Chapter 1

I can tell you exactly when I became a bad guy. I can describe it down to the very moment, as abrupt as…

As the blow of a hammer.

My knees squelched in blood-soaked carpet where I'd landed, trembling, beside my older sister's body. At that moment, the shock was too fresh even for tears. My mouth gaped into a scream beyond sound. Not Diana. No….

But I'd been a hospice nurse for three years; I was no stranger to death. Although I hadn't embraced our family tradition of witchcraft like Diana had—witchcraft as in goddess-worship, I mean, not that fantasy TV stuff—my instincts were solid. And despite my sister's mottled face, now caked with blood, I knew her too well to find any comfort in denial.

She'd been my constant in life. My guide. My friend. I'd once badly braided that long, golden hair, so different from my own, now streaked with more blood—we'd laughed, and posed and taken pictures. I'd often held those now broken hands, still wearing their ever-present silver rings. They'd held me, countless times, especially after losing our parents. And Diana's necklace…

Most witches wear pentagrams, point-up. The women in my family wear an overlapping circle design that our nonna called a "vesica piscis." It's nowhere near as common.

The pendant hanging limp from this dead woman's throat looked just like Mom's had. Just like the one lying forgotten in my bureau drawer.

This was her.

Somehow, impossible as it seemed, I now existed in a world where my big sister did not. Was not. Would not.

Sound, ugly and hurt, moaned from my throat. The room around me shrank—our small home's living room where we'd sat up to watch movies, to play games, to trade gossip.

I should be doing something, right?

In that moment, I didn't know or care what that might be. Diana….

Our belongings littered the floor. CDs and remote controls mixed with the detritus of my sister's magical interests—tarot cards, rune stones, crystals. A tapestry of Greek ruins fluttered, half-torn from the wall—she'd always wanted to visit Greece. A tumble of tools, screwdrivers and pliers and a scattering of cup hooks and nails, looked incongruous amidst calligraphed pages ripped from her Book of Shadows. All the tools had pink plastic handles. We'd gotten the kit a few years earlier. Magic can't fix everything, I'd joked. Now, blinking past a blur of tears, I found myself counting pieces. Screwdriver. Wrench. The one most obviously missing was…

The hammer.

Perhaps instinct warned me, or common sense, or even Diana's lingering spirit.

With a gasp, I threw myself away from her body as the bloody hammer arced down at me.

Metal bit into floorboards the carpet couldn't protect. I rolled through blood and tarot cards and stumbled to my feet. My crepe-soled shoes squelched in the damp, and my arm felt sticky and cold. The air smelled metallic, deathly.

And a stranger, a killer, straightened to full height not three feet from me. His dark eyes shone. His angular face was speckled with Diana's blood.

Right there, he stood. This was real.

"Katie, right?" His friendly grin chilled me, even more than his easy, urban voice. "The kid sister. Wow. You should have driven slower tonight, Katie. This, you know…it complicates things."

"Because now you won't get away with it?" I barely recognized my own, flat voice. Emotion hurled itself against the lingering wall of my shock, a battering ram of pain—but it hadn't gotten through yet. The amount that whimpered from my throat and burned in my eyes was nothing next to what fought to escape.

His grin widened, showing dimples. His hair, cut neat and short, was as dark as mine, and his charisma was like a spell. If it weren't for a prominent nose, he'd be gorgeous. How could I even notice that, past all the blood?

And past the dead sister. No….

I felt sick.

"Like that's going to happen." He raised the hammer to shoulder height and waggled his heavy eyebrows, downright playful. "Sure, you're trouble, but let's not get above ourselves. Face it, Katie. You're as good as dead."

Numb or not, I acted. Pretty sure I couldn't outrun him, I backed away, sweeping my arm out to find something, anything for a weapon. Magazine? No. A throw pillow? Hardly. My hand closed on our answering machine, and I threw that instead. He laughed as he dodged. The phone bounced after the machine—

The phone! Scooping it up, I started to punch the magic numbers, 9-1—

In a rush, the killer reached me. The hammer caught my hand so hard that I didn't even feel it at first, just saw the receiver fly across the room and only then, as if on a time delay—

Pain. Like, broken-bone pain.

Once that burst through, the rest of my horror swept after it. The sound escaping me became an ungodly, animal-like wail. I grabbed a floor lamp, sparks flying as the cord jerked from an outlet, but it made a lousy one-handed weapon. His pink-handled hammer, our hammer, knocked it aside—

Then the killer had me against the wall, one forearm hard across my throat, his thigh pinning my legs, his minty-fresh breath in my face. My right hand throbbed, agonizing, with every clutch of my heart. I wished I were one of those women who knew martial arts or kickboxing. I wasn't. He had me too tight to slip loose, and I was too short to head-butt even someone as average height as him. And damn it, my sister was dead.

My sister. My sister. My sister.

Copyright © 2006 by Yvonne Jocks