Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            “You left me to sit in my own shit and piss for three days!” he exclaimed, spittle spraying from him.

            “Then maybe you shouldn’t have killed Jasmine’s baby duck!” I exclaimed, only now remembering it. She had been in tears. And though he insisted it had been an accident, we had played jury and executioner, dropping him in the well as punishment. One day became two, then three before the reality of what we’d done hit us and Jasmine and I “found” him, almost comatose from cold and starving at the bottom of a dry well. Lee had never told on us, but it had been the end of all our innocence, and the very next week, they kicked me out of the camp for good.

            That’s why I threw Trent into the tree, I realized, only now remembering it. He had wanted me to leave Lee to die there, and I had said no. Son of a bastard . . .

            In a mental fog, I turned to the front door. “I gotta go,” I said, not sure what to do with the dagger. I couldn’t just shove it between my sock and calf. My books were still on Kisten’s pool table, and I paced forward, fear for Trent filling me. It had been raining for three solid days. The camp was closed. It wasn’t as if I could call someone to go out there. I was going to have to buy a line jump, and the only demon I halfway trusted other than Al was Dali. No, I have to buy three. One to get there, and two to get back.

            “You’ll never make it. Trent is going to die,” Lee said, his voice ringing in the rafters with the surety of a minister preaching hell and brimstone. “And you are going to live with the knowledge that you couldn’t reach him in time.”

            I jumped, shocked when Lee’s spell slammed into the pool table, engulfing it in a weird purple and blue flame.

            He hadn’t been after me. He’d been after my books.

            “Dilatare!” I cried, throwing the explosive ball of air at the flames, and the fire vanished, blown out to leave only smoke rising from the burnt felt. My bag was singed, but the books were fine. Not even warm when I gathered them to me like kittens. Dumbass. He tried to burn my books!

            “What is your problem!” I shouted as I spun to him, my books held to my chest. “I’m sorry about leaving you in the well for three days. But I was twelve. Everyone is stupid when they are twelve. It was a mistake.”

            Lee shook his head, unfocused magic wreathing his hands. “The only mistake you made was telling them where I was before I died.”

            “Yeah. That’s what Trent said.” And then my eyes widened at his sudden pull on the ley line. Words dripped from him, unclear and muffled. His hands gestured, pulling energy up and over him in branching rills, sparking in the charged air. This was pure anger I was seeing in him, rage possessing his every thought.

            And it didn’t have to be this way.

            “I am so sorry, Lee,” I whispered, books tight to me as I came forward. I needed a secure circle to ride out whatever he was going to throw at me. I didn’t have time to scribe one, but that ugly wax and fat circle might save my life. “I wish your daughter had been a normal witch,” I said, grief for his loss filling me.

            And then I stepped onto his dark pentagram.

            I jerked to a halt in surprise as a residual energy seemed to rise through me, fastening on my grief and loss, pulling it away, taking it in . . . harnessing it? Pain cramped my hand, and I cried out as the chakra rings burst into a quickly quenched heat.

            What the hell? I thought as I shook the imaginary fire from me. But then my breath caught. Lee’s dark magic pentagram was glowing. I had triggered something, something latent and left over.

            “Lee!” a familiar, feminine, and very pissed voice shouted.

            My head snapped up, and Lee spun, staggering in shock as he half turned.

            It was Vivian, her expression tight in anger as she stood before us on the stage. Mystics wreathed her, making her short hair into a halo and her white clothes spark as she moved. “You and me,” she said, pointing, and Lee retreated to the windows. “Right here. Right now.”

            “How,” Lee gasped, the magic in his hand faltering as he gaped at her. “You’re . . .”

            “Not happy,” she finished for him. “I can see everything now. And what I can’t, others can. They whisper to me, saying you lied. You lied to me. You lied to the coven. Consider your conditional plumber position revoked. Better yet, let me revoke you.”