A bright light blinded Hannah, even through closed eyes. As she pried them open, they adjusted to her surroundings. She was in her room, in her bed, to be exact. She slowly sat up and felt like gravity was trying to force her back onto her pillow.

Hannah glanced around the room, slowly moving her head. She felt a migraine coming on from the light in the room being too much for her. She looked at the candle and clothes that were still on the floor but noticed that the salt had dissolved from the wet clothes creating a puddle. She also saw Tina and Jennifer, lying in their sleeping bags on the floor by the side of her bed.

Hannah ever so slowly turned to look at her phone to check the time and saw that it was half-past ten in the morning. She didn't even remember going to sleep. As she replayed the night before, the last thing she could recall was Tina finishing her spell and Jennifer reading something from Hannah's spell-book. After that, Hannah couldn't remember anything, which made her feel strange.

Hannah tried to speak to wake up her friends, but every time she moved her lips, they would barely crack open, and her vocal cords seemed to not want to work either. She even tried licking her lips, but her tongue was dry as cotton and felt as heavy as her body did.

She started panicking.

"Hannah, is it?" an unknown voice spoke, scaring her to death. She looked around the room and saw no one. Where was it coming from? Hannah couldn't respond or even scream, which she wanted to instinctively do desperately.

"Hannah, I need you to calm down," the voice spoke again. This time it started to sound a little clearer. It was a male voice, but where was it coming from? Hannah wanted to get out of bed at that moment, but her body was frozen. Her feelings of anxiety rose. She wanted to burst into tears, but even her eyes wouldn't produce a single drop.

"I can't talk to you or show myself until you calm down, Hannah," the voice repeated. That was when Hannah realized that it wasn't coming from someone in the room. It was coming from someone in her head!

"Who are you? Why can I hear you in my head?" Hannah asked through thought. She hoped it worked in communicating with whoever was holding her body captive.

"All will be revealed in time," the voice responded. "For now, I still need you to calm down. I can feel that you are scared, and I want to let you know that there is no need to fear me."

"Well, then can you please let me have control of my body? What if my mom walks in and I can't talk to her or move? She'll freak out for sure," Hannah thought to the voice.

"I sent your parents shopping with your brothers," the voice explained. "They won't be back for at least an hour."

"You sent them shopping?" Hannah thought more to herself than to the voice, but since the voice could hear her thoughts, he repeated that he couldn't respond to her questions until she was calm. "I wasn't asking a question to you. You do realize that this is probably the highest level of privacy invasion."

The voice chuckled at Hannah's statement but said nothing more.

Suddenly Hannah felt as light as a feather. As if chains were loosening from her body. She also started feeling her saliva coming back to life in her mouth. She jumped out of her bed and knelt to shake Jennifer awake. As she went to rest her hand on Jennifer's body, her hand sank right into her. She attempted to wake Tina too, but the same thing happened, and her hand went through her friend's arm.

"What... the? Am... I... dead?" Hannah asked frightfully as she observed her trembling hands.

"Far from it," the voice responded, but this time it was out in the room.

Hannah was startled for a moment and looked upwards from her knelt position and saw a young man with captivating blue eyes and blonde hair, styled with a perfect side part. He was wearing a pinstriped suit that seemed to go well with his hairstyle and he was sitting at her desk chair, fidgeting with a classic fedora in his hands. This time Hannah was able to scream, which she didn't hold back from doing.

"Who are you?" Hannah shouted at the man once she stopped screaming. "And what the hell is happening to me?"

"Well you didn't want me hearing your thoughts, so I let your soul come out of your body temporarily while we chatted," he stated. "I didn't want to 'invade your privacy'," he added, making quote signs with his fingers and chuckled as if he thought it was a joke.

Hannah glanced over at her bed and saw her own body now laying back down on her pillow. Hannah felt herself starting to panic again. The man stood up from the chair and stepped over Tina's spell towards Hannah. Hannah instantly shot up to a standing position and changed her stance as if she was getting ready for a boxing match. Tears of fear started rolling down her cheeks.

"I told you, Hannah, I am not here to hurt you," the man said, holding up both his hands as if he was trying to prove his innocence. "In fact, it was you who summoned me here."

"How did I do that?" Hannah felt confusion wash over her as she tried to think of how she was the reason for this.

"You opened a dimensional portal to my world last night." 

Hannah didn't know what he was talking about. Opening a portal to another dimension? Why would she have done such a silly thing like that?

The man made another move in Hannah's direction, and as she was still in her fighting stance, she had an almost knee-jerk reaction and swung a closed fist at him. Her fist made contact with his bicep and even though she wasn't in her physical body, she felt her hand throbbing in pain. Hitting him was like hitting a brick wall.

With a smirk combined with an obvious look of annoyance, he clamped Hannah's arms to her sides with his hands. The more she tried to fight, the tighter his grip was.

"Let me go!" she screamed. "Just leave! Go back to wherever you came from."

"I can't!" he screamed back in Hannah's face so that she'd hear him. As he saw the fear in her face grow, he loosened his grip. She stumbled back onto her bed sitting next to her sleeping body, feeling defeated.

The man sat down next to her cautiously and continued, "Because of what you did, now I'm stuck here. At least until the next full moon.

"Hannah, this is not the first time some human has pulled me from my world into theirs, and this certainly won't be the last. But usually, when my world is summoned, it's for a reason."

Hannah was having a hard time comprehending everything that was being told to her. It didn't help that she still felt terrified that her soul wasn't connected to her physical body anymore and that there was a random invisible man in her room. She wanted to get back into her body, wake up, and have this whole thing all be one bad dream. 

Hannah took several deep breaths and pinched herself to see if it would help wake her up.

"I'm sorry to say, you aren't in a dream," he stated, as he watched Hannah, slightly amused.  "Listen, I hate it when my time is wasted. I don't want to be here as much as you don't want me here. But we can't undo what you did for a while, so we might as well get used to each other's company.

"So, here's what's going to happen," he continued. "I am going to reconnect your soul back to your body. Time will then start again and when your friends wake up you won't be able to tell them anything that has happened here, even if you wanted to. After they've gone, you will need to go see Madam Nova right away." He saw that Hannah was looking at him, confused. Before she could ask, he added, "I will direct you to her. Once we get to her, she may be able to help us."

As Hannah was about to respond and ask a question, the man snapped his fingers. Without even realizing it, her soul was back in her body. Hannah could feel its weight again, but it wasn't anywhere near as heavy as it was earlier. She moved to get up from her bed, which she was instantly so grateful to have full control of her body again. She looked at the time on her phone once more and was shocked to see that it still read half-past ten in the morning. He did stop time.

Hannah knelt next to Jennifer and slowly placed her hand on her friend, fearful that she wouldn't make contact again. Thankfully it did. She instantly scared Jennifer awake with her touch. "Girl! Don't wake me up like that! Those scary movies did a number on my dreams!" she said, sitting up.

"Me too!" Tina said with a yawn, having been woken up by Jennifer's startled voice. She stretched as she said, "I had a dream that Hannah's mirror over there opened some freaky portal and spirits came flying out into our world."

"Thank goodness it was just a dream," Hannah lied and gave her best fake laugh.

Luckily, Hannah was convincing enough for both Jennifer and Tina that they laughed along with her.

*****

At first, Tina refused to leave. She was determined to see Eddie and find out if the spell had worked. Hannah had to explain to Tina that Eddie went to church on Sundays and that his family always went to brunch after, so he probably wasn't going to be home for some time. Tina unwillingly accepted that she'd have to wait to see Eddie the next day in school.

As soon as Jennifer and Tina drove off, Hannah ran inside and dashed upstairs. She quickly showered and changed. Usually, Hannah would take her time and enjoy standing under the running water and blow-drying her hair until it was perfectly straight, but she was on a mission. Plus, she wasn't sure if the mysterious, invisible man, would be watching her. So she made sure not to doddle.

She towel-dried her long, brown hair just enough to be able to tie it up into a messy bun and not have excess water dripping down the back of her shirt.

As Hannah stared at her reflection in her mirror, adding a hint of eye-shadow to make her light brown eyes pop, she suddenly had a flashback. She remembered looking in the same mirror holding a cup and a white candle. Then she started thinking about what occurred that morning, just hours ago. She shook her thoughts away almost as fast as they entered her mind.

She made her way downstairs and found her parents in the kitchen, storing the groceries they had just bought. They did go shopping! She hugged them quickly and mentioned that she had to run an errand. Thankfully, they trusted her enough to never really question her, or want to know what she was doing. All they told her was to drive carefully and to be home by dinnertime.

Hannah got into her car casually. As she started backing down the driveway, she looked in her rear-view mirror and saw the man from her room sitting in the back passenger seat. Startled, she slammed on the breaks instantly, making him fly forward into the back of the front passenger seat. 

"Grr. Please tell me you know how to drive?" He was clearly not amused.

Hannah was surprised to see the real world had any effect on him. The replay of him flying into her seat amused her and she did her best to stifle a laugh. 

He quickly readjusted back into the seat, buckled himself in, and apologized for scaring her but insisted that they get going.

"Will you at least tell me your name?" 

"I told you, all will be revealed in time. Now drive."

Annoyed with his response, but not wanting to argue for fear of what he may do to her, she focused back on the road. The man directed Hannah to Madam Nova.

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Author Note:

Thank you for reading this chapter. I hope you continue reading further. I would be ever so grateful for feedback/comments on anything that stood out to you.

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Happy Reading!