I'm three shots, and four drinks down. Wait, or did we have four shots? I had one of Jamie's, so that makes five? Nah, can't be five. Must be four. Who knows? Ava starts laughing again.

"We should do this more."

"What? Watch me choke on cigarettes?"

"No!" Ava exclaims as she shoves my side. "Have fun." I respond with another chortle before Ava continues. "No, really. I'm aware more than anyone that I can sometimes be a bit too... serious. This whole thing is, whoa, stressful. Really stressful sometimes, and that's for the rest of us, let alone you." Ava takes a drag of her cigarette, and glances at the concrete below us. "You've probably noticed that emotional intelligence isn't one of my strong suits, especially with you. You just seem, like whoa, super happy and nonchalant about everything all the time, and I forget being so blunt and focused, and just... just generally serious isn't always the best approach."

I'm definitely way too drunk for a heart to heart right now, but I don't want to tell Ava that because I get the impression she's been building this up in her head.

"Nonchalant?" I start laughing, go to speak, but start laughing again. I manage to collect myself. "Nonchalant is probably the most left-field word you could ever use to describe me."

"Shut up," Ava says through a laugh as she nudges me again. "Okay, maybe that's not the right word, but you know what I mean... like, whoa, just... It just rarely seems like anything actually gets you down. Then it's not until you've hit breaking point that it shows, and by then it's too late."

Ah, okay, I see what she's getting at. It's the whole running far, far away from my problems and pretending they don't exist until shit hits the fan thing she's talking about. Can't argue against that. I want another shot. Sambuca this time.

"I'm sorry I'm not always super conscious of that, and that I can be a major fun sponge. I want to get better at it, for the sake of our collective mental health, not just yours. I could learn a lot from you."

I snicker at Ava calling herself a fun sponge, partly because that's definitely more Jamie's role, and partly because it's a funny concept. Fun sponge. Ha. Then I process the fact she just said she could learn a lot from me, and I start laughing even more. She's a real joker, this girl.

"Seriously! Could you imagine if it was, whoa, Jamie who had these abilities, and you weren't around? How dry, how depressing would this whole trip be? We'd all be miserable twenty-four seven. No offence to Jamie," she quickly interjects.

"That would be shit, you're right there. " I shrug. "You should probably bear in mind that any nonchalant attitude I have is more of a running away from my problems-esque coping mechanism than it is a positive character trait, mind you."

"It also makes you pretty resilient," Ava offers, which gets me raising my eyebrows. "You can take it too far sometimes, sure, but I mean, whoa, anyone else in your situation would've likely been driven crazy by now, or just plain given up." I go to argue back, but Ava hushes me. "You need to realise that. You really, really need to."

Just as things start turning too serious for my liking, a guy standing above us trips backwards and spills his drink over Ava. I jump up and yell at the guy, who hasn't bothered to apologise to Ava, and as any sane person would do, his response is to punch me square in the face. Ava's glasses fly off my face, and as I reach down to grab them, a hand starts yanking me back towards the club door. I stumble along with it, and it takes me a moment to realise it's Ava.

"Let's not anger the locals!" she calls over the increasingly loud music.

I look back to see the guy who hit me trying to barge his way through his friends, who are huddled around him while trying to hold him back. He's lucky I'm the 'retrieve my ghostie talking friends' yellow-tinted sunglasses' type, and not the angry type. That hurt, man.

"My cheek hurts," I moan to Ava, but she can't hear me over the dubstep beat welcoming us back into the club.

Ava and I stumble inside, and being the taller one of the both of us by almost a whole foot, I take lead to clear a pathway back to our friends. As we're making our way towards them, I put the glasses back on, and find myself almost slowing to a halt. Lights flash around the room as I look around with a yellow-tinted view of everything. I can't explain it, and I don't know if it's just because I'm drunk, but it flips my perception of everything on its head, and the contrast between every colour is amplified. I guess there always is method to Ava's madness.

I'm not sure what time we get back to the hotel, but as we do, I realise how right Ava was earlier. This was fun. This was a lot of fun. I vocalise this to the rest of the group, and we all agree we need to let our hair down more often. Even Jamie agrees, although he's quick to point out there's a limit. Everyone responds by calling him a buzzkill. Well, I call him one, then everyone agrees with me and starts poking fun at him. It's great. I worry we might be edging on bullying, but then Jamie starts fighting off a smile himself.

It's not until I'm alone in the hotel reception's bathroom before we all head up to our rooms that I decide this is the best birthday I've had since I can remember. I don't think I've ever cared so little about having no family as I do right now.

But of course, the world would never grant me happiness for too long. It doesn't want me getting cocky.

I'm back in my parents car the night we crashed. I'm not actually there, I know that. I know it's just another vision within a dream. It's almost perfectly where I left off last time, but my mind gives me the pleasure of reliving the part where we crash, and I hear my family's screams. My eyes are fluttering as the car door swings open, and a pair of hands yank me out of the car.

I yelp as I'm violently pulled off my mother's lap, forced out of the car, and dragged away from it by my arm. I look up, and with a grimace on her face, is Annabel. She's muttering to herself, and I'm telling her she's hurting me because she's pulling so hard, but she's ignoring me and I don't understand why or what the hell is going on. I tug against Annabel's force and stare back at the car as my mother begins stirring into consciousness in the back seat.

"You're hurting me!" I yell at Annabel as something black shoots past my eyeline. "Annabel, stop it! It hurts!"

"Be quiet!" she snaps.

Another dash of black shoots by. Then another few. Then a white light.

"Annabel, stop!" a voice calls behind us.

Annabel spins around as I do, and standing beside my family's wrecked car is my mother, alongside the unknown man who was sitting in the car's passenger seat. I can't see my dad from the angle we're standing, but I know from past visions that he's dead in the front seat. My mother is visibly shaking with tears streaming from her eyes, while the stranger stands with a measured expression on his face, and his hand stretched out in front of him.

"Annabel," he says in a perfectly even tone, and despite us being a good distance away from them now, I hear every word clearly. "We can figure this out, okay? C'mon."

My attention doesn't linger on the stranger for long though because surrounding him and my mother like moss is a mass of dark spots. There are some white lights, but they're laughably outnumbered. The whiteness is growing, but so is the darkness.

"You don't get it!" Annabel shouts. "The others did! Why can't you? I'm doing this for us! For Felix!"

"No, Annabel, that's what they want you to think!" the man calls back. "Look at him!" He lowers his eyes to me, and my present self has been so engrossed in the increasing numbers of pure and dark spirits that I didn't realise my past self is bawling his eyes out. "Look at what this is doing to him!"

"He's a kid, he doesn't know any better! I'm doing this for him!"

"Annie, please, honey..." my mother tries as she fails to hold back sobs, but she's quickly cut short by Annabel.

"You have no say in this. Dad's the spirit talker, not you! You know nothing!"

"Annie, please, I want to go home," my eight-year-old self cries. "You're being mean."

"Shut up!" Annabel screeches, and suddenly, all hell breaks loose.

The dark shadows begin bursting all around my mother and the unknown man as Annabel yanks my arm again. She pulls me to the side of the road, and forces me to crouch down. Her grasp is so tight on my arm that I can't feel my fingers anymore, and I have no idea what's happened to my mother and the stranger because my vision is completely blocked by Annabel's arms around me. Her hair is in my face, and she keeps telling me it's fine, and it hits me that I've experienced this part of the vision before. Except this time, Annabel's constant promises that everything is fine sound less like reassurances, and more like irritation.

I manage to find a gap in-between Annabel's arms, and I can't see much, but I can make out bursts of light and darkness. There's more light than before. That must be good.

"Felix, just stay! Don't look at them!"

Again, where Annabel's voice once sounded soothing, this time, it sounds twisted. Annoyed. Impatient. How could I not have noticed this in my first vision? I want to kick myself. This can't be real. This can't be real. Annabel wouldn't do this. My train of thought is cut short when a shot of blackness catapults towards us, and Annabel scoops me up into her arms before running onto the road.

She crouches behind the crashed car as I notice my father in the front seat, and I want to look away but I have no choice but to stare as my past self is engrossed in his lifeless body and bloodstained jacket. Annabel's grip on my arm is tight. The pure spirits seem to be outnumbering the dark ones now, and even though I know the outcome of all this, I still feel intense dread at the prospect of not getting out of this alive.

"Felix! Go!" Annabel suddenly yells, and it's tinged with the most frustration I've heard in her voice so far.

She shoves me away from the car, so hard that I stumble to the ground. By the time I'm able to turn back around, a black mass surrounds her as her body is thrown into the air before landing on the car bonnet. Her eyes aren't fully closed, but I've seen this before, and I know she's gone. Why did those things kill her? She was on their side. Then it fully, truly dawns on me. She was on their side. I can't process the thought much further because I'm being pulled back up by a different pair of hands, and moments later, I'm in my mother's arms.

She rocks me back and forth as she whispers in my ear, and my younger self is crying while my older self is screaming at him to ask what's happening. Why would Annabel do this? I can't understand it. It's not her. It's nothing like her.

"Don't look at them! Listen to me, don't look at them, okay?" my mother pleads as my younger self tries to peek at what's happening behind us. "Pretend they're not there! Don't look at them, please, don't look at them!"

She's crying as she speaks, and I wish she could explain. I wish she knew I was here right now, twenty-year-old me, desperately needing an explanation for all of this. Any kind of explanation. Why would Annabel do this? I keep hearing my name, and the rocking is starting to feel like shaking now. I don't understand. This can't be right. This can't be the Annabel I know. It can't.

As my mother continues rocking me, she's saying my name more and more loudly, but the vision is becoming increasingly hazy. I slowly emerge back into darkness, but the rocking is even more violent, and it's disorientating me as I hear my name being called over and over again.

I wake up to see a pair of honey-coloured eyes staring back at me, as soft hair brushes against the clammy skin on my face. I--What is--Carmen?

"Felix? Felix, are you okay?" she speaks so quickly that she trips over her words. "Sorry, I--You were freaking out in your sleep, I didn't know what to--I don't know if I should've woken you up, I'm sorry."

"No, it's alright, sorry. Just a bad dream," I manage to say through breaths. Why am I out of breath? I shut my eyes for a moment as Carmen backs away to give me space. "I'm fine."

I turn to look at Carmen, and despite only being able to make out part of her facial expression, to say she doesn't look convinced would be an understatement.

"Was it a vision? Do I need to get Ava?"

"No, it's fine, honestly," I say, and I'm about to tell her it was just a dream when I hesitate.

Annabel is nowhere to be seen, nor is Lucy. For once, I decide to do the healthy, sensible thing and tell Carmen everything. Does this count as personal growth?

Once I'm done relaying what I saw, I feel ten times better for not harbouring it in, but the enormity of what it means hits me. It was Annabel. I was right. It was Annabel who turned dark. What other explanation is there? There's a voice in my head that keeps niggling at me, telling me Annabel would never do that. She wouldn't. Why would Annabel do that? It's not her.

It's not her.

My thoughts go back to when we first discovered my Irish roots, and something Ava said sticks in my head. Annabel's spirit personality could be completely different to her living one. Turning dark, being cruel, hurting our family might not be the version of Annabel I know. But it might be the version of her I don't know.

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A/N: Slight hiccup. Things don't look to great for Annabel right now (or Felix, for that matter). What are you guys' thoughts? Is she genuinely clueless about all this? Or is she hiding some of what she remembers?