"Yes!"

I swing my hands in the air, stealing the water vapor from the atmosphere with little more than a thought and the pain of overexertion. A flare of white forms in the air, creating a cloud that aims itself toward the well-toned girl only a few footsteps away. Her hair, long and the deep shade of coconut is mixed with pure white highlights that shimmer and shine like the works of a very bad glamour magic attempt.

Her familiar, a chow chow lays in the sand, watching as the event unfolds between us.

Eyes the color of storm cloud raging in the wind gleam at me as the cloud slices through her weapon, a wand made of pine wood and tarnishing copper. I arch back as she darts at me, her fist outstretched for my jaw but only finding my shoulder. I wobble backwards but stay afoot, moving away from her next blow.

A clap and a whistle from one of my biggest fans forces me to bite back a smile as I barely get away from the witch's hand. She's fast but I'm stronger and bigger and the only way that I'll win this battle is to use that to my advantage.

Reaching for her wrist, I bury my nails into her skin and drag her onto the sand with a snag. The girl's eyes widen, the red glamor leaving them for her natural hazel with a blink and a yep for help.

"Conclude!" The referee, a young girl about seven years old runs to stop us, her raven black braids flying behind her. Her eyes, two large brown balls of light look between us with worry.

"Heard, Zefra." I say, offering my arm to Hannah, the sun-kissed girl who drags herself up from the earth.

"You owe me another wand." Hannah grins, dusting herself off. "You might have won the fight, but I won a new stick."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I snort as she reaches for my arm.

Before I can jerk away, my knees give away and the scorching ground burns my arms with unrelenting viciousness. Hannah says something under her breath as I lay in the sun with Zefra asking me a hundred times if I'm alright.

"I'm fine, Zefra." I huff as my skin starts to sting. "Just disappointed in myself."

"But you won." The dark-skinned girl looks at me with a soft sadness.

"I know."

"Then why are you disappointed?"

"Because I'm not perfect. One day I will be but right now, I'm gonna give myself hell until my form is undefeated."

"I thought you were great! And that cloud! You aren't even a storm witch and you did that with ease! Maybe you could teach me, Kim!" Her hand finds mine and I pull myself up to give her the illusion that her strength has grown.

"Maybe I'll be your mentor when the time comes."

Her smile grows so big that it makes my heart leap in my chest.

"Maybe you'll find your familiar too." I stand up as she says the very thing that I've been trying to forget.

Even after the horrible event of the destruction of the bluff's coven and the death of Ruth, my coven's leader, my familiar hadn't come to me. Things had gotten worse for us witches, as we had been forced to reduce our training and day-to-day lifestyle.

Even the waters had become agitated, forcing the human dominations to ban the surfers and the fishermen from taking to the waters. The spirits of the bluff's witches ran to the sea, finding comfort in the waves but even within the cobalt, their anger bubbled and raged.

Rightfully so.

"Yeah, maybe." I dust myself off with one hand and keep her hand in the other as we cross the beach towards the gathered witches.

"What do you think they'll look like?"

I shrug. I always imagined the creature would be bigger than the common snake, fox, or rabbit.

"A bloodhound."

"Why?"

"So I can hunt down those men who killed our friends. I want to hunt them like them like the animals that they are."

I don't tell her about the plans that Paul and I had conjured only a few nights after the tragic event. About the ideas that the rest of his lair mates and my coven had thrown in. It shocked me that even the vampires had felt the rage that we had, but alas, Max knew that an attack on us would mean an attack on them.

"Oh. Aren't you scared?" Her bright eyes warm my soul.

"Yeah, but we all are. We have to be to survive." I say, wishing that I could be as strong as the words coming out of my mouth, to be as sure as my steps.

The water hisses from behind me, smacking into the stone wall of earth rising above the waters. Jutting rock shelves hang like swords on a shelf, protecting the upper world from the crashing waves. The saltiness of the ocean fills my every sense, stinging my nose but reminding me of the magic that lives within it.

Zefra looks up in fear as the waves retreat without a body in tow, their hunger for revenge left unquenched.

"How can we please the spirits?" Her small voice asking such a big question catches me off guard.

I don't know.

"No one knows."

She holds my hand tighter as we walk closer to the gathered covens.

"Maybe they're hungry." She whispers.

"You think so?"

The small girl shakes her head. "I know so."

I freeze at her words but before I can clarify just what she meant, she breaks away from me and runs to her coven leader, a pale woman with a heavy amount of black eyeliner and lipstick, her eyes hard on me with something that ranges between distrust and curiosity. Then again, who could blame her?

Any good coven leader would question my motives. It was I who had found the charred remains of the witches with a vampire companion. It was also me who had been too wrecked to help place the bodies to rest before the humans could stump on our sacred lands and destroy what was left of not only our but their dignity.

I wave and dip my head low in respect.

The coven of the twilight hour.

The symbol of a half moon on the leader's arm in the form of a black tattoo clarifies that.

A pigeon pecks at her head, digging its beak in her huge bat's nest of a hairstyle but she seems not to mind it, her gaze locked on mine as she reluctantly returns the gesture.

Her cold expression fades as Zefra embraces her, replaced with a rather soft laugh. I take it as my cue to break the stare, moving off to where my coven of two stands huddled like they've seen a ghost. Even the outgoing Angel, a beam of sunshine seems to be bothered by something.

"Somebody died?" I joke.

"That's not funny." Darla steps forward, her Led Zeppelin shirt stained with its fair share of grit and sand from defeating challenge after challenge except for the last she lost to a girl as fast as lightning.

"Not that it was serious, Darla." I hold my ground as her frown grows deeper.

"Or something I want to bring up." She remains hard.

"Well, I assume that you two are gonna let me know why you're both looking like somebody kicked a puppy." I cross my arm, trying to look tough despite the sun using my head as a target practice.

Angel speaks first, her downward expression forming into one a little better but still quite worrying for her.

"They've been talking about us." Angel keeps her statement short.

"You in particular, as they have for the last weeks-." Darla raises her voice as she keeps going.

"And I should care, why."

"More like why you shouldn't care." Darla snaps. "Let's see, you were seen with a vampire."

"We all date one, keep going." Her pale eyes outlined in dark liner she took from my vanity could rip me apart.

"But you were seen with him in broad moonlight"

"-discovering bodies. If it wasn't for me following my intuition into the woods where their coven is located, who knows what those coven hunters could have done? They should remember the broadness of our situation."

"But they don't see that, Kimora." Angel's voice sounds like a plea. The wild colors of her maxi dress make it hard to focus on her dark brown eyes only a few shades darker than her complexion. "They see what they want to see."

I fight back the shutter in my stomach.

"I don't need to care what they see because I know my intentions. I know what led me there that night and if any of those twilight hour witches try to claw at my name, I'll ask the real question. Why didn't they hear anything, why did our leader have to die when they should have been the first combatants."

"Why are you so adamant?" Darla grabs my arm, the rosary around her neck worn as both a travesty and an attempt to fit in with the humans as a protection cold against my skin.

"Why are you so afraid?" I spit. "We are of the coven of sharp stones, we were never the biggest and now we're the smallest. We can't let them kill off what's left of us."

Darla is never afraid to fight but in front of the other covens would be pure stupid. I hope with the stillness and quiet anger burning in her gaze, something inside of her head is thinking about how right I am.

"Stop it." Angel forces her way between us.

Angel's name is more than fitting if you're relying on the image that comes to a human's head. She is indeed the stereotypical image of the humanoid figure of perfection and love, her beauty and kindness unmatched.

Her heavyset features only add to her goddess appearance, not a blemish on her skin as her stringent self-care routine and perfected glamour magic had paid off.

"Kiki is hungry and if I don't get home, she'll destroy the house." Angel starts, worry edging in her voice for the bobcat.

"You didn't feed her?" I ask.

"No, because if I feed her, she'll still destroy the house trying to find some more food." She lifts her finger. "And today is Laddie's birthday so I have to find him something, we all have to find him something."

Angel narrows her eyes with solemnity. She has come to love the kid almost as much as Dwayne does, if not more. I'm not quite sure who loves him more, Dwayne, Angel, Star, or Paul. Marko is much like David and Darla, silent around the boy with not much to say to him besides a simple, "Hey Kiddo."

"Of course." I nod. "How could I forget."

Only half vampire, like Star, I wonder just how long David or Max would allow Star and Laddie to stay that way.

"You never forget." She pats my hand. "But you-."

She pivots her eyes to the sulking Darla who's already leaving, her copperhead climbing out from the inside of her vest colorful with patches and iron-ons.

"Never mind her." I close my eyes against the sunlight. "Sorry about everything."

"It isn't your fault." I flick my eyes to the now empty beach, the humans only specks farther out towards the mainland closer to the boardwalk.

"There are so many eyes beating down on me, you know what I mean. I want to be perfect, I want to be that girl who holds her punches and laughs it off. The girl who participates in everything and makes everyone feel at home."

"But you aren't that girl. You're the girl who's better at defense magic than memorizing incantations and makes a mean sigil when she needs to. You're the girl who we'd send to walk through danger because your brain completely rotted in the fear department."

"I know and they fear that."

"That's what we love about you. That's what this coven needs." Her lips twitch as she tried to fight back a smile. "That's what Ruth loved, why she let you join with nothing but a stupid Crowley book, a welcome to California notebook, and some herbs which you still have in a box."

My throat trembles as I try to hold back tears and cover it up with more laughable memories.

"She set the Crowley book aflame."

Angel chuckles. "A good choice to be honest. She always knew best."

I try to keep myself as composed as Angel does.

"I miss her."

"Me too." She looks out at the ocean which rears up yet again and strikes, but this time at the humans, dragging some form too close to the warning line of red tap away.

Angel quickly points but I remain tranquil as the people scream and cry out curses to the waters, some running away while a few of the brave dart out to the water to retrieve a man long gone.

When the spirits strike, nothing is left.

Ruth's deep voice rattles through me. I feel it with every fiber of my being.

"We should go." Angel takes my hand. "We need to go."

I shake my head, happy that she said just what I was thinking. "For sure."