Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The gurgle of draining water was drowned out by a burst of sulfuric air and the telltale popping of a demon portal opening. Freezing horror shot through my veins as a pink, shrieking demon staggered through a slit in our reality and settled on the countertop behind Brenda.
About the size of a toy dog, its smoky jaws unhinged and burst open like it could chomp a human whole with its sharp teeth—which it might be able to do if the thing had corporeal form, which it didn’t.
Its screech was smothered by a gut-wrenching choking noise as Brenda clawed off her mask, gasping for breath.
She listed sideways and grabbed me, basically pulling me into the bathtub.
The rose quartz orb thudded on the bottom of the tub, then rolled to the drain, covering the hole.
Riding adrenaline, I scrambled out of the water, chanting a demon-banishing spell.
“Blessed ancestors, come to my aid! Earth, sky, and water, I banish this demon from our world. Demon, I command you back to your own domain.” The demon dog-like thing didn’t even blink. Pulling at my birthright power, the prickle of my energy swirled into a ball the size of a tangerine in my hand.
At the same moment the demon’s maw opened and blasted hazy purple air at the back of Brenda’s head, I threw my energy ball.
But the demon’s attack, propelled by its tiny flapping wings, freaking landed first. The pinkish-purple cloud sizzled as it sucked the gauzy life essence from Brenda.
My second ball splatted against the small horn atop the demon’s upper jaw, erupting into silvery sparks, but the demon still didn’t disappear like it should have.
Brenda whimpered, but her eyes held stunned shock.
Weak from the drain and equal parts terrified and furious, my vision grayed at the edges. “Begone, demon. I command you to return to your plane.”
I whipped my last energy ball at the demon’s bumpy, hairless chest as Brenda fell sideways against the tub. With an ear-numbing screech, it dissipated.
Pop!
The portal closed.
I swiped off my N95 mask.
Brenda wasn’t moving.
My whole body aching and vibrating, I rolled her over. Blood trickled down the side of her head, pooling in her ear. It had slowed already. But my heart jumped into my throat as I leaned close to her mouth and nose.
She wasn’t breathing.
I ran into the hall and grabbed my phone.
With the 9-1-1 call on speaker, I pulled Brenda’s deadweight onto the bathroom floor and started CPR.
The 9-1-1 operator started with questions, but I was staring in disbelief at my herb-encrusted wrist. The gold anklet, which was now a bracelet, stared back.
The spell must have broken under the water and transferred to me.
The room hazed like I was looking at it through smoke.
I got the address out and answered their other questions as I counted compressions.
Once the call ended, I focused all my attention on Brenda.
I could do this.
I had to keep her alive.
“Come on, Brenda, don’t die on me,” I chanted.
My wet arm burned as if it had been dipped in hot wax, and poor Brenda’s face reminded me of my mother’s when she was taken from me five summers ago.
The doctors had called it a stroke, but I knew the truth.
Somehow, the Wyrd Sisters of Luce had reached beyond my mom’s defenses and squeezed the life out of her.
It was eerily similar to Brenda’s attack.
Had the demon come for me but attacked Brenda by mistake?
She couldn’t die.
Not on my watch.
Done with thirty compressions, I leaned over her and pressed my lips against Brenda’s rubbery ones, blowing in a rescue breath.
As if my mother was looking over me, Brenda moaned. She turned her head, and her eyelids flickered. I wiped her lipstick off my mouth, bursting with joy. “Hey there, you gave me a scare. How are you feeling?” I silently thanked my ancestors as I rolled her gently into the recovery position.
Brenda moaned at the movement, but her skin color was better. I patted her shoulder. “Rest and breathe. I have help coming.” It was good she wasn’t asking what happened. I could only hope that with the shock of the experience she wouldn’t remember the demon attack.
The bathroom was a disaster. “I’ll be right back,” I said.
I grabbed the mini hand vacuum out of my messenger bag and then returned to Brenda.
“I’m going to do a quick cleanup, okay? You just stay lying there,” I said, checking her breathing again. She nodded and choked out an “Okay.” Her head wound had clotted over. I wondered how much she remembered, but shock had a way of blanking out memories.
With whirlwind speed, I cleansed the room, adding a quick settling spell to vanquish whatever demon energy traces might be left behind. In two minutes flat, the bathroom looked less like a ritual scene and more like the footbath I was going for.
“Everything is going to be fine now,” I said to Brenda, crouching down beside her.
“Okay,” she said again. I took that as a sign of life. I put my head between my knees and sucked in slow breaths, looking for the strength to build shields while avoiding looking at the cursed bracelet.
My situation rolled in my head like movie credits: I had a cursed bracelet attached to me, and I’d faced a demon type I’d never seen before or read about.
Brenda had almost died. I’d sworn an oath to my mother never to harm a human.
This was pretty close to disaster. I swiped at a tear dripping down my nose.
If I’d gotten proper training, I might have known what to do—but there were only me and the grimoires left to face the world.
I’ve never met anyone like me, and I probably never would.
Mom, a self-taught hedgewitch, had shared all the spirit mojo my grandmother had taught her, training me to balance energy, but since the Sisters of Luce had ripped her from our world, there wasn’t anyone to help level my otherworldly skills up.
“I want to get up.” Brenda moaned and tried to roll over as sirens approached outside.
“They’re almost here. You should probably stay still for a minute or two more. I have to go downstairs to let them in. Don’t try to get up on your own, okay?”
She nodded, and I raced to the stairs, not wanting to leave her alone for long.
It was the paramedics, but the police arrived before I got back upstairs.
Their questions were tougher to deal with.
By the time I’d answered everyone, I was choking back sobs and cradling a ball of soaked tissues.
The paramedics had bundled up Brenda and rolled her away.
She was “stable,” they said. I’d “saved her life,” they said.
But they didn’t know it was me who had almost caused her death.
No family showed up, but a couple of nosy neighbors checked in. I gave my contact info to the police, who thanked me again for my quick thinking and getting my CPR certificate. Trembling, I picked up my messenger bag and left.
Outside, I dropped my shades in place to block the glare while furiously texting my bestie Oriana.
Sorrel
Hey, things went south at the client’s house. She almost died.
Ori
Waaa? No. Omgomgomg. Are you okay? What happened? Are you still there?
Sorrel
I’m on the way home. I’ll explain when I see you.
Ori
I’ll cancel my thing and be there ASAP.
Sorrel
Thanks, I could use a hug.
Ori
Sending them. Bringing more. Hang in there. On my way. Take care of you.
Knowing Ori was coming was like taking off a corset.
We would figure it out. Ori could pull answers out of a book no one else remembered existed.
When we’d first met at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, she’d nearly short-circuited over my unschooling—peppering me with questions about curriculums and diplomas like I was her own walking case study.
It took a bunch of chai-fueled chats to explain how unschooling is like homeschooling without the rules.
It’s life-led learning. The big thing is I’d gotten to follow what I was passionate about, so green crafting had been my main focus.
Ori was in a double major of history and linguistics, but even with her genius brain, that was a lot to wrap her head around.
Right now, I needed every last synapse of help to puzzle out what to do about the thing on my wrist.
At the park, I stopped walking and did a self-check. Despite bone-weary fatigue, I was on edge—like something else was around the corner. I’d made a pact to never take a non-demon life, but by accident, I’d come close to not being able to protect Brenda. I leaned against a tree to ground myself.
The little demon hadn’t even had sigils. I eyed the gold around my arm like it was an alien. No. Not an alien. A parasite.
Spells could transfer in water, but not inside a circle, so what in the hellebore had happened? The longer the gold thing was on me, the more it was going to mess with my energy. I had to get it off.
Demons were relatively rare, and the chances of another portal opening today were low to nil.
I had an hour or so before Ori arrived, and I needed food, stat.
But as I walked to my favorite green juicery, the images of Brenda and the pink bumpy demon dog obliterated any rational thought. I was weak and hungry and rattled.
Standing in line at the juicery, I mumbled calming chants.
Maybe it was my upbringing to respect nature, but over the years, I’d discovered that leafy greens, raw food, and freshly pressed juices holistically boosted my energy and refreshed my magic.
Muscles and organs took longer to absorb the nutrients, but crunching leaves or sucking back a smoothie returned my power almost instantly.
My phone buzzed with a call from my father’s attorney, Charles Worthington III. I hit decline. The lawyer only called if it was about money. That could wait.
As far as I was concerned, the DNA my dad had passed on had nothing to do with who I was. He’d left my and Mom’s chosen life with the intentional community (which he chose to call a commune) and thrown in with a tech startup that ended up netting him millions.
My parents’ hefty divorce settlement paid for the Potrero Hill house, the taxes, and the retreat Mom and my stepdad, Bud, had built up in the redwoods.
It also had a clause that my father would stay away from me.
That suited me. He’d never really understood Mom, and he definitely would not get my specialness.
“You feeling okay?” the counter person asked.
"Yeah, just thirsty," I replied, taking my order of organic celery, pear, cucumber juice, and a couple of salads. Outside, I downed a juice in four gulps. It was like a warm blanket after a night of stargazing.
Green power zipped through my veins as I hiked back up the hill to Potrero. Once I was safe inside my wards, I would get the damned bracelet off before it killed me. When I turned onto my street, I ran the rest of the way home.