"You gotta do something!" Jake is pacing from my bedroom door to the window while I'm trying to process that he is in my house and, instead of throwing insults at me, he's talking to me.

We've been neighbors since birth and have grown up together. My playmate, my classmate, and my best friend until middle school, when he decided to start hanging out with a new group of friends. Suddenly I was being called names and teased in an uncomfortable, bordering on bullying way. When not harassing me, he has mostly stopped acknowledging my existence.

But now here he was demanding the "tainted one" help him.

I glare at him for a solid minute before growling, "Seriously dude, WTF?"

He always hated it when I used slang abbreviations.

His brows narrow, and his expression morphs into a look of annoyance I'm all too familiar with.

I swallow a laugh. Okay, I know this is no laughing matter; this is some seriously crazy shit going down.

"We need to go help my brother." Jake is looking out the window, and his voice is calmer, and his shoulders are no longer hunched. I can see the fear slowly ebbing away, being replaced with a look of determination.

I move next to him and look down into the yard at what's left of Katie. Her head is now discarded in my mother's prize rose garden. "Your brother is probably dead." Yes, I was thinking it, but I honestly didn't mean to say that out loud.

Jake reaches out and grabs my arm. "You're wrong. Randy is alive. He was on the other side of the room when they attacked. He's smart. He probably ran down to the cellar. That basement door is metal and thick." His fingers dig into my skin. "My brother would be safe down there. I'm betting Randy and the other girls are down there waiting for us to bring help."

I pull my arm away and rub the marks his fingers leave on my skin.

There is not a magic dispatch I can call. No 911 "help me, evil has come a knocking on my door, please send someone" department I can ring up.

Now, maybe if I were part of a coven, they might help, but my family has always shied away from covens. We call ourselves solitary witches, preferring to practice magic on our own.

Magic shared is much more powerful, but it also means you're allowing your magic to be tainted by someone else's energy. Not everyone who uses magic practices white magic, and dark witches really enjoy screwing with white witches, so when they join a coven, they aren't always honest about the type of magic they are wielding.

I had it drummed into me since I was small how dangerous it can be to allow even a smidge of black magic swirl within you.

No coven means I have no list of marked friends to call on for help. I can call my parents, but by the time they make it back, we'll probably be dead.

We were royally screwed.

The sound of splintering wood floats up the stairs.

Holly hell, the beast has somehow busted through Granny's protection spell. A spell settled on this house a hundred years ago, cast by one of the most powerful witches in generations.

In theory, only an army of undead or a dozen covens of dark witches could breach the perimeters of a house covered in such a spell.

Jack has said he smelled skunk, not smoke, which meant we could be dealing with a legionnaire. A higher-up creature in the legion of demons that call hell their home.

I've never read or heard tales about such a creature coming through such a weak connection as a Ouija board. In theory, such a crossing would take a powerful witch to work a seriously dark spell, the type of magic that goes against all that is considered holy to the white witches.

I could not imagine even a dark witch being foolish enough to try and bring forth such a demon. There would be no way to contain it once it crossed over. The hellish thing would run wild, killing everyone in sight. Which it did try to do, and is still trying to do.

Jake and I are now shoulder to shoulder in the hallway, looking down the stairs at a wide-open gap where my front door used to be.

Those orange eyes brightened when they saw us, and that thing let out an evil, high-pitched crackle that I swear I can hear coming from inside my head.

I involuntarily take a step back and then another. Jake does the same.

"Choices, my girl. Life is full of circumstances that are forced upon you that will bring forth a person's true character." I could almost feel my grandmother's fingers on my chin as her words ring through my head. "Are you a fighter, or will fear send you running away? There is no way to know what you are capable of until you are forced to face the worst that life can throw at you, child."

I'm picturing the afternoon out in the yard when she decided to give me this particular lecture. 

Her eyes narrowed as she looked deeply into my eyes. "Mark my words, you will be tested in this world at some point. No one walks this earth without having sorrows and troubles fall upon them."

Her hand lifted my chin and held firm as she studied me and asked again, "Is there the fire to fight inside you, granddaughter? Are you like me? Or are you a more docile spirit like your mother?"

Well, Granny, I guess we were about to find out who I take after.

When the demon steps over the threshold into the house, I turn and run towards my parents' bedroom.

I slid across the room as an ungodly roar erupts somewhere down below in the living room. 

***